The police symbolize how some abusers pose as defenders of their victims—sometimes even convincing the victims themselves to act against their best interests. In the novel’s universe, great cities can become alive and sentient, at which point they choose one or more of their residents as avatars to represent and defend them. In one of the novel’s first scenes, New York City’s avatar, a homeless young Black man, sees a police officer and wills himself invisible, indicating that police officers—who are supposed to protect and serve the city—are in fact a threat to the city’s residents. Then Paolo—the avatar of São Paolo—warns New York City’s avatar that an enemy of cities from a parallel dimension, the Woman in White, will send her underlings “among the city’s parasites.” Shortly afterward, a tourist falsely accuses New York City’s avatar of stealing a purse, leading two police officers to merge into a single eldritch creature and attack him.
This sequence of scenes underscores the novel’s claim that police officers are “parasites” on the living organisms of cities—that is, they end up harming the cities they claim to defend. This dynamic of abusive policemen becomes even clearer with the introduction of police officer Matthew Houlihan, the father of Staten Island’s avatar, Aislyn Houlihan. Under the guise of protecting Aislyn from the dangers of the big city, Matthew controls her, berates her, monitors how much she drives, and may even have hidden a GPS tracker in her car. The novel does not claim that all police officers abuse their power or harm the city—toward the novel’s end, one female police officer mistakes Paolo and Manhattan’s avatar Manny as authorized personnel and aids them because “those who would help protect the city see what they need to see”—but in general, the novel uses police officers to show how abusers can hide their controlling, abusive behavior by claiming that they are defending or protecting their victims.
Police Quotes in The City We Became
I am Manhattan, he thinks again, this time in a slow upwelling of despair. Every murderer. Every slave broker. Every slumlord who shut off the heat and froze children to death. Every stockbroker who got rich off war and suffering.
It’s only the truth. He doesn’t have to like it, though.
“Just getting sick of these immigrants,” he says. He’s always careful to use acceptable words when he’s on the job, rather than the words he says at home. That’s how cops mess up, he has explained to her. They don’t know how to keep home words at home and work words at work.
So when she’d seen this man step out of the crumbling entryway of an old building shell, with a smirk on his lips and his hand prominently resting on the handle of his gun, she’d felt like she does now, fiftyish years later in an art center bathroom. She’d felt bigger. Beyond fear or anger. She’d gone to the doorway, of course. Then she grabbed its sides to brace herself, and kicked in his knee. He’d spent three months in traction, claiming he’d slipped on a brick, and never messed with her again. Six years later, having bought her own pair of steel-toed boots, Bronca had done the same thing to a police informant at Stonewall—another time she’d been part of something bigger.
Bigger. As big as the whole goddamn borough.
“I know an apology don’t make up for it […] I know it don’t, okay? I damn sure got called a dyke enough myself just for stepping into a ring that dude rappers thought was theirs by default. Motherfuckers tried to rape me, all because I didn’t fit into what they thought a woman should be—and I passed that shit on. I know I did. But I got better. I had some friends slap some sense into me, and I listened when they did. And I figured out that the dudes were fucked in the head, so maybe it wasn’t the best idea to imitate them.”
Police Symbol Timeline in The City We Became
