Becoming New York's Finest

"In the postwar years, after excluding women, African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities from its ranks for most of its history, the New York City Police Department undertook an aggressive campaign of integration. This exhaustively researched study provides the first comprehensive account of how and why the NYPD came to see integration as a highly coveted political tool, indispensable to policing. At the same time, it shows how white male rank-and-file cops were simultaneously under siege from an increasingly controlling management and a critical public. In particular, it chronicles the efforts of the Policemen's Benevolent Association to turn back the tide of integration, cloak its own political advocacy, and appropriate the language and tactics of civil rights and feminism. Out of a complex and multifaceted story, author Andrew Darien presents a nuanced but accessible narrative of civil rights in the largest municipal police force in America"--