CAS professor Chenjerai Kumanyika opens his new podcast, “Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD,” with a clip of his daughter, Eniola, asking him about the police’s purpose on the playground. While she understands that the police are meant to keep us safe, it’s clear there’s a lot more at play.
Kumanyika is an assistant professor at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, with a specialty is narrative audio journalism. His new podcast details the rise of modern policing, focusing specifically on the New York City Police Department since its inception in 1845. While its official history is one full of civil service and dedication, Kumanyika discovers that its past is checkered with corruption and racism. On the show, he discusses this in hopes of reorienting current political debates — with the release coincidentally timed with Mayor Eric Adams’ indictment and the police commissioner’s resignation.
“Empire City,” The New York Times said, “challenges both those who believe that the institution has always worked to produce public safety and those who assume it can never be changed.” Protesting is in Kumanyika’s blood — his father, Makaza Kumanyika, was a civil rights leader who was detained after attempting to place Mayor Robert F. Wagner under citizen’s arrest in 1964.
Kumanyika was detained after shielding student protesters outside Gould Plaza last spring. Before that, he made regional news when he was escorted out of a Clemson University campus rally for Donald Trump in 2016 for wearing a keffiyeh. In an interview with WSN, Kumanyika spoke about his experience making the podcast and the response to its release.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
WSN: Did you ever expect your historical research to be so prominent in the current news circuit, especially with a presidential election just around the corner?
Kumanyika: The timing is just kind of mind-boggling. While the timing certainly helps people see the relevance of the show, these are not good things that are making it relevant, right? No one wants to see the mayor be embattled in this crisis for doing things that we don’t know. We don’t have all the details. Certainly, the accusations that are on the table don’t represent anything good for New Yorkers and the police department.
The similarities of the modern-day news cycle to its episodes about the 1900s are striking — in episode five, Kumanyika details two cops extorting bars and other nightlife owners with bribery and fines. It’s similar to the current allegations against former NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban, who was accused of smoothing over disputes that occurred at nightclubs his brother owned. The show’s relevance makes it stand out even more against what some consider to be a saturated podcast market.
WSN: In the show, you discuss the Astor Place Riot of 1849, where the police hid outside instead of helping the theatergoers trapped inside. It is quite similar in ways to the Uvalde school shooting in 2022. Did you ever notice any parallels between the two?
Kumanyika: I certainly thought a lot about Uvalde. There’s something in my show for people who are even very pro-police, pro-NYPD. If there’s a justification for policing, it would be what happened in Uvalde. There’s mass shooters who come into a school. How you going to stop them? You would think that would be the key case where police would be relevant. Instead, what we see is that not only did they not go in, and they were in massive numbers.
Having an open line of communication between both pro- and anti-police views is important for Kumanyika, because it’s a vessel for change. He disagrees, for example, with the idea that the police are just “thugs in uniform.” There are people attracted to the power, he believes, but a scarier concept is this — people who go into the job wanting to protect and serve, but then find that the system and culture require them to do harm and remain complicit, like staying outside of a school during a mass shooting.
WSN: You were detained at the pro-Palestinian encampment last spring. Did this experience influence your approach to the show? Did you ever think you would be following in your father’s footsteps?
Kumanyika: I’ve attended a lot of protests and covered a lot of protests and participated in a lot, so it’s not a surprise, but for things to unfold the way they did was definitely a shock. When I started at NYU, I never thought that my own university was going to call the police on us. This was a protest. There’s a long history.
This was about property and getting off property. It was not that they called the NYPD to prevent danger, either. Seeing that up close, and then kind of seeing how they took us in, watching. They have a whole unit, this was the strategic response unit, and seeing, really seeing how they behaved. They were confused. All of those things were educational to me. It was a very up-close look.
Being a part of the detained students had Kumanyika wondering about who the system is designed to keep safe. He describes the protest before the NYPD arrived as a peaceful place. After the NYPD arrived, Kumanyika described students being pepper sprayed and dragged by their hair down the street. There are examples of officers helping the public, he explains, but history shows you that protecting wasn’t what they were originally designed to do — it was to keep order.
WSN: Eniola’s voice and dialogue is a strong layer of the podcast. Was it a difficult decision to bring her perspective into your discussions of violence and corruption?
Kumanyika: It’s a complicated reality. If my daughter is in a situation, and she feels that she needs to call the police to keep her safe, I want her to do that. I don’t want something I tell her to make her feel like she can’t call the police and do what she needs to do to be safe. But I also want her to understand — there’s a lot of stories in my communities and [those I have] reported. People call the police, like Win Rozario, here in New York. I believe his mother called the police because he was having a mental health issue, and then they shot him, and she begged them not to. And, you know, if you watch that footage, you know the NYPD is going to say the usual things: he resisted arrest, they feared for their life. But I think when you watch that video, there’s no way you could argue that preserving his life was their number one priority. And so, I want her to know that when you call the police, just understand this is a possibility.
While Eniola agreed to participate in the podcast now, Kumanyika knows that when she grows up she could feel differently. He’s prepared for that possibility — and planning on creating a space for open and honest discussion.
Five episodes out of the eight-part series are now available online, with new episodes releasing every Monday on streaming platforms.
Contact Julia Diorio at [email protected].
