The subject of this review may seem peripheral to the interests of
this list, but note the reviewer's comments on the impact of drugs on
patterns of police corruption.
 
*******************************************
Jack Blocker
History, Huron College, University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario N6G 1H3 Canada
(519) 438-7224, ext. 249 /Fax (519) 438-3938
 
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 17:57:06 +1000
From: "Mark Peel, H-Urban Co-Editor" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: H-NET Urban History Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: REVIEW: Mackey on Chin, _New York City Police Corruption_
 
Posted by Thomas C. Mackey <[log in to unmask]>
 
Cross-posted from [log in to unmask] (November, 1997)
 
Gabriel J. Chin, ed.  _New York City Police Corruption Investigation
Commissions, 1894-1994_.  Buffalo, N.Y.:  William S.  Hein, 1997.  6
volumes.  Illustrations and maps.  $325.00 (cloth), ISBN
1-57588-211-6.
 
Reviewed for H-Law by Thomas C. Mackey
<[log in to unmask]>, University of Louisville
 
                 Meat-eaters and Grass-eaters
 
All professions develop their own jargon and the police profession
is no exception.  No police force in the United States has possessed
a higher profile and undergone more praise and condemnation than the
nation's oldest police force, the New York City Police Department.
In the argot of the New York Police Department, and recounted by the
1972 _Knapp Report_, corrupt police practices can be divided into
two types:  meat-eaters and grass-eaters.  As defined by the _Knapp
Report_, those police officers who "aggressively misuse their police
powers for personal gain" are meat-eaters, while "grass-eaters
simply accept the payoffs that the happenstances of police work
throw their way" (p. 4).  For example, plainclothesmen who routinely
shake down gamblers and drug dealers and demand protection money to
look the other way in exchange for not arresting such persons are
meat-eaters, while the precinct patrolman who accepted a free coffee
and danish in the Greek diner on the corner is a grass-eater.
 
I, myself, corrupted a Louisville, Kentucky, policeman just the
other day.  One morning a couple of weeks ago, I sat at the counter
of my local Denny's enjoying my coffee and fuming at the local
liberal newspaper.  A policeman entered the restaurant and sat down
a couple of seats away from me and ordered his breakfast.  Just as
his food arrived, a couple rushed into the Denny's carrying a small
child and literally screaming that their son had stopped breathing.
The officer stood up, used his radio to call for EMS, and took
charge of the situation.  He pried a wad of gum out of the child's
throat and administered a little C.P.R. to the boy to re-start his
breathing.  Once the medical technicians arrived, they took over the
boy's care and transported the now revived child (and over-wrought
parents) to the hospital; the officer returned to his seat at the
counter.  Denny's warmed the officer's breakfast for him and I
corrupted him--I picked up his tab and bought his breakfast for him.
 
I was glad to help the officer and buying his breakfast fulfilled
one my goals in life--to buy off a police officer.  Okay, so I did
not exactly "buy off" the officer, but he and I both knew that
letting civilians buy a policeman a meal is against department
policy and we both ignored the rule.  That sort of grass-eating is
indelibly part and parcel of police work, just as more aggressive,
and less common, meat-eating appears as a constant theme in police
history.  The reprint series nicely demonstrates the constant of
corruption within the New York City Police Department (and really
all police departments) and the constant of investigation and
"reform" of the Department.  Meat-eating and grass-eating will not
cease;  how to prepare to better manage these constants of police
work is the on-going theme running throughout these six important
reprinted police reports--The Lexow Committee Report (Volume I), the
Curran Committee Report (Volume II), the Seabury Investigation
Report (Volume III), the Helfand Investigation Report (Volume IV),
the Knapp Commission Report (Volume V), and the Mollen Commission
Report (Volume VI).
 
Spanning one hundred years of police investigations, these
previously hard-to-find reports have been gathered together and
ought to find a home in most every research library and law library.
Assistant Professor of Law at Western New England School of Law
Gabriel J. Chin provides an introduction to the entire series at the
beginning of the first volume, the _Lexow Report_, and he provides
an historical introduction and preface before each report in this
series.  Specialists in criminal justice and police history will
find Chin's introductions adequate to the topic but hardly thorough
in their coverage of the primary and historigraphical literature
(the important work of Wilbur Miller is glaringly absent, for
example).  But Chin's purpose is not to recast the shape of the
interpretations of police corruption; his only purpose is to provide
scholars and students with primary sources previously difficult to
locate and consult.  By gathering together these reports, Chin has
provided an important and useful service.
 
Reading these varied reports, historians will be struck by the
change and continuity visible through time.  These six reports,
covering a century of police evolution and each reflecting its own
particular context, reveal some similarities.  Usually, some
particularly troubling event occurs or an outraged reformer (or
newspaper) reveals a meat-eating or grass-eating policeman or police
practice.  Politicians then respond by appointing an investigative
committee.  Funded by the city and by private persons and groups,
these anti-corruption committees hire investigators hold public
hearings, receive headline-grabbing testimony, and, in time, issue a
report.  Only one of these commissions, the Helfand Commission of
1954, possessed the power to prosecute those accused of violating
state law.  In response to these investigative reports, the New York
City Police Department adopts new rules and regulations, institutes
new training and sensitivity courses, tinkers with its recruiting
standards, and re-organizes the department's internal oversight and
controls over its officers.  Then a "reformed"  police department
drops from the headlines, patrolmen and plainclothesmen adjust to
the new rules and guidelines, and the grass-eaters and the
occasional meat-eater return to grazing.  This pattern emerges in
each and every one of these reports and it suggests that this
pattern will continue into the future.
 
Yet one key new issue appears in the last report of this series, the
_Mollen Report_ of 1994:  the effect of illegal drugs and the drug
trade on the meat-eaters.  As previous reports made clear, instead
of taking money to look the other way from criminal activities, by
1994 groups of policemen had become active participants in the drug
trade, buying and selling narcotics while on duty.  They used their
police intelligence to raid rival drug dealers, stole drug dealers'
money and drugs, resold the drugs, and physically abused the
dealers.  Because of the enormous amount of money available through
such activities, a few police officers had literally become just
another dangerous drug gang in town.  Not that anyone needed further
reenforcement about the dangers of drugs, but this development
demonstrates just how corrupting illicit drugs and the drug trade
can be to police and on the general urban environment.  Whether this
latest evil for the police and the city will be (or can be)
controlled is still unclear, but drugs truly challenge the city and
its police force to maintain a police department with a minimal
number of meat-eaters and a tolerable number of grass-eaters.
Regardless, these reports are important reading for urban,
institutional, and criminal justice historians, and Daniel J. Chin
has performed a worthwhile service in reprinting these engaging and
important police corruption investigations.
 
     Copyright (c) 1998 by H-Net, all rights reserved.  This work
     may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit
     is given to the author and the list.  For other permission,
     please contact [log in to unmask]