The Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor was created in 1953 in response to the pervasive corruption on the waterfront in the Port of New York-New Jersey.  A joint state agency it was formed after public hearings revealed corruption, give-backs, bribery, rampant theft, and all manors of unfair practices in the business of loading and unloading cargo ships. 

"The states of New York and New Jersey hereby find and declare that the conditions under which waterfront labor is employed within the port of New York district are depressing and degrading to such labor, resulting from the lack of any systematic method of hiring, the lack of adequate information as to the availability of employment, corrupt hiring practices and the fact that persons conducting such hiring are frequently criminals and persons notoriously lacking in moral character and integrity and neither responsive or responsible to the employers nor to the uncoerced will of the majority of the members of the labor organizations of the employees; that as a result waterfront laborers suffer from irregularity of employment, fear and insecurity, inadequate earnings, an unduly high accident rate, subjection to borrowing at usurious rates of interest, exploitation and extortion as the price of securing employment and a loss of respect for the law; that not only does there result a destruction of the dignity of an important segment of American labor, but a direct encouragement of crime which imposes a levy of greatly increased costs on food, fuel and other necessaries handled in and through the port of New York district."
      Waterfront Commission Act, 1953

The Waterfront Commisssion has a police station at 100 Coumbia Streeet, in Red Hook.