History of

Policing,
Prosecution, and
Structural Racism
on Long Island,
1640–2019
Prepared by Laura Portwood-Stacer for the
Suffolk County Chapter of the
New York Civil Liberties Union,
September 2019
 1640s–1650s
Land dispossession by European settlers on Long
Island reduces Native Americans’ capacity to feed
themselves through hunting and planting as their
territory is diminished. Native Americans are forced
to obtain food by engaging in trade with settlers,
which enmeshes them in endless cycles of debt.
English settlers demand more land as payment for
debts, furthering the cycle of dispossession.

Many Native Americans turn to whaling work for

survival; English whaling companies establish a
system similar to sharecropping in which Native
American whalers become indentured servants until
their debts are paid off.

Land alienation for Native Americans is complete on

Long Island by 1703.

Despite their greater power and numbers, colonists

spread hysteria over “Indian conspiracies,” fearing
large gatherings of Native Americans even if only
for religious ceremonies.

Sources: John Strong, “Indian Whalers on Long Island 1669–1746,” Long

Island History Journal; John Strong, “The Thirteen Tribes of Long Island: The

History of a Myth,” The Hudson Valley Regional Review

 1670s
Eden Salsberry serves as the first sheriff of Suffolk
County. For the next two centuries, sheriffs regulate
justice in the county according to their own personal
morals and judgment. Sheriffs have discretion to
impose punishments such as the death penalty for
crimes such as adultery and theft, in addition to
murder.

The Governor of the New York colony commissions

the appointment of a leader and “constable” to
maintain “good order” among the Shinnecock people
on Long Island. Three years later, the Shinnecock
constable is stripped of his office and accused of
leading a riotous group through Southampton. The
Shinnecock are threatened with arrest and
deportation in chains to trial in New York City. An
English constable is then given authority over the
Shinnecock villages, disregarding their existing
system of village governance.

Sources: Brian Johnson, “Origins of the Suffolk County Police Department,”

Long Island Historical Journal, Vol. 15, Nos. 1–2, 141; John Strong, “The

Thirteen Tribes of Long Island: The History of a Myth,” The Hudson Valley

Regional Review
 1706
The provincial governor of New York allows justices
of the peace on Long Island to use the death penalty
on African Americans who liberate themselves from
slavery. On the evening of January 24, 1708, an
enslaved Black woman and an enslaved Native
American seek revenge on the person who enslaved
them in Queens County, killing him, his wife, and
their children. Authorities suspect a broader
rebellion and arrest the two conspirators and
several others. On February 2, 1708, the woman is
burned to death and the man is suspended in chains
beside a blade that cuts his flesh as he moves. Two
other African Americans are also executed.

1741
White colonists in the New York region fear a “slave
conspiracy”; this fear leads to the preemptive arrest
of 172 alleged co-conspirators. Eighty-one people
confess to participation in the conspiracy in order to
save their own lives or the lives of loved ones.
Thirty-eight people are executed, including thirteen
who are burned alive. Some who are not executed
are transported to labor camps in the Caribbean.

Source: Alan Singer, “Slavery in Colonial and Revolutionary New York:

Complicity and Resistance,” Long Island Historical Journal

 1768
The Smithtown government passes an edict stating
“that no Squaw Mustee or Mulatto female … shall
have any house or cellar, or wigwam, standing in the
bounds of said Smithtown.” Constables are
authorized to pull down and demolish any remaining
dwellings. English settlers who allow Native
Americans to set up dwellings on their land are
fined.

Source: John Strong, “The Thirteen Tribes of Long Island: The History of a

Myth,” The Hudson Valley Regional Review

 1770s
At the time of the American Revolution, eleven
percent of Suffolk County residents are African
American, and most are enslaved. Two of every five
households in Suffolk County includes enslaved
African Americans.

1817
The New York state legislature abolishes slavery,
but grants enslavers a 10-year grace period. Slavery
becomes fully illegal in New York in 1827.

Source: John G. Staudt, “From Wretchedness to Independence: Suffolk

County in the American Revolution,” Long Island Historical Journal

 1830–1854
Capital punishment continues to be imposed by
Suffolk County sheriffs, with several executions
held publicly using scaffolds and axes.

1844
New York City creates its first formal police force as
a means to maintain discipline and control among
industrial workers, many of whom are immigrants
and Catholics feared and resented by wealthy
Protestant nativists. The creation of a formal police
force makes widespread enforcement of vice laws
and the criminal code possible for the first time.

Sources: Brian Johnson, “Origins of the Suffolk County Police Department,”

Long Island Historical Journal, Vol. 15, Nos. 1–2, 142; Alex S. Vitale, The End

of Policing, p.37
 1900
With population growth in Suffolk County, several
of the towns establish police forces to supplement
the law enforcement activities of the county sheriff.
These police forces are often made up of only a
single police officer or “constable” who is appointed
by the community and lacks formal training. Police
officers' salaries are determined by the number of
arrests, warrants, and prisoner transports they
make.

1920s
Long Island Park Commissioner Robert Moses
extends public access to Long Island, but uses
infrastructure to restrict access to those with cars,
effectively excluding those who take public
transportation. Moses takes specific measures to
keep African Americans from entering public parks
and beaches, such as denying permits for Black
groups and buses.

Sources: Brian Johnson, “Origins of the Suffolk County Police Department,”

Long Island Historical Journal, Vol. 15, Nos. 1–2, 142–143; Robert A. Caro,

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Rise and Fall of New York, 318–9
 1920s
One in eight white residents of Nassau and Suffolk
Counties is a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Klan
membership on Long Island includes local ministers,
county workers, prominent politicians, and at least
one chief of police. The KKK holds regular cross
burnings in Patchogue, Bellport, Sayville, and other
communities. A cross-burning in Wantagh is
attended by an estimated 8,000 people. Klansmen
also set up checkpoints at which they stop and
search people’s cars. In Freeport, 2000 robed
Klansmen march down Main Street in a 4th of July
parade as 30,000 spectators look on.

The Klan continues to organize on Long Island into

the 1930s, ‘40s, and beyond. As late as 1945, the
public high school in Freeport has a KKK emblem
over its main entrance.

Sources: Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the

Suburbs Happened, p. 30, 280; Jane S. Gombieski, Long Island Historical

Journal; “Portrait of the Klan,” Newsday

 1924
The Eugenics Record Office at the Cold Spring
Harbor Laboratory is the center of the eugenics
movement in the United States. There, bigoted
scientists use rudimentary genetics to degrade
minorities and single out supposedly superior races.
One of the lead scientists, Henry H. Laughlin,
testifies before Congress, advocating forced
sterilization and anti-immigration laws. The
Immigration Act of 1924 effectively bars Eastern
Europeans, Jews, Arabs and East Asians from
entering the country, while allowing Northern and
Western Europeans continued entry. At the state
level, thousands of people who are deemed “unfit”
are forcibly sterilized.

The University of Heidelberg in Nazi Germany

awards Laughlin an honorary degree for his work in
the “science of racial cleansing.” He accepts the
award, and his research on Long Island continues to
influence Nazi ideology throughout World War II
and the Holocaust.

When war breaks out in Europe, widespread

discomfort with eugenics and Nazism turns public
sentiment against the Eugenics Record Office,
which closes in 1939.

Sources: Joshua A Krisch, “When Racism Was a Science,” New York Times,

October 13, 2014

 1933
An article printed in the newspaper The Long
Islander reports: “Immigration Men Seeking to
Deport Unwelcome Aliens.” Police in Huntington,
Northport, and Greenlawn cooperate with
immigration authorities, and multiple arrestees who
cannot prove their US citizenship are deported.

Sources: Joshua Ruff, “Diasporas in Suburbia: Long Island’s Recent

Immigrant Past,” Long Island History Journal

 1947
William Levitt begins building the Long Island
suburbs. When asked to account for the path his life
took, Levitt says:

"Okay, in the seventeenth century, in 1624 exactly, a

man by the name of Captain John Hawkins, an
Englishman, brought the first boatload of slaves to
Virginia. Up until then there were no black people on
this continent. But now the black people were here,
they multiplied geometrically until finally a couple
of centuries later, as they moved into the north,
they moved onto the same street we lived in
Brooklyn. Next to us a black assistant D.A. moved
in. Fearing a diminution of values if too many came
in, we picked up and moved out. We then got into the
suburbs, into building..."

Levittown refuses to sell homes to Black families,

even after the passage of the federal Fair Housing
Act, which bans discrimination in housing. In 1960,
less than .1% of the population of Levittown is Black.
In 2010, the Black population of Levittown is still less
than 1%.

Sources: Ron Rosenbaum, "The House that Levitt Built," Esquire; 1960

Census of the United States; 2010 Census of the United States

 1940s–1970s
As Black families move into suburban communities
on Long Island after World War II, many
neighborhoods change from White to integrated and
then to segregated as White families move out to
avoid integrated schools. This White flight is aided
by sensationalist reporting in Newsday—with
headlines like “Harlem Comes to Long Island,” and
“Negroes Invade Roosevelt”—and real estate agents
who employ block busting and racial steering to get
White families to sell their homes in neighborhoods
where minority families are moving in.

Real estate agents tell White homeowners that an

influx of racial and ethnic minorities will cause
property values to plummet. Agents use other scare
tactics, such as telling White parents, “You have a
twelve-year-old daughter. What if she were raped?
You’d have a mulatto grandchild.” White families
agree to sell their homes for less than their actual
value. In some cases, blockbusters stage break-ins
to scare residents. No one is ever arrested or
prosecuted for these acts.

Banks and mortgage lenders practice redlining, in

which they deny mortgages to Black families who
want to purchase homes in predominately White
neighborhoods.
Sources: Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the

Suburbs Happened, 182–184; “NAACP Faces Fight on Zoning,” Newsday

 1950s–1960s
“Law and order” rhetoric emerges alongside the Civil
Rights movement as segregationists link civil rights
legislation to increases in crime. (Crime increases
are more likely associated with the coming of age of
the baby boom generation). After passage of the
Civil Rights Act, political positions on crime policies
tend to align with historical positions on
segregation, regardless of party.

Police brutality across the country triggers uprisings

by people of color in the 1960s. The violence
associated with these uprisings is used as pretext for
the intensification of law enforcement in segregated
urban communities, which are underserved by other
public services.

Sources: Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, pp. 40–43; Elizabeth

Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass

Incarceration in America, p. 64–66

 1958
Residents of Suffolk County vote in a referendum to
establish a county-wide police department. The
Suffolk County police headquarters building in
Hauppauge opens on January 1, 1960. Most officers
are White; officers who belong to minority groups
are mostly concentrated around the town of
Babylon.

Sources: Brian Johnson, “Origins of the Suffolk County Police Department,”

Long Island Historical Journal, Vol. 15, Nos. 1–2, 145–146

 1969
Black families in Freeport protest discrimination
and segregation in their public schools and school
buses. When the high school principal persuades the
school board to desegregate the buses, some White
students counter-protest and violence breaks out.
Two Black students are stabbed by White students;
the student leader of the White protesters is
attacked by Black students. Police are called in and
two Black students are arrested for disorderly
conduct. Sixty police are sent to the school the
following day, while Black parents worry that their
students might need protecting from the police.

White parents call for law and order, making

statements such as, “Liberalism didn’t make this
country great and it’s not going to help us now. We
have to crack down on every law violated—hard.”
(Quoted from the Long Island Press, April 29, 1969)
Another White parent says, “We feel our children
are like a bunch of white sheep that have been
attacked by black wolves while the shepherd stands
around.” (Quoted from Newsday, April 29, 1969).
White parents also criticize the mayor and school
board for “handcuffing the cops and going easy on
the Negroes.” (Quoted from the Long Island Press,
April 29, 1969)

Source: Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the

Suburbs Happened, 193–198

 1970
Long Island State Senator Norman Lent is elected to
the US Congress. In Congress he introduces a
constitutional amendment to ban school integration
efforts.

1970s
Municipal police departments expand tickets,
citations, and arrests for low-level crimes resulting
in fines and fees that fund local court systems and
generate general revenue.

Sources: Alan Singer, “The Civil Rights Struggle on Long Island in a National

Context”; Issa Kohler-Hausmann, Misdemeanorland: Criminal Courts and

Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing, p. 1–2

 1973
The Village of Freeport institutes a housing
ordinance restricting the number of persons who
may reside in a dwelling, based on anti-immigrant
occupancy codes originating in New York City
tenements of the 1870s. The ordinance continues to
be aggressively enforced to effect evictions and
prosecutions of immigrant residents, while housing
safety codes go unenforced against negligent
landlords.

Local governments often choose to condemn and

redevelop so-called “blighted” properties,
compensating the landlords under eminent domain,
rather than using police power to compel landlords
to upkeep their deteriorated properties. This creates
a legal and financial incentive for landlords to
neglect properties in immigrant and low-income
communities on Long Island.

Sources: Stefan H. Krieger, “A Clash of Cultures: Immigration and Housing

Code Enforcement on Long Island,” Hofstra Law Review 36(4)

 1976–1993
A grand jury concludes in 1976 that the Suffolk
County Police Department has a "tradition" of not
reporting to the district attorney crimes committed
by its own police officers.

Police brutality—forcing confessions from arrestees

—in Suffolk County is exposed in the National Law
Journal in 1979, using data collected by the Suffolk
County chapter of the NYCLU. Two members of the
chapter are interviewed in an ABC News expose.

In the 1980s, New York’s State Investigation

Commission receives more than twice as many
complaints about Suffolk law enforcement as it does
about law enforcement officials in any other county
of New York.

The New York Civil Liberties Union and its Suffolk

County chapter create the “Police Practices Project”
to monitor police brutality in the county.

By the 1990s, the Suffolk County Chapter of the

NYCLU is still receiving an average of five police
brutality complaints per week.

Sources: NYCLU Suffolk County Chapter records; Peter L. Davis, “Justice

Perverted,” Newsday
 1980
Ronald Reagan is elected president on his racially
coded promise to fight crime with the power of the
federal government. While the FBI and federal
government had not previously been involved in
fighting street crime, the War on Drugs shifts
federal resources away from white-collar crime and
toward drug-law enforcement. Law enforcement
budgets soar, yet funding for drug treatment,
prevention, and education is cut.

Source: Beckett, Making Crime Pay, 47

 1990s
The need for a large, eager, and sometimes
underground workforce—ready to do Long Island’s
low-wage work—increases as upper-middle-class
housing developments continue to spread in Suffolk
County. The burgeoning economy of wealthy
homeowners in the Hamptons and elsewhere creates
a huge labor demand in construction, landscaping,
and domestic help. The workers who do this labor
often live in segregated communities.

Source: Joshua Ruff, “Diasporas in Suburbia: Long Island’s Recent

Immigrant Past,” Long Island History Journal

 1994
Broken Windows policing is instituted in New York
City. Law enforcement personnel are trained to
target low-level offenses such as:

• noise complaints
• double parking
• blocking traffic
• prostitution
• panhandling
• graffiti
• peddling and vending
• aggressive bicycling
• public drunkenness

Source: Issa Kohler-Hausmann, Misdemeanorland: Criminal Courts and

Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing, p. 26

 1998
A militant nativist group called Sachem Quality of
Life forms in Farmingville and begins disseminating
propaganda that accuses undocumented Latino
immigrants of being inherently prone to rape, armed
robbery, and other violent crimes. The group is
assisted by a national anti-immigrant hate group,
Federation for American Immigration Reform, based
in Washington, DC, which dispatches a field
organizer to help with recruiting, street actions, and
the propaganda campaign.

Sources: Southern Poverty Law Center, “Climate of Fear”

 1999
The Town of Brookhaven passes the 1999
Neighborhood Preservation Act, after lobbying by
members of Sachem Quality of Life. The law limits
the number of people occupying rental homes. There
are numerous incidents of threats, intimidation, and
physical violence against the targets of this law,
many of whom are day laborers. Much of this
violence goes unreported to police, as immigrants
fear police cooperation with immigration
authorities.

A Farmingville house where immigrants live is the

target of a drive-by shooting; no shooter is arrested.

Suffolk County Legislator Michael D’Andre, himself

the son of Italian immigrants, declares that if his
home district Smithtown is “attacked” by “illegal
immigrants,” “We’ll be out with baseball bats.”

In 2000, a similar bill is passed for all of Suffolk

County.

Sources: Joshua Ruff, “Diasporas in Suburbia: Long Island’s Recent

Immigrant Past,” Long Island History Journal; Southern Poverty Law Center,

“Climate of Fear”
 2003
Steve Levy, an anti-immigrant hardliner, is elected
county executive of Suffolk County. Levy calls pro-
immigrant groups a “lunatic fringe.” He is re-elected
in 2007 with 97% of the vote.

2005
Police in Farmingville raid 11 houses and evict about
200 tenants, all of whom are Latino day laborers and
their family members. The police cite overcrowding
and health and safety code violations. The evicted
tenants are locked out and not permitted to collect
their possessions, and Suffolk officials do not
provide them with resources to find other housing. A
federal court later rules that the town’s actions were
illegal.

Source: Southern Poverty Law Center, “Climate of Fear”

 2009
The Southern Poverty Law Center issues a report
documenting that Latino immigrants in Suffolk
County are regularly harassed, taunted, and pelted
with objects hurled from cars. They are frequently
run off the road while riding bicycles, and many
report being beaten with baseball bats and other
objects. Others are shot with BB guns or pepper-
sprayed. Most will not walk alone after dark;
immigrant parents often refuse to let their children
play outside. A few have been the targets of arson
attacks and other violent hate crimes.

Many immigrants tell the SLPC that the police are,

at best, indifferent to their reports of harassment,
and, at worst, contributors to it. They say there’s
little point in going to the police, who are often not
interested in their plight and instead demand to
know their immigration status.

Sources: Southern Poverty Law Center, “Climate of Fear”

 2010
Census data shows that Long Island is one of the top
10 most racially segregated regions in the country.

Sources: ERASE Racism, “Heading in the Wrong Direction: Growing School

Segregation on Long Island”

 2019
District Attorney and former Police Commissioner
Tim Sini makes public statements in support of
Broken Windows policing in Suffolk County, while
the Suffolk County Police Department actively
pushes local villages to more aggressively enforce
quality of life laws.

In villages such as Patchogue and Bellport, police

are urging local mayors to pass stricter codes with
harsher fines for offenses such as reckless bicycling.
Currently, bicyclists deemed by police to be
engaging in disorderly conduct or reckless
endangerment face arrest, jail sentences of up to a
year, and up to $2000 in fines. Even children may
have their bicycles confiscated by police under the
new codes.

Source: Nicole Fuentes, “You Can Be Arrested for Riding Your Bike,” The

Long Island Advance