All language subtitles for 6. History of the NYPD

Copper is a cop show that's set
in a very specific time and place...

...in the American past.

In 1845, New York City created the first
professional police department in the U.S.

Twenty years later, roughly,
where we are in the show...

...that police force has grown and become
an integral part of New York City life.

It was a messy, confusing time...

...there was bigotry and prejudice...

...and crime, and you set this detective
of that period in the midst of all of that.

To do a cop show set in the 1860s, how did
they catch the bad guy without all this stuff?

There was no DNA, there were no machines.

By 1863, the New York Police Department
also reflected the extraordinary changes...

...that had gone on in New York
over the last couple of decades...

...particularly mass immigration
from Ireland.

So by our time, the police department
is roughly one half Irish-Catholic.

And there were a lot of concerns
about that.

We do the dying
while the uptown bigwigs do the crying.

All the way to the bank.

Would the Irish-Catholic
immigrants be loyal to their own people...

...their own neighborhoods,
their own clans...

...or would they be loyal to the job
of being a cop?

Would they put the city and the city's needs
above the needs of their kinsmen...

...their families, their neighborhoods,
their religion?

And that question was a very,
very important one...

...that I think was finally
and forever answered...

...by the police department's role
in the draft riots of 1863.

In many, many instances
there were violent confrontations...

...between a largely Irish-Catholic force
and rioters who were largely Irish-Catholic.

They won't forget this, Maguire. You're
committing an insult against our people!

The saddest part of the draft riots for my
character is he's forced to kill the Irish--

His own people.

--To resolve the draft riots
that hit New York.

It's incredibly tragic, but incredibly telling
of the time, the amount of anger in the air.

The draft riots established the fact that the
police department was a professional force.

Being a New York cop was
the number one part of their identity.