Joe Petrosino: 2006 Movie Excerpt

from a 2006 Italian made movie
from the youtube poster

In memory of the most important italian-american police agent, he fought against the mafia carrying out his duty up to the end. I know, he isn't famous as well as Al Capone, Lucky Luciano etc. but this is because of the stereotype and the ignorance of many people are very strong when one talks about the italian-american reality and about the mafia.

Joseph Petrosino: 1911

petrosino-1911

Joseph Petrosino: 1905

petrosino-1905
from the ny daily news

F. Y. I.: A Hero With a Badge, By MICHAEL POLLAK
Q. I am proud of the Italian heritage of New York police officers, and there is one Italian-American officer I wish you would write about: Joe Petrosino.
A. Gladly. Lt. Giuseppe Petrosino, perhaps the most celebrated individual officer in New York police history, holds a sad distinction: He is the only New York police officer to have been killed in the line of duty outside the United States.
The Mafia violated its longstanding rule against killing cops when in 1909 it silenced Lieutenant Petrosino, who had emigrated at age 13 from Salerno. His specialty was fighting the mob in the days when it was extorting money from immigrants.
Petrosino, often called Joseph, was born in 1860. He joined the force in 1883 and was promoted to detective in 1895 in a departmental housecleaning spurred by Theodore Roosevelt, the police commissioner.
At 5 feet 3 and 200 pounds, Petrosino was not known for his gentleness. In 1902, he founded the Police Department’s bomb squad to counter the mob’s use of explosives in carrying out extortion threats.
From 1905, Petrosino and the “Italian Branch,” an elite corps of Italian-American undercover officers, arrested thousands of members of the Sicilian Mafia and Neapolitan Camorra, deporting 500. Reports of crime against Italian-Americans dropped 50 percent.
Lieutenant Petrosino was shot to death on March 12, 1909, in Palermo, Sicily, where he was planning to record the names of Sicilian criminals who had immigrated to the United States; his goal was to deport them. A local Mafia leader, Don Vito Cascio Ferro, was suspected, but no one was ever convicted of the killing.
Some 250,000 people attended Lieutenant Petrosino’s funeral. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery in West Maspeth, Queens, and his name lives on at Petrosino Square, a triangle at Kenmare and Lafayette Streets in Little Italy, where he grew up.

Joseph Petrosino

petrosino
Joseph Petrosino is a real life character in Laurie Fabiano's Elizabeth Street
Above images related t Petrosino, below his wiki bio

Giuseppe "Joe" Petrosino (August 30, 1860 - March 12, 1909) was a New York City police officer who was a pioneer in the fight against organized crime. The various crime fighting techniques that Petrosino pioneered during his law enforcement career are still practiced by various agencies in the fight against crime.
In 1874, the balance of the Petrosino family emigrated to the United States from Padula (in the province of Salerno, Campania), a village in southern Italy. Joseph having been sent over previously with a young cousin (Antonio Puppolo) to live with his Grandfather in New York. An unfortunate street car accident took the life of the Grandfather and the two young cousins wound up in Orphans/Surrogates Court. Rather than send the children to the Orphanage, the Judge took them home to his own family and provided for the boys until relatives in Italy could be contacted and arrangements made to bring over family members. As a consequence Joseph Petrosino and his cousin Anthony Puppolo lived with a "politically connected" Irish Household for some time, which opened up educational and employment avenues which were not always available to more recent immigrants. On 1883-10-19, he joined the NYCPD[1]. During his service, he would become friends with Theodore Roosevelt, who was police commissioner of New York City at the time. On 1895-07-20[1], Roosevelt promoted him to Detective Sergeant in charge of the department's Homicide Division, making him the first Italian-American to lead this division.
The pinnacle of his career came in December 1908[1] when he was promoted to Lieutenant and placed in charge of the Italian Squad, an elite corps of Italian-American detectives specifically assembled to deal with the criminal activities of organizations like the Mafia, which Petrosino saw as a shame to decent Italians.
One notable case in Petrosino's stint with the Italian Squad was when the famous Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, who was performing at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, was being blackmailed by gangsters who demanded money in exchange for his life.
It was Petrosino who convinced Caruso to help him catch those behind the blackmail.
A second notable case in Petrosino's stint with the Italian Squad was his infiltration of an Italian-based anarchist organization that assassinated King Umberto I of Italy. During his mission, he discovered evidence that the organization intended to assassinate President William McKinley during his trip to Buffalo.
Petrosino warned the Secret Service, but McKinley ignored the warning, even after Roosevelt, who had by this time become Vice-President of the United States, vouched for Petrosino's abilities. As a result, McKinley was assassinated by Leon Czolgosz during his visit to Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition on September 6, 1901.
Petrosino's investigations into Mafia activities led him to Don Vito Cascio Ferro, the godfather of the Mafia in New York. In 1903, Petrosino arrested him on suspicion of murder, but Cascio Ferro was acquitted. He later returned to Sicily, where he became increasingly involved with the Sicilian Mafia.
In 1909, Petrosino made plans to travel to Palermo, Sicily, on a top secret mission. However, because of the incompetence of Thomas Bingham, New York's police commissioner, the New York Herald published the story of Petrosino's mission on February 20, 1909, just days before his departure. Even though he was aware of the danger, Petrosino headed to Palermo as planned. However, this decision would prove fatal. Petrosino wrongly believed that the Sicilian Mafia would not kill a policeman, as they did not in America.
On March 12, 1909, after arriving in Palermo, Petrosino received a message from someone claiming to be an informant, asking the detective to meet him in the city's Piazza Marina to give him information about the Mafia. Petrosino arrived at the rendezvous, but it was a trap. While waiting for his 'informant,' Petrosino was shot to death by Mafia assassins.
Vito Cascio Ferro was arrested for Petrosino's murder but was released after an associate provided an alibi. However, he later claimed to other crime figures that he had killed Petrosino, which helped propel him into the position of capo di tutti capi (boss of bosses). Ironically Ferro died in prison in 1943 after being arrested in 1927 on a murder charge he probably did not commit.
On April 12, 1909, Petrosino's funeral, which was attended by 250,000 people, was held in Manhattan. New York City declared the day of his burial a holiday to allow its citizens to pay their respects. A small plaza just north of the old NYPD Headquarters at 240 Center Street in Manhattan was renamed in his memory[1]. His widow {B.1869} died in 1957.
* Among the numerous honors, awards and recognitions received includes a small park in Greenwich Village, New York City, formerly known as Kenmare Square, was named after Petrosino in 1987. Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino Square Park as well as the Joe Petrosino Prize for Investigative Reporting which was also named in his honor.
* Petrosino's story would be discussed on the 2-hour History Channel program Godfathers, which featured commentary concerning his life by Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York, and Bernard Kerik, former police commissioner of New York City.
* Three biographical films have been made of Petrosino's life including Sidney M. Goldin's The Adventures of Lieutenant Petrosino (1912) as well as Pay or Die (1960) starring Ernest Borgnine and The Black Hand (1973) starring Lionel Stander. He has also been the subject of the Italian television series Joe Petrosino, where he was portrayed by Beppe Fiorello.
* The character of Lieutenant Louis Lorelli (J. Carrol Naish) in The Black Hand (1950), starring Gene Kelly, is loosely modeled on Petrosino.
* British novelist Frederick Nolan has written two novels based on Petrosino's career with the NYPD, No Place to Be a Cop (1974) and Kill Petrosino! (1975).

Martin Scorcese's Elizabeth Street

244 Elizabeth
The above images are from curbed, as is a segment from below

A curious reader recently inquired about the goings-on at 244 Elizabeth Street, a tired old tenement on the eastern edge of Nolita, noting that this one is "a building where the deadbeat tenants would sit around and BBQ and take over the street, but I noticed a roll down gate covering their front door, cinder blocks covering the ground floor windows and wood covering other windows in the building." Deadbeats? Harsh! We dug into our vast archives and found a tale stretching across the past century, with echoes of Scorsese and the Gangs of New York. Given what we discovered, the neighborhood's newly-arrived neighbors might want to brush up on their marinades, because it looks like the old-timers will soon be back.
Mobsters and mayhem, right this way.
244 Elizabeth, currently owned by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, went into foreclosure back in the mid-70's. Now the building is being rehabbed as part of the Tenant Interim Lease Program, a city-sponsored community development initiative that "assists organized tenant associations in City-owned buildings to develop economically self-sufficient low-income cooperatives where tenants purchase their apartments for $250." High-paying neighbors will want to know that the cinder blocks and plywood now filling the facade are merely the interim design elements; they will give way to new windows and a full renovation. And very possibly the return of sidewalk BBQs.
If any nabe newbies are complaining now, imagine what they would have said a hundred years ago when this block was a target of the infamous Black Hand gang. Two doors down at 240 Elizabeth sat Pasquale Pati's Italian Bank; late in the afternoon of January 23, 1908, a bomb was set off in the bank's doorway as a way to extort cash from the banker and terrorize the neighborhood. On duty to combat the insurgents was NYPD's Lt. Joseph Petrosino, who gave his life in the on-going fight and is remembered at Petrosino Square a few blocks away. Forty years later this block was home to director Martin Scorsese, first at 241 Elizabeth and then later in a third-floor apartment facing onto Elizabeth at No. 253. There, from the fire escape where he slept on hot summer nights, Scorsese soaked up the activity on the mean streets below. Deadbeats and BBQs and all.