Patrolling and Controlling the Streets: The Origin of School Safety Patrols in New York City

Abstract

The rise of automobile use in New York City in the 1920s placed pedestrians, particularly children and adolescents, in a new danger. Fatalities and injuries among youth involving automobile accidents created a public health crisis, especially as children navigated streets to and from school each day. The New York Automobile Club and the New York Police Department partnered with the school district to sponsor school safety patrols to educate children and protect them from this newfound danger. The motives of both sponsors, along with the increased expansion of police presence of school grounds, provide complexities, though, to this origin story. As scholars today intensify their explorations and investigations of police and carceral history in the United States, particularly involving black youth in urban centers, the origin story of school safety patrols in New York City has much to say about controlling and patrolling the nation’s streets and beyond.