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Rizzo joined the Philadelphia Police Department in 1943 and would go on to embrace hard-charging tactics, like raiding beatnik and gay hangouts in the 1950s. Nearly anything was justified to get a suspect in cuffs, no matter their race. But African-Americans were some of the poorest residents of the city, and that grim reality set the groundwork for Rizzo's turbulent relations with people of color, which were locked in place by a series of high-profile incidents in the 1960s.Like plenty of American lawmen in that era, Rizzo didn't seem able, or willing, to differentiate between activism and criminality. In 1966, he organized four squads of shotgun-touting cops to raid offices and an apartment associated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Philly, turning up two and a half sticks of dynamite. (SNCC activists claimed then, and reiterate today, that the explosives were planted by an informant.) In 1967, after being appointed police commissioner, Rizzo led a phalanx of officers to a school administration building where a crowd of students was protesting in favor of a black history curriculum. What happened next is in dispute, or at least the precise wording is: Local newspapers reported that Rizzo told cops, whom he suggested were being attacked, to "get their black asses.""Take Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, the guy in Staten Island, and you put all that shit in one city."—Michael Simmons
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Meanwhile, Rizzo retained absolute control over the police department. He appointed a new commissioner, but officers who needed favors or help with a problem still knew who to go to. "When I was in trouble, I circumvented the whole world and went right to the Mayor's Office," remembers Chitwood, who was among the subjects of a Philadelphia Inquirer investigation into pervasive brutality in the department. "It was still Rizzo's police department. I went to Rizzo, and said, 'Look, I don't want to lose my job.' And Rizzo said to me, his exact words were, 'As long as I'm mayor, you'll have a job.'"Critics are still fuming about how the police department under Rizzo was deeply politicized. "Rizzo was responsible for a lot of police frame-ups," alleges Hakim Anderson, a former SNCC activist, who recalls being arrested 17 times in a three-month period. "About every other week I was being picked up for something. They were frame-ups, never any convictions for any of the charges." Radical activists weren't the only targets: Philly police were used to intimidate Rizzo's establishment political opponents too, according to the 1977 book The Cop Who Would Be King , including the president of city council, the head of the local Democratic Party, and the superintendent of the school district."Rizzo kidnapped the fucking city, that's what he really did." —Larry Krasner
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