The Last Neighborhood Cops

The Rise and Fall of Community Policing in New York Public Housing

by Fritz Umbach

Series: Series: Critical Issues in Crime and Society

Published by: Rutgers University Press

Subjects:New York City and State, History: US, Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Law

272 Pages, 6.0 x 9.0 in, 5 illustrations.

Hardcover
9780813549064
Published: January 5, 2011

$64.95 SS

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EPUB
9780813580524
Published: January 5, 2011

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PDF
9780813552354
Published: January 5, 2011

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

In recent years, community policing has transformed American law enforcement by promising to build trust between citizens and officers. Today, three-quarters of American police departments claim to embrace the strategy. But decades before the phrase was coined, the New York City Housing Authority Police Department (HAPD) had pioneered community-based crime-fighting strategies.

The Last Neighborhood Cops reveals the forgotten history of the residents and cops who forged community policing in the public housing complexes of New York City during the second half of the twentieth century. Through a combination of poignant storytelling and historical analysis, Fritz Umbach draws on buried and confidential police records and voices of retired officers and older residents to help explore the rise and fall of the HAPD's community-based strategy, while questioning its tactical effectiveness. The result is a unique perspective on contemporary debates of community policing and historical developments chronicling the influence of poor and working-class populations on public policy making.

"Our buildings must be patrolled by foot" : policing public housing and New York City politics, 1934-1960
"A paradox in urban law enforcement" : residents, officers, and the making of community policing in NYCHA, 1960-1980
A confluence of crises : the 1970s and the undermining of community policing
The end of community policing, 1980-1995
A return to origins and the merger, 1990-1995 : losing, saving, and losing the housing police again

FRITZ UMBACH is an assistant professor of history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York.

"Beyond this book's powerful implications for contemporary policing, it's must reading for those interested in the larger social, cultural and economic history of Gotham since World War II. Sophisticated, skillful, and myth-toppling scholarship."
~Mike Wallace, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gotham

"Ask Americans for a symbol of crime and failed policy and they'll likely name the 'projects.' Umbach inverts conventional wisdom, skillfully taking us where few tread—we are better for it."
~Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day

"Based on careful archival research into the New York City Housing Authority police department archives and interviews with both former officers and residents, Umbach's book provides a bottom-up view of residents' interactions with police. A welcome correction that engages many topics."
~American Historical Review

"...a nuanced and compelling history of the importance of policing, both formal and informal, in creating social order in New York City projets."
~The Journal of American History