Thomas A. Reppetto - American police: a history. Volume 2, The blue parade, 1945-2012

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Thomas A. Reppetto

American Police:
A History

Volume II

The Blue Parade
19452012

Enigma Books

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without permission of Enigma Books.

Published by Enigma Books, New York

Copyright 2012 by Thomas A. Reppetto

First Edition

e-ISBN: 978-1-936274-44-4

Publishers Cataloging-In-Publication Data

Reppetto, Thomas A.

American police : a history : the blue parade, 1945-2012 / Thomas A. Reppetto. -- 1st ed.

p. : ill. ; cm.

Issued also as an ebook.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-1-936274-43-7

1. Police--United States--History. 2. Law enforcement--United States--History. I. Title. II. Title: Blue parade, 1945-2012

HV8138 .R462 2012
363.2/0973

Dedicated to the memory of Americas greatest expert on policing,

Professor James Q. Wilson
19312012

Contents

American Police:
A History

Volume II

The Blue Parade
19452012

T hroughout history people have looked back on certain periods as ones that changed both their own lives and the course of the world. For many Americans, particularly Southerners, it was the Civil War. Other generations chose the stock market crash of 1929 or World War II. For me it was the 1960s. When I joined the Chicago Police Department in the 1950s, I had very little to learn about the world I was entering. I had known it, literally, since I was born. My neighborhood was home to many cops. My mother, a spirited Irish girl, had grown up in a nearby neighborhood were even more cops lived and in later years many of the friends of her youth became high-ranking commanders. For a time she was a police clerk. I was not yet ten, when one day I went to visit her at the police station where she worked and landed in the middle of a manhunt for a multiple murderer who had just killed an officer that she had spoken to at roll call that morning.

My father too was well acquainted with the police. I will leave out the details, except to mention that one of his friends was the first man to be put on the FBIs 10 Most Wanted list. That fellow ended up in Alcatraz, whereas my father never went to jail, though there were efforts made to put him there. I attended my first mob funerals when I was eleven. One was that of a big-shot gangster, the other was a man who worked for my father and made the mistake of socializing with the big shot, despite being warned the fellow was hot. When the assassin opened up, both men were killed. Trouble came frequently in my parents lives. I attribute this to the fact that they were both products of the Roaring Twenties who loved the excitement. Not surprisingly they got divorced when I was very young.

When the 60s began, I was a patrolman rank detective chasing youth gangs around the streets. I had every expectation that I would spend the next thirty plus years as an active cop. If fortune smiled, I hoped to retire as a lieutenant and then go to work as a private investigator until Gabriel blew his horn. I did not envision what the 60s would bring or that for me the world would spin so rapidly. By the end of it, I had been promoted in succession to sergeant, lieutenant, captain then commander of detectives, earned a Harvard doctorate was present at civil disorders in a half a dozen American cities, marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King (as head of a police security detail) while missiles and fireworks filled the air, and had been caught up in the 1968 Democratic Convention. Topping that, I was offered an important administrative job in the United States Department of Justice.

In succeeding decades, I was allowed to prowl the corridors of power of the nations capital, state houses and city halls. One incredible day, I stood on the balcony of the Department of Justice alongside the attorney general of the United States watching a protest going on below us. We were both inundated by the tear gas the police were firing at the demonstrators. In New York, I was around for the World Trade Center attacks in both 1993 and 2001. In 93 I lived across the street from the South Tower. I wrote books and articles and lectured at professional societies and universities. I was a dean and later a vice president of a college in a major university. In 1960, I knew nothing of the American business world, by the 80s I was a regular visitor to the executive suites of Fortune 500 corporations and the great Wall Street houses. Through many newspaper interviews and TV appearances, I became acquainted with the operations of the leading papers and the famous networks. While one would like to think all this came about because of my own qualities, the truth is that I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. In the final analysis, I am what I have always beena big-city detective wandering through various worlds observing and storing away what he sees and hears.