Bergen Precinct -- Brooklyn History
Bergen Precinct. Photo by Suzanne Spellen.

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4 of this story.

The first months of 1898 were rough on all of New York City. New Year’s Day heralded in the birth of Greater New York, with five boroughs, all operating from the central control of Manhattan.

This new arrangement was hard on all the new city agencies, but nowhere was it felt more than in the departments of the police and fire services, two important agencies that were charged with keeping the city safe.

When Greater New York was created, the Bronx and Manhattan had already consolidated their civic infrastructure under one roof. Staten Island was too remote and isolated to really worry about right away, and Queens was a collection of towns, some of which were also pretty remote.

The towns closest to Manhattan, like Long Island City, could be worked with, but Brooklyn was the biggest challenge for the new administration.

Brooklyn had been an independent city, with well-established civil institutions, including police and fire services that had their own headquarters, own uniforms, own equipment and own personnel, officers and procedures. All of that would now be under the control of central departments in Manhattan. This was not going to be easy.

Part One and Part Two of the story of the unification of the New York City Police Department told of the problems in meshing the forces. First of all, someone had to be in charge, and in turn of the 20th century New York, that meant dealing with Tammany Hall, the Democratic Machine that had Manhattan under its thumb for at least 30 years already.

The corruption of Tammany Hall had been one of the main reasons many Brooklynites did not want to become part of New York City, but they were outnumbered by those business leaders who wanted the benefits of less taxes and a broader base for their businesses.

Hardly any of those businessmen were Democrats, but they figured that the economic advantages of unification would eventually overcome politics. They may have been right, but it took much longer than most of their lifetimes.

Tammany Hall may have been most infamous for the reign of Boss Tweed, in the 1870s, but his successor, Richard Croker, was much worse. Croker, whose name and likeness didn’t have the punch in the press like Tweed, was actually a better organizer, a more efficient boss, and much smarter than Tweed.

Croker took Tweed’s machine and turned it into the Terminator. He refined the operations, and used the police department as his collections and enforcement wing. By 1895, the New York Police had the reputation of being the most corrupt police department in the country.

Theodore Roosevelt became President of the Police Commission in 1895, and did his best to change that reputation. He rooted out as many Tammany men in high places as possible, and worked with the men on the street, demanding performance, and winning their respect.

But two years after taking the job, he had rattled too many cages for Tammany’s comfort, and they forced him out. A year later, Greater New York City was created, and the new city charter made it possible for the new head of the police department to be a Republican, the man who had been in charge of Manhattan’s force before the change, John McCullagh.

McCullagh was hated by Croker, and by extension, his puppet mayor, Augustus Van Wyck. While Croker worked to get him out, McCullagh took on the daunting task of combining all of the separate police departments under one roof.

He instituted several new programs, and went about upgrading equipment and precinct houses, and established new precincts in parts of Brooklyn that had grown into new neighborhoods.

Many of his programs were resented by some of the old guard Brooklynites in the new police force, but aside from complaining about it, there was little they could do. It was no longer in their control. One new change in Brooklyn was the old system of “special patrolman.”

This was a force of about 400 men who were issued special shields by the BPD, which they each paid $3 for. These men were civilians employed as security guards and night watchmen at private businesses, on the docks, with the steamship companies, and with manufacturing companies.

They were employed by the businesses they guarded, but had to report weekly to the police precincts in order to keep their badges in good standing.

The special patrolmen had to wear a specific color gray uniform that otherwise looked like a police uniform, and aside from their badges, had no training by the police department, and were not allowed to carry firearms, or do any other police related tasks.

Manhattan PD did not have a similar program. After 1898, Brooklyn’s special patrolmen had no legal standing. They could be, technically speaking, arrested for impersonating a police officer.

The new regime cast a dubious eye on these night watchmen, and made some changes to the program. The new city charter stated that their employers had to deposit a month’s salary in advance in a special account, and sign papers stating that the city and the new police department were not liable for anything that happened to the special patrolmen while on their watch.

Needless to say, many employers refused to do so, and the number of official special patrolmen in Brooklyn went down from over 400 to under 50. Security guards and watchmen were not prohibited from their jobs, they just were no longer a part of the new police department.

Another big change for Brooklyn PD was in the uniforms. This would be much harder to swallow than getting rid of the special patrolmen. McCullagh wanted his unified police department to all have the same uniforms, including their heavy winter overcoats.

The Chief called for an inspection of the men in Brooklyn, with winter overcoats and all their winter gear – in August. The Brooklyn Eagle reported that there was much grumbling in the ranks.

Not only for the discomfort of wearing heavy wool in the summer, but also because any new uniforms would have to be paid for by the men themselves, and uniforms, especially heavy coats, were not cheap.

The new uniforms for patrolmen consisted of long blue frock coats with two rows of nine brass buttons. They had to wear dark blue pants, hard grey police helmets and had leather belts with scabbards that held their nightsticks.

They all were required to carry Colt 32 revolvers. In the winter, a heavy boiled wool overcoat topped the uniform. The paper reported that on inspection day, the room reeked of mothballs and camphor, as coats, packed away by dutiful wives for the summer, had to be worn before the odors of protection could be aired away.

The uniforms of Manhattan and Brooklyn were slightly different, and the Brooklyn force of over 1,800 men had already been forced to buy new uniforms. They were upset about that, but the coats, which cost at least $28, were more than a week’s salary for most of the foot patrolmen.

They sent a representative committee to Manhattan to ask that the new coats be phased in, as the men’s old coats wore out, as the men could not afford them.

Manhattan was not too sympathetic, the paper reported, saying that if Manhattan had joined Brooklyn’s force, they’d be forced to change THEIR uniforms, and would that be fair?

No, it wouldn’t, so too bad. The paper did note that more sympathetic ears in the Manhattan office were going to look into what could be done. In the meantime, the coats went back into mothballs until winter, and the difficult task of reordering the force continued.

If Chief McCullagh only had to worry about uniforms and grumbling Brooklyn policemen, he’d have been happy. But he knew it was only a matter of time before Van Wyck and Croker got rid of him.

Their man, a police captain in Manhattan named William Devery, was being groomed for the top job, and was being promoted up the ladder to be eligible for the job. Before the year was up, Boss Croker, who was conveniently in England at the time, said that it was time for McCullagh to go.

The board that oversaw picking the commissioner was run by two Republicans and two Democrats. The Democrats fell in line and voted to retire McCullagh. The Republicans refused.

So Mayor Van Wyck, who had the power to remove the commission members, got rid of one of them, and replaced him with a less principled Republican. The vote was cast again, and Chief McCullagh was retired with a $3,000 pension, and William Devery was made Chief.

This was a man so corrupt that had he been a civilian and caught doing his dirty deeds, he would have been in jail himself. But, as he told a group of policemen in one of the precincts he was made captain of, “They tell me there’s a lot of grafting going on in this precinct.

They tell me that you fellows are the fiercest ever on graft. Now that’s going to stop! If there’s any grafting to be done, I’ll do it. Leave it to me.”

Next time: The conclusion of the story. Research for this series comes from local newspapers and other press. Many of the details regarding Chief McCullagh and his relationship with Boss Croker and Mayor Van Wyck comes from an excellent article by Bernard Whalen and David Doorey, called “The Birth of the NYPD.”

(78th Precinct House, Bergen at 6th Ave. Photo: S.Spellen)


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