The Washington Times published part one of my On Crime
column on Paul Moses’ The Italian Squad: The True Story of the Immigrant
Cops Who Fought the Rise of the Mafia.
You can read the column via the below link or the below text:
BOOK REVIEW: 'The Italian Squad' - Washington Times
Being half Italian and growing up in an Italian American
neighborhood in South Philadelphia, I was aware of organized crime at an early
age. Back in the 1960s, I lived around the corner from Angelo Bruno, who was
then the boss of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family.
I also lived around the corner from Richard Zappile, the Italian
American Philadelphia chief of detectives who fought the Cosa Nostra and later
served as deputy police commissioner. There were and are far more Italian
police officers than Italian mobsters.
So I was interested in Paul Moses’ “The Italian Squad: The True
Story of the Immigrant Cops Who Fought the Rise of the Mafia,” and I contacted
him and asked why he wrote the book.
“It spins off from my previous book, ‘An Unlikely Union: The
Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians’ (NYU Press, 2015). That book
explores how these two ethnic groups, once so antagonistic to each other,
eventually came together. Part of that story was about the early Italian
officers in the Irish-dominated NYPD. I focused a chapter on Lt. Joseph
Petrosino (seen in the above photo), founding commander of the Italian Squad. He did not have an easy
time in getting respect within the department, but eventually was celebrated
and then mourned by the entire city after he was murdered while on an
undercover mission to Sicily in 1909.
“Petrosino’s life and death have been well covered in many
books, some movies, and even comic serials. But I saw that the history of what
happened to the Italian Squad after his assassination was not as well known. I
wanted to write it because it’s both an exciting crime story and a revealing
window on the immigrant experience in America. It resonates in today’s debates
about immigrants and crime, and police-community relations. It’s a true-crime
story that explores social trends that continue to affect us today.”
How did you research the book?
“Newspaper archives from the period I covered, 1904 to 1922,
were certainly important. But over-reliance on the newspapers has sometimes
skewed the historical record, I found. So a lot of other sources were needed to
figure out what really happened.
“These included transcripts of trials and other government
proceedings; records that Joseph Petrosino’s family kept; some records,
including a diary, kept by the family of Petrosino’s successor and friend, Lt.
Anthony Vachris; prison records; State Department correspondence (since New
York police communicated with Italian authorities through diplomatic channels);
daily reports of Secret Service agents; archives such as the records of the
U.S. consul in Palermo; City Hall correspondence; annual police reports, and so
on.
“The NYPD’s records from the period are mostly lost, but there
was a lot of detail on personnel, discipline and other police matters published
in The City Record, a sort of Federal Register.”
Why did the NYPD establish the Italian Squad?
“Two reasons. First, the newspapers hyped Italian crime,
instilling in the public the false idea that there was a massive ‘Black Hand’
crime syndicate directed by mob bosses in Sicily or Naples. They demanded
action, creating a political headache for the mayor.
“Second, there were some serious crimes afflicting the Italian
community — blackmail, enforced through bombings and kidnappings targeted at
immigrant Italians who’d managed some small success, such as owning a grocery
store. The Italian community demanded better policing — more Italian-speaking
officers, for starters.”
Why did the immigrant Italian police officers join the squad and
agree to fight the Black Hand?
“Joseph Petrosino and his successors felt that the entire
Italian immigrant community was being tainted as crime-prone because of crimes
committed by a small minority. They knew that their fellow immigrants by and
large just wanted to improve their lives by working hard.
“Because of language barriers and perhaps indifference, the NYPD
was failing to protect the community. And most Italian immigrants wouldn’t
cooperate with law enforcement, either, partly because of their experiences
with police in Italy, and partly out of recognition that the criminal justice
system in New York was stacked against them.
“The mission that Petrosino began and passed on to his
successors was to be a bridge between an Italian community that distrusted the
police and a police department that was very skeptical of the immigrants
flooding into the city.”
How was the Italian Squad perceived by Tammany Hall politicians?
“Tammany did not like the idea of having an Italian Squad.
Tammany leaders had a lot of influence on the Police Department, and that
helped protect their gambling interests. The Italian Squad was a wild card; its
commanders generally reported to the commissioner or a deputy commissioner,
rather than through the ranks of the Detective Bureau.”
In part two, Mr. Moses discusses the Black Hand and Cosa Nostra
in America.
• Paul Davis’ On Crime column covers true crime, crime fiction
and thrillers.
• • •
THE ITALIAN SQUAD: THE TRUE STORY OF THE
IMMIGRANT COPS WHO FOUGHT THE RISE OF THE MAFIA
By Paul Moses
NYU, 304 pages,
$29.95
Note: Below is a photo of former Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family boss Angelo Bruno and a photo of the former Philadelphia Police chief of detectives Richard Zappile.
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