It was called the Gilded Age. In the late 19th and early 20th century, there was extreme wealth and everybody else (remind you of another time?). Wall Street bankers back then were getting robbed, someone had to protect them. In his new book Rogues Gallery: The Birth of Modern Policing and Organized Crime in Gilded Age New York, Author John Oller describes the not-too-subtle interrogation methods, how the intent of police was to keep crime out of wealthy neighborhoods, and how the poorer minorities were targeted by police. The roots of where we are today are there.