{"id":10921,"date":"2016-10-24T07:57:43","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T11:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=10921"},"modified":"2016-10-25T14:32:08","modified_gmt":"2016-10-25T18:32:08","slug":"philadelphias-scarlet-streak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2016\/10\/philadelphias-scarlet-streak\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia\u2019s Scarlet Streak"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Police<\/a>
1966 Plymouth Fury Patrol Cars at Police Headquarters, 750 Race Street (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even though he despised the color, as long as Frank Rizzo carried a badge the patrol cars of the Philadelphia Police were lipstick red. Rizzo snapped at officers who spoke of them as “red cars” and one can only imagine what he said when he heard them referred to as “rotten tomatoes\u201d or \u201cred devils.\u201d<\/p>\n

As soon as Rizzo rose to the position of police commissioner in 1967, he announced a plan to replace the red with a less strident blue and white. But Mayor James H. J. Tate made it clear: such decisions were above Rizzo’s pay grade. Traditional red would reign five more years.<\/p>\n

The order came down Tuesday January 4, 1972\u2014Rizzo\u2019s first full day as mayor. He barely minded the ribbing that his brother Joe, the fire commissioner, would be able to tell them apart from vehicles in his department. For the newly inaugurated mayor, \u201cBlue Tuesday,\u201d as the newspapers called it, was a Red Letter Day.<\/p>\n

Why, exactly, was red so objectionable?<\/p>\n

Philadelphia\u2019s scarlet\u00a0streak dated back to 1929, a time when color, let alone bright colors, were rare on your basic, Henry-Ford-black automobile. And 1929 was anything but an ordinary year for the Philadelphia police. The department was in a tailspin, having been documented as\u00a0systemically corrupt.<\/p>\n

Historians tell us<\/a> that “spreading gangland warfare\u201d and simmering scandal “exploded” into \u201ca spectacular grand jury investigation” in August 1928. The city\u2019s annual, underground, Prohibition-era economy of alcohol and other “amusements\u201d had soared to $40 million. Nearly 1,200 bars remained open. Across the city were 13,000 speakeasies and 300 \u201cbawdy houses.\u201d And half of the total proceeds were skimmed off for “protection.\u201d Investigators learned that much of that $20 million passed through the hands of police officers and district captains handpicked by ward leaders. The Philadelphia Police Department wasn’t part of the solution; it was the city’s crime problem.<\/p>\n

Mayor Harry Mackey ordered a complete, city-wide \u201cclean up\u201d of the department, including redistricting. In the shakeup, 4,500 officers were\u00a0transferred; at least 85 were dismissed. Precautions assuring visibility and accountability of the reconfigured force were put in place.<\/p>\n

Red had long\u00a0been associated with Philadelphia, usually in a positive way. S. Weir Mitchell titled his Philadelphia-based historical romance The Red City<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Elizabeth Robbins Pennell waxed in Our Philadelphia<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>a book-length love letter,<\/em>\u00a0how “peace breathed, exuded from the red brick houses with white marble steps\u2026” But there was also a distinct downside to Philadelphia red. Gothic novelist George Lippard considered the infatuation excessive. “The eye is wearied by one unvarying sameness of dull red brick\u201d he noted in The Quaker City<\/em><\/a>, observing that \u201cthe man who paints a house blue or yellow or pink or white, or any other hue\u2026than this monotonous red, is\u2026set down by his neighbors, as slightly weak minded or positively crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there was the notable role for the color in Nathaniel Hawthorne\u2019s popular American classic,\u00a0The Scarlet Letter, <\/em>where red stood out as Hester Prynne’s badge of public shame after being found guilty of adultery.<\/p>\n

When reform-minded leaders instituted the \u201cRed Car System\u201d in 1929, it almost certainly was not an allusion to Hawthorne\u2019s tale. But less than a year after revelations of deep, widespread, systemic corruption, the choice of scarlet for patrol cars would have been at the forefront of any attempt to increase visibility and accountability. Years later, some might well have considered\u00a0the color as a vestige, a residual echo of a precaution aimed at introducing transparency for a disgraced police force. They could still feel the punitive stridency of red.<\/p>\n

As commissioner in 1969, Rizzo took delivery of 255 new, red Ford V-8s with air-conditioning, power brakes, power steering and bucket seats. From the city\u2019s point of view, Pacifico Ford’s $911,802 price tag was the lowest of three required bids. This would be among the city\u2019s last orders for red cruisers.<\/p>\n

Public reaction was largely positive a few years later, when the city shifted to blue and white. “I like it,\u201d said a woman on Market Street. \u201cIt doesn’t scream at you.” But a cabbie worried: \u201cIt just didn’t stand out like the red.\u201d<\/p>\n

Absolutely right.<\/p>\n

After 43 years, Philadelphia\u2019s scarlet\u00a0streak had come to an end.<\/p>\n

[Sources: \u201cHuge Rum Bribes to Police Bared in Philadelphia,\u201d Chicago Daily Tribune,<\/em> September 1, 1928; William G. Shepherd, \u201cThe Price of Liquor,\u201d Colliers<\/em>, December 1, 1928; \u201cGraft Findings Hit 85 Philadelphia Police,\u201d The Washington Post<\/em>, March 14, 1929; Albert C. Wagner, \u201cCrime and Economic Change in Philadelphia, 1925-1934,\u201d Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology<\/em>, Vol. 27, Issue 4, Winter 1936; \u201cPolice Cars to Stay Red, The Bulletin,<\/em> May 22, 1968; City Gets Low Bid of $2530 Apiece for 255 Red Cars,\u201d The Bulletin<\/em>, November 11, 1969; \u201cRizzo Gets His Way on Police Cars,\u201d The Bulletin<\/em>, January 4, 1972; John Clancy and Don McDonough, \u201cIt\u2019s a Blue Tuesday for Police Red Cars,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, January 5, 1972; William A. Lovejoy, “Phila.’s Blue “Red Cars ” Draw Favorable Comment,” The Bulletin<\/em>, February 17, 1972.]<\/span><\/p>\n

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Even though he despised the color, as long as Frank Rizzo carried a badge the patrol cars of the Philadelphia Police were lipstick red. Rizzo snapped at officers who spoke of them as “red cars” and one can only imagine what he said when he heard them referred to as “rotten tomatoes\u201d or \u201cred devils.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}