"When Constabulary Duty's To Be Done, A Policeman's Lot Is Not A Happy One."

Over the past several months, this author has been consumed by two topics that have been dominating the news: the antisemitism that has swept this country generally, and college campuses specifically, and, more parochially, the plagiarism scandals that have engulfed Harvard.  The two topics are interrelated, if not inseparable, for it is highly unlikely that the former could exist without the intellectual rot and historical illiteracy that appears to permeate our purportedly intellectual bastions.

The siren that is Harvard continues to tempt me, as it was reported this week that a top neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School had been accused of falsifying data and plagiarizing images in 21 separate papers, and, more poetically, Harvard's chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, faced her own accusations of widespread plagiarism, including, most egregiously, that she repackaged a study performed by her husband as one of her own.  For someone, like me, addicted to irony, it is hard to move on to other topics when Harvard keeps fêting the public with a veritable buffet of delectable farce.

However, another story, concerning a subject of greater interest to me has dominated the local news.  In New York City, where I have spent almost my entire life, two policemen were beaten by a group of migrants.  This incident did not occur in one of New York’s outer boroughs during the dead of night.  Instead, it occurred in the heart of the city, in Times Square, at a time, 8:30 in the evening, when that area was teeming with tourists.

New York City responded to this assault on its police force in what has become a familiar manner – it immediately released without bail a number of the alleged offenders who were arrested for the crime.  After visibly demonstrating their contempt for New York’s criminal justice system – one suspect displayed two middle fingers as he left his arraignment – a number of those arrested promptly left the City.  As explained by law enforcement expert Jonathan Miller on CNN, the conduct of the alleged perpetrators is familiar to law enforcement.  According to Miller, many criminals live in jurisdictions such as Florida, but travel to New York to commit crimes precisely because the criminal penalties and the risk of prison are so low in the latter jurisdiction and so high in the former.

What seemed particularly shocking to many was not the attitude of the migrants, which has come to be expected, but that of the court hearing their case, with respect to the public beating of police officers.  Once, an attack on the police was considered, if not unthinkable, a step not considered lightly.  More importantly, such an attack was treated by law enforcement as an aberration that needed to be addressed with immediate and significant consequences, to send a message that such assaults would not be tolerated.  To see an assault on the police treated by the courts with the same seriousness as an incidence of shoplifting sends an entirely different message.

Of course, New York has always been a city of immigrants, and the influx of migrants today mirrors that of immigrants to the City over a century ago.  Not surprisingly, conflict between immigrant groups and the police have historical precedents as well.  One famous example is the assassination of Joseph Petrosino, the first Italian detective in the New York police department who was murdered by Mafia perpetrators.

Italian Migration and the Growth of the Black Hand

The history of Italian migration to this country bears many similarities to the largely Hispanic immigration currently occurring at our southern borders.  Although Italian immigration had occurred throughout the 19^th century, it exploded in the period from 1880 to 1920, after the peak of Irish immigration several decades earlier.  Like migrants coming to this country today, Italian immigrants of the 19^th century sought to escape economic hardship in their home country.  They came in waves nearly as large as the wave of immigrants entering this country today.  By 1910, according to the United States Census, approximately one-quarter of New York City residents were of Italian descent.

Such immigrants suffered abuse on their journey to America, just as they do today.  Many immigrants, too poor to pay for their passage to the US, had their journeys financed by Italian criminal elements.  The immigrants worked off their debts, often under intolerable conditions.  Although such contracts were declared illegal, they still persisted among Italian immigrants.

Criminality flourished in such an environment, and what were initially ad hoc and disjointed criminal gangs became organized, adopting the loose coalitions that had characterized Sicilian organizations.  A well-known Italian mobster, Vito Cascioferro, believed by many to be the real-life inspiration for Vito Corleone, is credited with organizing the Italian mobs and teaching them more sophisticated methods of extorting money on a grander scale.  Foremost among these methods was extortion, where gangsters extorted money from legitimate Italian businesses in exchange for “protection.”  Cascioferro worked with a gang from Harlem known as the Morello Gang, which is considered one of the first Mafia families and which was eventually taken over by Lucky Luciano.   The founder of the Morello Gang, Giuseppe Morello was born (for Godfather fans) in Corleone, Sicily.

The problems caused by Italian mob organizations, then known as the Black Hand, reached national prominence with the murder of the New Orleans police commissioner, David Hennessey, by three gunmen using sawed-off shotguns commonly used by the Sicilian Mafia, known as a lupara.  Before he died, Hennessy identified his killers as “dagos.”  Nineteen men were arrested.  One was killed while in prison, and eleven were placed on trial.  By contemporary accounts, the trial was marred by alleged bribery and witness intimidation.  As a result, eight were acquitted, and the trial of the other three resulted in a hung jury.  The court remitted them back to prison for their own safety.  Nevertheless, a mob attacked the prison, shooting the victims and hanging the corpses of two from lampposts.  It is considered to be the largest mass lynching in United States history (“Lynching,” or the extrajudicial use of force, does not necessarily involve hanging.  The term is widely believed to have originated in colonial America with a Virginia planter and justice of the peace, Charles Lynch, who punished loyalists outside the judicial process.).

The New Orleans vigilantism was not only a national incident, but an international one, affecting relations between the United States and Italy.  The reaction within the country was mixed, with many condemning the lawless shootings and many, such as Theodore Roosevelt, considering it “rather a good thing.”  President Benjamin Harrison sought to placate Italians by declaring Columbus Day as a one-time day of celebration in response, the first national recognition of the holiday.  On the other hand, the New York Times, speaking of the victims, editorialized, at the time:

These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins, who have transported to this country the lawless passions, the cut-throat practices, and the oath-bound societies of their native country, are to us a pest without mitigations.  Our own rattlesnakes are as good citizens as they.  Our own murderers are men of feeling and nobility compared to them.

The Times saw New York’s Italians in equally threatening terms, with one headline screaming: “NEW YORK IS FULL OF ITALIAN BRIGANDS; The Police Find the Black Hand a Growing Menace.”

Joe Petrosino

The predominantly Irish New York city police, while recognizing the problem, was hamstrung in its efforts to combat this organized crime.  More particularly, they had virtually no officers, and absolutely no detectives who spoke Italian.  Enter a 5’3” dynamo named Joseph Petrosino, born in Sicily, but raised in the United States.  Petrosino ran a newsstand and shoeshine business outside the central headquarters of the New York police, where he came to the attention of the officer in charge, Alexander “Clubber” Williams.  Williams obtained an exemption from the Department’s height requirement to recruit Petrosino.  After the lynchings in New Orleans, Petrosino gained an even more formidable ally in the Department, Theodore Roosevelt, who, in 1895, became president of New York City’s Board of Police Commissioners.  In that year, Roosevelt promoted Petrosino to the rank of detective, making him the first Italian speaking detective in the Department.

Petrosino quickly became somewhat of a legend working undercover and was dubbed the “Italian Sherlock Holmes.”  He spoke a number of Italian dialects, so he could assume any identity he chose.  He worked as a sanitation worker, as a beggar, as a priest, and as others.  As part of an undercover sting, he established a bogus counterfeiting ring.  According to a report in the New York Times, the sting was so successful that Petrosino and his subordinates were the subject of a police raid, wherein they were arrested.  This snafu was the catalyst for the formation of the Italian Squad, initially a small task force chosen personally by Petrosino.

Petrosino was involved in numerous famous cases.  He helped the famous tenor, Enrico Caruso, foil blackmailers who had been demanding money from him.  He infiltrated a ring of Italian anarchists and learned of a plot to assassinate several world figures including President William McKinley.  With his connection to Theodore Roosevelt, Petrosino was able to warn McKinley and the Secret Service protecting him.  However, they failed to heed Petrosino’s advice to beef up McKinley’s security, and the President was gunned down by a crazed anarchist while on a trip to Buffalo, New York, a trip against which Petrosino had advised.

Petrosino was responsible for the creation of New York’s first bomb squad, to investigate scientifically the origins of bombs utilized to frighten businessmen into accepting protection, and he was one of the first to gather evidence from bombs that might aid in capturing criminals.  He also practiced witness protection to shield the identities of informants who gave him information about criminal activities.

The Italian Squad grew from a small handful of men to more than two dozen, all dedicated to fighting the influence of Italian mobsters, or the Black Hand.  The tactics employed by the squad were not subtle.  Although Petrosino was extremely smart, he was also brutal in the war he waged against the Black Hand.  One city alderman quipped that Petrosino “knocked out more teeth than a dentist.” The Squad’s tactics were successful, slashing crimes in Italian neighborhoods by 50%.

Petrosino was not reluctant to blame politicians for the prevalence of crime in New York, like many police officials today.  He frequently blasted the courts for being soft on criminals, and he called for stricter immigration laws to prevent foreign criminals from entering the country.

One of Petrosino’s most famous cases, before the formation of the Italian Squad, put him on a collision course with Vito Cascioferro and the Morello gang.  A dismembered body was found left in a barrel on the Lower East Side.  Leaving bodies in a barrel to be found was a signature of the Black Hand, the better to propagate its message of intimidation.  Petrosino eventually learned the identity of the corpse – a low level counterfeiter who worked for the Morello gang named Benedetto Madonia.  Madonia’s sister and brother-in-law both informed Petrosino that Madonia had threatened Morello because the latter had not paid him for counterfeiting services.

Petrosino eventually arrested Tommaso "The Ox" Petto, a Morello enforcer, for the murder.  Petto was found to have a pawn ticket in his pocket for a watch that had belonged to the murdered Madonia.  However, Petto was not convicted.  Both Madonia’s sister and brother-in-law recanted their testimony.  Nevertheless, the “Barrel Murder Case” was not a complete failure.  It raised the public’s awareness of the threat of organized crime, and, for Petrosino, it linked Cascioferro with the Morello gang.  Around the time of the murder, Cascioferro returned to Sicily.

In 1909, Petrosino attempted to travel to Sicily undercover to address the ties between Italian mobsters on that island, including Cascioferro, and those in New York, and to seek to identify mobsters who might be subject to deportation.  However, his cover was blown by an article in the New York Herald.  As a result, he was recognized wherever he went.  Approximately three weeks after his arrival, Petrosino was gunned down in a Palermo street.

Reaction to Petrosino’s Murder

News of Petrosino’s murder produced outrage in the United States.  A manhunt extending as far as Ohio and Baltimore resulted in the arrest of numerous suspects in the slaying.  Petrosino’s body lay in state, and was viewed by approximately 30,000 people according to contemporaneous news accounts.  The crowds attending Petrosino’s funeral were even greater.  The New York Times estimated that 200,000 mourners lined the streets for Petrosino’s funeral procession from St. Patrick’s Church on Mott Street to the Calvary Cemetery on Long Island.

Petrosino’s death was the catalyst for measures taken, particularly by the United States government, against the Mafia.  The Secret Service, unable to prove a murder charge against Giuseppe Morello and his associate, Ignazio Lupo, was nevertheless able to convict them of counterfeiting.  They were both sentenced to long prison sentences and lost control of their gangs.  Ironically, their successor was eliminated by a mobster sent to New York by Vito Cascioferro to reassert his authority, Salvatore Maranzano, who employed a veritable Who’s Who of hitmen -- Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis, and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.

Reaction to Assaults on the Police Today

If the reaction to the death of Joe Petrosino was one of outrage, the reaction to the current assaults on the police is, to a large degree, one of indifference.  One suspects that the zeal exhibited by authorities seeking the recapture of those migrants who fled New York City is caused as much by embarrassment as by a desire to support the police. 

However, it is not just the public and the courts that have demonstrated indifference.  At the very moment that the police are under siege in this City, the City Council has passed a bill, the How Many Stops Act, which requires a police officer, whenever he speaks to a witness, to fill out a form or take notes of the following information:  (1) the race, gender, age of the person interviewed, (2) the reason for this particular interview, (3) the circumstances that led to it, (4) whether the encounter was based on a radio run, information from another police officer, witness or other, and (5) whether a summons was issued, force used, or an arrest made.  The purpose of the bill is purportedly to document or reduce racial profiling.  While critics of the bill complain about the paperwork burden the bill will place upon police, another consequence is equally obvious.  Although a disproportionate percentage of crime is committed by blacks, and, more importantly, a disproportionate percentage of crime victims are also black, police will be disincentivized to investigate those cases lest their paperwork leave them open to charges of racial profiling because they have interviewed a disproportionate number of blacks.

Viewed through today’s lens, the Italian Squad would be perceived as an instrument of ethnic profiling – a squad directed solely to the investigation of Italians.  Yet, as reflected by his funeral, Petrosino was revered by his countrymen, for the simple reason that he kept Italian neighborhoods safer.

As noted above, the Times Square migrants demonstrated their contempt for law enforcement when they left their arraignments by their expressive gestures.  New York’s government has shown its contempt in an equally obvious way.