Conclusion

Abstract

Although the era of immigrant police officers and the type of knowledge they developed during the course of everyday life had been replaced by technocratic knowledge and classroom training, it never really disappeared. Police recycle tactics often; this is policing's “small toolbox.” Tactics like ethnic policing are often retired as ineffective, only to be deployed again under new names like “community policing” or “demographic squads.” The historical actors also come back with new meanings attached to them, as both Joseph Petrosino and Samuel Battle were honored by the NYPD in the 1980s and 2010s.