Even in L.A., Irish Cops Patrol the Cloverleaf

NORTHRIDGE — Traffic Sgt. John Amott is standing in the emergency room of Northridge Hospital Medical Center next to the bed of a motorcycle officer who took ill near the end of the day shift.

Amott’s motorcycle boots are set wide apart on the tile floor. His beefy forearms, freckled and furred with thick blond hair, are crossed in front of him. The blood of ancient McGuires and McGlynns of Roscommon and of long-vanished McCorts of Dublin inflames his capillaries; it gives him a certain glow, a kind of boiled look.

“Anything you need me to watch out for?” he asks the groggy officer, who is drugged after an apparent attack of food poisoning.

“No, they’re going to do a CAT scan,” the sick man says. “Maybe I’ll be out of here pretty soon.”

Amott narrows his eyes, cracks a smile. “I suppose you’ll be wanting overtime,” he says.

You could canvass the police departments of New York and Boston and other old Eastern cities, but you’d be sorely pressed to find an Irish-derived cop with more filmic stereotypes flying than 54-year-old John Amott of the LAPD. Garrulous, humorous, irreverent, cocksure--pin on as many of the other cliche-banners as you like.

The unique Irish experience in America has passed largely into myth and caricature. Irish Americans, like their German counterparts, are the most assimilated, the most middle-class, the most suburbanized, the most outbred of ethnic groups. Yet the Irish cop, a peculiar product of a peculiar history, endures as a reality.

“My oldest son was born on St. Patrick’s Day,” Amott shrugs. “His doctor’s name was Flynn. My wife’s maiden name was Maureen Flaherty. The doctor came out of the delivery room and said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve got a son--named Patrick.’ ”

The association of the Irish with the police--does anyone find it remarkable that the Irish Center of Southern California is holding its St. Patrick’s Day celebration next week at the Los Angeles Police Academy?--goes back as far as 170 years.

Beginning in 1830, and exploding with the Great Famine of 1845, mass Irish immigration swelled the then-small cities of the Protestant American East with Catholic Hibernian poor. It was no coincidence that the New York City Police Department was founded the year of the Famine, to protect society from the immigrants.

*

In New York, Boston and Philadelphia, Irish immigrants were poor, stressed, scorned and jailed in the greatest numbers, says Edward O’Donnell, professor of urban ethnic history at Hunter College in Manhattan.

“The term ‘paddy wagon’ was coined because the police vans being pulled through the streets contained more than their share of Paddies who’d been arrested,” he says. “And then, by 1855, those vans were likely to be driven by Paddies, as well. By 1855, more than 25% of the New York police force was Irish born. One of the reasons police work was so compelling was: What better way to counteract the stereotype that, as an Irishman, you’d never make a good American?”

Irish employment on urban police forces grew hand-in-hand with Irish local political power. Such patronage continued to flow until the 1930s, even after the Irish had been swamped by new immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. “The Irish proved very good at hanging onto power long after their demographic sun had set,” O’Donnell says.

Once the Irish had been safely assimilated, the stereotype of the Irish cop arose, especially in movies, as a vessel for all the traits associated with his people.

*

“You’ll see the Irish policeman who is sinister, part of the corruption of the big city, like in ‘The Untouchables,’ ” says Richard Peterson, an English professor who teaches in the Irish Studies Program at Southern Illinois University. “You’ll see him as hearty, brave, loyal, someone who loves a good fight. You’ll see him as happy-go-lucky, like in all those Hollywood B-movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s, in which actors like Jack Carson and Pat O’Brien were always playing policemen, when they weren’t playing priests. And then there’s the Irish cop who’s sort of brooding and vulnerable and explosive--the David Caruso character, Kelly, in ‘NYPD Blue.’ ”

No one really knows how many people of Irish extraction actually are in law enforcement today. The National Assn. of Chiefs of Police and the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics keep track of demographic categories such as “African American” and “Hispanic.” Irish Americans, however, long since have been subsumed into the “white” category.

“By now, who knows what an Irishman is?” says a Bureau of Justice Statistics spokesman. “They’re so mixed up with other peoples that if a guy claims to be Irish, who’s to say no?”

The growth of Emerald Societies in the police forces of America’s larger cities hints at a continuing Irishness in the profession. The societies were first established in eastern cities in the early 1950s to preserve and promote Irish culture among police officers.

The Los Angeles Emerald Society was not established until 1992. It currently has 200 members working for LAPD, the California Highway Patrol, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and other agencies.

“It was started by some guys who had grown up on the East Coast,” says society president Steve Kirby, an LAPD detective. “They remembered the St. Patrick’s Day parades and the Emerald Societies back there, and wanted to have something like that here.”

John Amott, who is a founding member of the L.A. society, has English blood from his father’s family. His maternal-side Irishness, he says, is important to him, but more a matter of cultural affiliation than deeply rooted personal identity.

“I know how to make Irish soda bread, and my family loves it,” he says. “And from time to time I take out the folk music--the Clancy Brothers, the Chieftains. I knew Tom Clancy when he was alive. My kids went to grade school with his kids at Our Lady of Malibu.”

Although the L.A. society’s meetings often feature programs on Irish history and culture, they also include presentations on law enforcement issues.

Moreover, no non-Irish need not apply. The Emerald Society is open to officers of all ethnic and racial backgrounds.

“Oh, we’ve got a lot of Irish last names--the O-apostrophes,” Kirby says. “But you ought to see the last names of some of our other members: Ortega, Burgmeier, Devereaux, Maniscalco.”