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| Lt. Joe Petrosino, NYCPD, Badge #285 |
“When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death – this is heroism.” R.G. Ingersoll: Speech in New York, May 29, 1882
Growing up, like many American-born boys, I was enamored with tales of superheroes, men with “powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men” who used their powers in the fight against evil. The names of these fictitious heroes no doubt would ring a bell with many who are reading this article: Superman, Spiderman, Thor and Daredevil, to name just a few. To a young boy like me it was exhilarating to read of the exploits of these people in comic books, even if in the back of my mind I knew they didn’t really exist (except in the world of imagination). Of all of them, my favorite was always Batman.
Why Batman, you say? Simple: unlike the others, Batman wasn’t blessed with extraordinary powers no real human could possess. True, he was highly intelligent, very athletic and a capable fighter, but nothing about Batman (except perhaps, some of the technology he utilized) was out of the realm of the possible. In short, Batman was a “normal human.” I guess then you could say he was my favorite because I could most identify with him.
As I grew older (and more cynical) I put away “childish things” like comic books because like most adults, I saw things “through a glass darkly” and realized the world was nothing like that in comic books. Superman and Spiderman didn’t exist. There was also certainly no one like Batman, a normal human who, equipped with nothing but guts, sheer force of will and available technology, could wage a reign of terror against the forces of evil.
Needless to say, it was refreshing for this young boy at heart to learn he was wrong.
Giuseppe “Joe” Petrosino was born in the town of Padula in the region of Campania, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies on August 30, 1860. At an early age he came down with smallpox (which killed his mother). He would carry the scars of that disease for the rest of his life. Shortly afterwards, his father sent him over to America to live with his grandfather and a cousin in New York City.
Tragically, a street car accident took the life of his grandfather. Joe and his cousin wound up in surrogate court, where they faced the dismal prospect of being remanded to an orphanage. Instead, and incredibly, the judge took the two boys into his own home, providing for them until relatives in Italy could be contacted and sent over.
This provided opportunities for young Joe that otherwise might not have been available for him, given the fact he was a recent immigrant. Taking advantage of the situation, he studied hard and eventually joined the New York City Police Department on Oct. 19, 1883.
A common stereotype of Petrosino perpetuated to this day is of him being short and fat. While it is true later photos show him on the portly side, earlier ones show a thickset man with very wide shoulders, large chest and bull-like neck. He looked like someone with whom you didn’t want to tussle. What he lacked in height he more than made up for in tenacity and brute strength, something that served him well in his early days as a beat cop. New York City in the 1880s was a far more brutal place than it is today, as crime statistics from that time will attest. The police, in turn, often had to resort to more brutal methods to enforce the law and maintain order.
Joe Petrosino thus proved more than capable of handling the rigors of patrolling the streets of New York City on foot. One incident that highlighted this was the case of a Mr. Washington, who was set upon by three large muggers. Trying desperately to fight them off, Washington was quickly joined by Officer Petrosino. Between the two of them they pummeled the three thugs into the dust, and Petrosino subsequently arrested them. In the beginning Joe was constantly being tested by neighborhood toughs. In time, however, they backed off as they soon learned he was no pushover.
Petrosino eventually attracted the attention of then-Police Commissioner Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, who promoted Joe to Detective Sergeant assigned to Homicide (1895), according to some making him the first Italian-American ever to hold that position. The “Bull Moose” also saw in Joe a kindred soul, and the two quickly struck up a friendship that would last a lifetime.
Roosevelt’s promotion of Petrosino proved to be a wise one, as Joe, in addition to being a competent street-brawler, possessed a keen, intuitive mind as well. It is documented that during his tenure in Homicide, he racked up more arrests and convictions than any other detective in the Bureau. Documentary evidence shows most of these cases were solved using long hours of painstaking research, making him a true-life “Lt. Columbo.”
According to Petrosino himself, his favorite case concerned an Italian immigrant named Angelo Carboni, who was sentenced to die in the electric chair for murder. Joe was convinced of the man’s innocence, and took it upon himself to save him. Over a period of four weeks (and traveling through two countries), he used disguises, informants & police savvy to eventually capture the real murderer and free Carboni, who was literally just days away from being executed!
In December, 1908 Joe was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant and put in charge of the Italian Squad, an elite group of Italian-American detectives whose job was to investigate and crush organized crime in New York’s Italian-American communities. At this time a particular problem was the existence of a criminal activity labeled “The Black Hand” (Sicilian: “A Manu Neura”) which had been brought over by gangsters from Italy. Black Handers would extort monies from victims by letter threatening assault, kidnapping, arson or murder if their demands were not met. Preying almost exclusively on their fellow immigrants (who they knew were less likely to cooperate with police), by some accounts as many as 90% of Italian-Americans were victimized by these traitorous scum, including famous Neapolitan tenor Enrico Caruso!
Petrosino made it his life’s work to shut down the operations of these gangsters. Armed with arrest warrants and with the help of his fellow members of the Italian Squad, Petrosino arrested hundreds of gangsters, often during actual meetings of the gangs! Published accounts state overall crime in Italian-American communities fell 50% thanks to Joe and the Italian Squad.
Numerous anecdotes exist attesting to the incredible bravery and tenacity of this man. My favorite concerns his run-in with Ignazio Saietta (i.e. “Lupo the Wolf”), a vicious gangster (and prolific murderer) who vowed to “take care” of Petrosino. Learning of the threat, Joe confronted him in a store in Little Italy, Manhattan. During a heated exchange, Saietta apparently called Joe a “son of a bitch” (an insult taken quite literally back then). Enraged at the insult to his late mother, Petrosino lunged at Saietta, chasing him outside the store and beating him black and blue. He finished Saietta off by dropping him, head first, into an ash can. Turning to the small crowd which had gathered in wonder at the scene, Joe pointed to Saietta and yelled “Is this the coward you are all so afraid of? How tough does he look now?” before stomping off.
Another concerns a young Italian girl who was kidnapped and held for ransom by the Black Hand. She was kept in a room and every night a woman would come in to feed and wash her. One night, while lying in bed, the skylight opened up and a rope came down. A man started climbing down the rope. The girl cringed in terror. The man placed his finger over his lips, motioning for her not to scream. Upon reaching the floor he showed her his badge, identified himself as Petrosino, assured her she’d be alright and then instructed her to hide under the bed. He then waited in the darkness until her captors appeared and promptly arrested them.
Petrosino’s fame exploded! Among his many accomplishments:
• He helped set up America’s first organized crime task force (the aforementioned “Italian Squad”)
• He set up America’s first Bomb Squad, learning how to trace bomb-making components
• He helped pioneer witness protection and intelligence-gathering programs
• He stressed the need for infiltrating criminal organizations for purposes of gathering intelligence against them
Every superhero has his nemesis, and Lt. Petrosino would be no different. Just as Batman has his Joker, Joe would have his Vito Cascio Ferro. Ferro was a prominent Mafia thug, born and raised in Sicily, who immigrated to the United States. Uneducated but by most accounts very intelligent, he had a hand in reorganizing the Mafia in the U.S. before running afoul of Petrosino, who chased him to New Orleans before Ferro fled back to his native Sicily. Before he left, Ferro vowed to one day kill Petrosino “with his own hands.”
In 1909, Joe came up with an ambitious plan to cripple the Mafia in the United States. Secretly traveling to Sicily, he would gather the names and photos of every Mafioso known to Italian police. By comparing them to files in the U.S., American authorities could then arrest and expel any gangsters living here as “undesirable aliens.”
The Fates, however, had decided to confer upon Lt. Giuseppe “Joe” Petrosino that greatest of honors a warrior of law and good can receive…the crown of martyrdom! Shortly before he was to depart for Palermo, Sicily, New York City’s corrupt and incompetent police commissioner Thomas Bingham leaked word of the mission to a local newspaper. In spite of this, Joe decided to go anyway, naively believing the Sicilian Mafia (like their American counterpart) would not kill a policeman.
While in Palermo he was contacted by an unknown party asking to meet him in the Piazza Marina, ostensibly to give him information concerning the Mafia. It turned out to be a trap, however. He was gunned down in cold blood. Though he was never tried for the crime, both Italian and American law enforcement officials believe Vito Cascio Ferro was the “trigger man.”
Back in the United States, Lt. Petrosino would be given a hero’s funeral (attended by over 250,000 people). Vito Cascio Ferro would earn “street cred” for the murder, and would subsequently go on to rule over the Mafia (and the island of Sicily). He would not be lucky enough to rest on his laurels, however. Within a few years the political situation in Italy would change drastically. By 1922 Benito Mussolini and the Fascist Party would be in control of the country. Within four years “Il Duce” would establish dictatorial control. One of his first orders of business was to rid Sicily of the Mafia…and Vito Cascio Ferro. This was accomplished by one of Mussolini’s underlings, Cesare Mori: “the Iron Prefect of Sicily.” Stripped of his power and spirited off to an island prison, Ferro would die a gruesome death in 1943 (and people say there’s no such thing as karma!).
Back in the United States, law enforcement officials would be left to wonder how different American history would have been had this real-life Batman been successful in his mission to Palermo.
*- Said of the Chevalier Pierre du Terrail Bayard (1476-1524)
Further reading: “Joe Petrosino” by Arrigo Petacco (MacMillian Publishing, 1974)
