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From the Citizens to the Mayor: the Construction of Police Cases in New York City (1905-1925)
| In the first quarter of the twentieth century, many New-Yorkers wrote to the mayor of New York City to complain about crime conditions in their neighborhood and about lacking or inadequate police action. These complaints were then forwarded to the New York Police Department. This paper aims to study police-community relations as well as the role of the mayor. How did New-Yorkers conceive their role in municipal government and policing? What were the consequences on policing of this democratic pattern and the expectation that municipal institutions should be close to the people? Could the mayor as the people’s representative intervene in this process and at the same advocate police professionalism and autonomy? Based on a sample of letters and police reports, the goal of this paper is to examine as comprehensively as possible the whole process that makes a police case and analyze how the relationship between police and society is organized on a daily basis.
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