New York Exposed

The Gilded Age Police Scandal That Launched the Progressive Era

Bibliographic Data

ID4155692
AuthorsKeith D Revell (0000-0002-3730-8100, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume104
Issue1
Pages206-207
Publication date2017-06-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jax062
OpenAlexW2641632912
LanguageEN
Citations received6

The Lexow Committee, headed by New York state senator Clarence Lexow, a German American Republican from Nyack, held a series of spectacular hearings into the New York City Police Department between March and December 1894. Closely covered by an aggressive press corps, the committee's seventy-eight sessions and 678 witnesses produced the most damaging revelations in the department's history, exposing a deeply entrenched system of police blackmail and extortion and providing sordid details of their role as managers of the city's lucrative vice economy. In a testament to the breadth of institutional complicity with police malfeasance, these shocking disclosures did not result in any structural reforms within the department nor were any officers jailed or permanently dismissed from the force. However, the historian Daniel Czitrom makes a persuasive argument that the Lexow investigation set the tone for many Progressive Era reform efforts with its emphasis on political corruption, nonpartisan citizen mobilization, professional public administration, and investigative journalism

Administration (probate law · Complicity · Extortion · Gilded Age · Misconduct · Political science · Politics · Progressive era · State (computer science · American History and Culture · Law · Public Administration · Race, History, and American Society

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