8. William “Big Bill” Devery was an example of a police official who opposed Roosevelt
William Devery was a captain of the New York Police who once berated the men of his precinct, warning them that their collective graft was to stop immediately. “If there is any grafting to be done, I’ll do it”, he told them. “Leave it to me”. He was later convicted of bribery and extortion and fired from the force. He appealed successfully and eventually became New York’s first-ever Chief of Police in 1898. He made so much money through his illicit activities that he became a co-owner of a professional baseball team in Baltimore, moved it to New York, and named it the Highlanders. Today they are known as the Yankees. Devery was representative of what Roosevelt faced when reforming the New York Police Department.
Roosevelt gained the support of the public for a time with his vocal and written denunciations of the unsavory relationship between the police officers on the street and the ward bosses from Tammany Hall. Police precinct captains were the arbiters of criminal activity throughout most of the city, their officers were the enforcers of their decisions. But with the public, and most of the city’s newspapers, supporting Roosevelt the police captains found that they had to lay aside much of their criminal activities until Roosevelt overstepped and lost the goodwill he had built with the public.
