Jules Stewart's "Policing the Big Apple"

Jules Stewart is a New York–born, London–based writer. Among his many books, he is the author of Madrid: The History, Madrid: A Literary Guide for Travellers, and Gotham Rising: New York in the 1930s.

Stewart applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Policing the Big Apple: The Story of the NYPD, and reported the following:

Page 99 deals with the appointment of NYPD Commissioner Edward Pierce Mulrooney, who held the job in the early Depression years 1930-1933. His nomination by Mayor James Walker caused something of a shock to the Tammany Hall machine that ran city politics. Walker, himself a Tammany man, chose Mulrooney because he was a reticent workaholic, a person who spurned the limelight and therefore posed no threat to Walker’s bloated ego.

The book tells the 400-year history of policing America’s largest city, from Dutchman Johann Lampo, who patrolled New Amsterdam’s waterfront in the 1630s, to the Black Lives Matters protests that erupted after the George Floyd murder in 2020. It is a tale of much bravery and occasional corruption, daring and heavy-handedness on the part of the officers who have served in the NYPD. Certainly the most difficult task in writing this book was to leave the reader satisfied that the job was accomplished with impartiality and objectivity. When all is said and done, it must be said that the NYPD emerges in a more positive than negative light.

Page 99 offers the browser a good introduction to understanding police work, in that it illustrates the growing turbulence and the diversity of colourful characters that grabbed New York headlines from the 1930s onward. The role of the NYPD in taking on the multiple challenges of Mafia gangsterism, ethnic clashes and even jihadist violence starts more or less around the time of Mulrooney’s stewardship. Mulrooney was a seasoned, professional cop who took up the post of commissioner with 34 years’ experience under his belt. This devout Irish Catholic came to the job at a time that New York was experiencing an upsurge in gangland murders. Readers opening the book at page 99 would get a vivid idea of the trials facing the NYPD in dealing with lawlessness, gun violence, drugs and racketeering in the Depression years. From the horrific killing of gang moll Vivian Gordon to the kidnapping and murder of celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh’s son, Mulrooney, like his successors, was given little respite in the battle to maintain a semblance of peace and stability in the streets of New York. His commissionership reflects a truism highlighted throughout the book, that there is never a ‘good’ time to take on the commissionership of the NYPD.

Visit Jules Stewart's website.

--Marshal Zeringue