Fascinating Vintage Photographs Captured of Daily Life of the New York Police Department in the 1970s

   
 
1978. Police officer playing with the children in Harlem.
 
1972. Detention facilities.

 

1978. Investigators from the 9th Precinct with his lieutenant Edward Manetho.

 

 
1978. The police are trying to help fallen from overdose addict.

 

1978. The police intervened when a family quarrel escalated from a simple skirmish in a fight.

 

 
1978. Small narkobaryga shows one of his scars resulting from multiple stab wounds.

 

 
1978. The district shows traces of drug dealers stab wounds he received while working on the street. The area is so dangerous that police are walking around with two guns and a pocket knife. A small pair of binoculars is needed to monitor the drug dealers in the distance.

 

 
1978. District Bowery in the Lower East Side is full of drug addicts, alcoholics, and drug dealers. Police officers make regular rounds and take them away from the streets.

 

1978. One of the officers, as he told me that he was always very worried about his family that stays at home. "Who will protect them while he works at night?"

 

1972. A police officer on the roof of one of New York's schools oversees drug dealers trying to sell drugs to schoolchildren. "These school guards are useless" - said one of the teachers. "Calm yourself can be felt only with real police officers, armed with a real gun and on duty in the corridors of the school. Then I'm no longer a teacher. I overseer."

 

1972. Neither the attendant at the hotel, or a neighbor, who lived with him for three years, no one knew anything about the guy who died in a hotel room. Neither the name nor the job. The man was lying on his back on the bed, lifeless gaze directed at the ceiling, in the hand syringe with a needle. "How did he die" - I asked the policeman. "Substandard drugs" - he replied. Later I learned that he was an informant and collaborated with the police.

 

1972. "If I had to, I could have shot" - said one policeman. "But I prefer not to think about it. Most of the police in their entire career there is no such need. Hopefully, I'm one of them."

 

 
1975. Department photo identification at police headquarters in New York. Special machines have a sketch of a wanted criminal.

 

1978. Two officers check a suspicious car. According to the procedure they come back with his hand on the handle of a revolver.

 

 
1979. The funeral of a police officer who was killed on duty.

 

1979. Police divers.

 

 
1979.

 

1979. A group of residents accused Chelsea staff of the 10th section of ill-treatment of detainees.

 

1979. Shooting galleries.

 

1979. Reid in shooting galleries.

 

1979. Toilet clogged gelatin capsules and syringes.

 

1979. In a raid was attended by about 12 plainclothes officers. Police used a circular saw and hydraulic cutters to get into the apartment. Inside they found a large quantity of drugs packaged in boxes and the woman who this morning has been released on bail. In the window we could see how the street going to small drug dealers and wait for the police to leave.

 

1979. The funeral of a police officer.

 

1972. Murder in the store. The saleswoman was killed just because of a few dollars lying in the cash register.

 

1978. A man carried away in a straitjacket.

 

1979. Received a call about a street fight. When the police and ambulance arrived at the scene, they found a man lying on the pavement unconscious.

 

1979. The man's body on the sidewalk. Someone put a note asking him to call the police on his chest.

 

1979. Curator of the Museum of the New York Police holds an artifact of the Romantic era gangster wars.

 

 

1972. In the prison.

 

1972. The death of a drug overdose in Harlem.

 

1972. Homicide investigators show photos of suspects residents of the district.

 

1972. "This is a real carousel" - said a police officer. "We're taking prostitutes off the streets, they pay a small fine and come back the same evening. This is just a nuisance." "The inconvenience to anyone" - I asked. For customers, he said, for the customers.

 

1972. An underground passage from the building of the prison to the courthouse.

 

1972. A patient with an overdose of drugs in the hospital waiting room. "Next time it may be too late" - the doctor said.

 

1972. A search of suspects.

 

1972. The police checked the abandoned building. Inside, there is no light, no heat, no water. On one of the doors hung castle. When it broke, then found the body inside.

 

1972. This is not a bank, and the regular grocery store.

 

1972. A security guard at a clothing store.

 

1972. Expert studies fingerprints.

 

1972. A ballistic examination.

 

1972. Expert studies bullet.

 

1972. Detectives Homicide remove fingerprints from the body in the morgue.

 

1972. Employees homicide working around the clock over the murder of two policemen. "If necessary, we will work in our own time" - said one of the detectives.

 

1972. Mounted police raise the fallen man in the street.

 

1978. Officer Steve Kreychi wears a bulletproof vest before heading out to patrol the neighboring buildings.

 

1972. The boy came to the police station and said that he was left home alone and he needs help.

 

1972. "Is not she lovely?" - He said.

 

1972. "I was returning home after drinking and vomited. His wife said that I stink of vomit and kicked out of the house. Holy shit!"

 

1978. Much of the work of the patrol is to just stand and watch.

 

1978. Fashionistas look like tough guys, but in reality gruel and namby-pamby.

 

1978. Thief caught in the process of breaking the shop wall asking him to return his tools.

 

1978. Quarter of a burnt-out and abandoned buildings girl ran out and waved a police car. She was raped by friends of her boyfriend while he watched. When the police went with her to find out what's what, the neighbors began to shout after her - "slut", and trying to tear off her clothes.

 

1978. Soon came to a man lying in the street.

 

1978. Another false alarm. The officers ran up to the 12 floor of the house with a gun in his hand, knocked on the door, and there the family sitting at the dinner table instead of the promised armed men. "They do it all the time" - says the policeman. "They know that we have to quickly come on such challenges and quiet neigh when we run past. This is a joke they are."

 

1978. Police separate the two fighting teens.

 

1978. "None of the beautiful girl in my area. Some homeless and crazy. Politicians and social workers believe that if they do not see them, then they do not exist. Okay, they exist, and I'm going to collect all this crap off the streets for them".

 

1978. Patrol scooter.

 

1978. The suspect resisted arrest.

 

1978. The officer draws detainees.

 

1979. Volunteers from the auxiliary police are instructed in the basement of the police station. In one of the sections of a staff member told me that his box in the locker room was broken into and some uniforms stolen. "Who could have done it?" - I asked. "More Cops" - he said. "They see us as strikebreakers."

 

1979. The young man says a police officer as he crashed the car.

 

1979. A police officer on duty near the set of the film. There is the increasingly popular "cult cop" when representatives of sexual minorities piece dress uniform, walking around with handcuffs, keys and whistle on a belt.

 

1979. A protester refused to leave the roadway and was taken away by force.

 

1979. Rocking.

 

1979. Police.

 

1979. The funeral of a police officer who was killed on duty.

 

1979. Police chiefs.

 

1979. The funeral of a police officer who was killed on duty.

 

1979. The funeral of a police officer who was killed on duty.

 

1979. Detective is an inventory of confiscated in the raid guns.

 

1979. Children play in a police car in one of the hottest days of July.

 

1979. Police rushed on call and grabbed the teenager suspected of robbing a supermarket. The store manager said that they got the wrong man. Later inspection showed that the teenager had been involved in other crimes.

 

1979. Demonstration.

 

1979. The officer at the street fair.

 

1979. The officer shoots a gun with an ankle before school in the gym.

 

1979. The lull in the police station.

 

1979. Addict searched an abandoned building on the stairs.

 

1979. Reid in shooting galleries.

 

1979. Reid in shooting galleries. At the local slang, it is called a "shooting gallery".

 

1979. Policeman artist paints a portrait of the suspect.

 

1979. Abandoned building in which the shooting galleries.

 

1979. Ombudsman.

 

1979. Suspect shot on Polaroid.

 

1979. Police officers during a visit to a countercultural clothing boutique.

 

1979. Evening Halloween.

 

979. Police at the time of the visit of a foreign security official.

 

1978.

 

1978. A police officer checks was a bad man, or is he just drunk.

 

1978. The man was found lying in the street and taken to hospital.

 

1978. The detainee and the officer looked at each other in a police station.

 

1979. December 31. New Year's Eve.

 

Without a signature.

 

1978. Arrested in the patrol car.

 

1979. Night at the police station.

 

1972. Teenage girls run away from their parents and are imbued with the smell of the city. "These lucky to have not yet reached the pimps" - a fatherly voice said one of the officers. "The night they will spend here, and in the morning we'll give them to social workers."

 

1978. Police arrest anti-war demonstrations.

 

 
1972. The police carry anti-war demonstrations.

 

 
1978. A police officer waits patiently in the hospital waiting room while the victim was wounded in the leg to tell him what happened.


(Photos by Leonard Freed / Magnum Photos)