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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.
Past is prologue in NYPD history 'The Italian Squad': opposition to immigration; institutional racism; political surveillance and repression; police corruption and brutality.
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New immigrants, and new kinds of crime, were flooding the city and the old Irish cops on the beat didn’t understand either. It was time to launch a special force. They called it “The Italian Squad.”