Based on his new book Police and the Empire City: Race and the Origins of Modern Policing in New York, this talk will trace the role that race, ethnicity, and colonialism had in shaping the modern police department in New York City, the rest of the United States, and the world. Perceived failures on the part of the police, politicians, reformers, and scientists to effectively subordinate a multi-racial city drove "innovations" like fingerprinting, mug shots, and other surveillance technologies which form the basis for the modern information-hoarding style of policing.