88th Precinct -- Brooklyn History
88th Precinct. Photo by Suzanne Spellen.

Read Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of this story.

On January 1, 1898, Brooklyn woke up to a new world in which it was no longer the master of its own destiny. It was now part of Greater New York City, where the seats of City power rested on the streets and in the buildings of Lower Manhattan, not at Brooklyn’s City Hall or in the office and bank buildings of Court Street.

It’s hard to imagine what that may have been like. The closest analogy may be that it felt like Brooklyn had been conquered by another nation. All aspects of city life were different after January 1st, and in the coming months, it got a lot worse before it got better.

Take the police, for example. Since they were charged with maintaining order, stopping crime and apprehending criminals, all very important tasks, you’d think those in charge would have spent a lot of time planning for the re-organization of the police force, so that the transition of power and command would be swift and efficient. Yeah, you’d think…

One that fateful day, all of Brooklyn’s appointed officials, and many of their elected officials found themselves unemployed. They were redundant. Greater New York didn’t need two Police Chiefs, two Presidents of the Board of Education, or two heads of the Fire Department, or Public Health.

Many of the men who ran the agencies and departments of Brooklyn were actually better at their jobs than many of their Manhattan counterparts. But they were the conquered, and Manhattan ruled, so at the beginning of 1898, they were out.

It was all politics and power. For most of the late 19th century, Brooklyn had been run by the Republicans. They were in charge during the city’s greatest surge in growth and influence, and oversaw Brooklyn becoming the fourth largest city in the nation, and one of the richest and most powerful.

Yes, a lot of that wealth depended on fortunes made across the river in Manhattan. But Brooklyn had plenty of its own wealth, generated on its docks and piers, as well as in the factories that made every kind of product imaginable.

The powerbrokers and movers and shakers of that day were, with few exceptions, Republican. The same held true for Queens and Staten Island.

The Democrats had their powerbrokers too. Manhattan’s Tammany Hall exerted great influence in Brooklyn, especially amidst the Irish and other immigrants who made up much of the workforce.

As the 19th century progressed to its end, the Democrats were able to wield a great deal of political power, as well, and were a force to be reckoned with. Since Manhattan was ruled by Tammany at the turn of the century, Brooklyn’s Democrats owed a lot to them, and Tammany would get their due.

Most of Brooklyn’s Republican leaders, backed by Republican businessmen and industrialists, had voted for a Greater New York. They figured it was good for business, and therefore good for them. Sharing the pot, as it were, would reduce taxes, increase business, and reduce waste in the bureaucracy of agencies and services.

The more politically minded also were counting on Brooklyn’s powerful Republican power base, added to those in the other boroughs, being able to counter the power and corruption of Tammany Hall. That was naive, to say the least.

Tammany Hall dug in deep. Led by Richard Croker, one of the wiliest and most cunning political bosses ever, Tammany had ties everywhere, in every agency, every office, every ward, and every police station and fire house.

Almost everyone owed Tammany for their job, or a relative’s job, or had taken charity, or accepted a favor. If they had not, there was always blackmail or pressure from above. While the rich Republicans were taking care of business, Tammany was behind the scenes taking care of the little guys.

They gave public donations of food and other aid to the slums full of immigrants. They promised to see to the common man’s needs. If a working man needed help, he could go to his Tammany ward boss, and get his problem fixed.

All they asked in return was for your vote and your loyalty. They got it, so much so that by the beginning of the 20th century, Republicans were totally out of power in New York City.

Of course, most of the “little guys” didn’t realize that the Tammany leadership was getting as rich as any Republican Robber Baron off of their loyalty, or that sometimes getting a problem solved involved some nasty head thumping in an alley somewhere.

They also didn’t realize that Tammany ran the city, but that didn’t mean they ran it well. In fact, they were actually pretty bad at running the city, and that would eventually be their downfall.

But that’s another story. This one is about some of the problems they had in joining the Brooklyn Police Department with Manhattan and the other boroughs, and creating the NYPD.

On January 1, 1898, eighteen separate police departments were suddenly all one entity. Those departments came from all five boroughs, and included not just the regular police, but police forces for the parks, the harbors, the bridges, and even the Telegraph Bureau, which was the forerunner of the Communications Department.

Brooklyn had one general police department for the entire city, because all of the different towns of Brooklyn had merged into a city before unification. They also had separate Parks and Bridge police. But Queens had separate forces for many of the different towns.

So did Staten Island. The Bronx had been joined with Manhattan’s police force before unification. Making one police force was not going to be easy.

The vote to unify New York City was taken and approved several years before it actually happened, so there was time to get ready. Throughout the soon-to-be-boroughs, the individual police entities took that time to make promotions and hire new people so that when unification came, each department would have a better standing in numbers and rank.

The new City Charter mandated that the new police department could have no more than 6,396 people, which included 29 female matrons for the jails. When 1898 rolled in, the combined polices force had many more men than they were supposed to.

All of the new hires were promptly fired. The new Police Board immediately complained that there were not enough men to police a city of 3,400,000 people. Day One and the problems were already mounting.

The Charter also quite specifically mandated that the police department would not be at the control of any political party. To that end, the mayor had to appoint a four member bi-partisan Police Board, which would oversee the department.

That board had two Republicans and two Democrats, and its first President of the Board was one of the Democrats, a man named Bernard York. Each member served a four year term, but could be removed at any time, at the mayor’s discretion.

The first mayor of this unified New York City was Augustus Van Wyck, an affable man who was a smooth talker, and totally under the thrall of Tammany Boss Croker. This was not news. Van Wyck even ran with the campaign slogan “To hell with reform.”

He actually managed to accomplish some important things while in office, especially in getting the subway system going, but he was a Tammany puppet in most other things.

The men who wrote the new City Charter must have had him in mind, because they wrote into that document many important checks and balances on power. But they didn’t entirely anticipate the tenacity and power of Boss Croker.

The Charter was quite specific as to who could become the first Chief of Police of all of New York City. There were only four possibilities.

He had to be either the current Chief of Police of New York or of Brooklyn, or the deputy chief of either department. That was it. Richard Croker wasn’t enamored of any of these men. He wanted his man, William S. Devery, who was a police captain in Manhattan.

But Devery wasn’t ranked high enough, and was ineligible. The new Police Board went with the current head of Manhattan’s Police Department, John McCullagh.

John McCullagh was a good choice, and was respected in the department. But he was a Republican, and would not be dancing to Tammany’s tunes. Boss Croker was not happy, and from day one worked to get him out. Meanwhile, his man Captain Devery was quietly promoted to Deputy Chief of Police.

He bypassed the rank of Inspector, and moved right on up the ladder. His time was coming, one way or another. No doubt aware of the back room positioning, Chief McCullagh had a lot of work to do, and little time to do it. He had to whip his combined forces into one police force, and the sooner, the better for the city.

Next time: The stage is set, now the play begins. We’ll look at how Brooklyn’s police fared in the wake of the Great Mistake. It all starts with a uniform…

(88th Precinct House, Clinton Hill. Photograph: S.Spellen)

Related Stories
Walkabout: “The Great Mistake” — How Brooklyn Lost Its Independence
Walkabout: “The Great Mistake” — How Brooklyn Lost Its Independence, Part 2
Walkabout: Policing the “Great Mistake,” Part 1


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