Joseph Petrosino

The Adventures of Lieutenant Petrosino (1912)

Giuseppe "Joe" Petrosino (born August 30, 1860 in Padula , Italy , † March 12, 1909 in Palermo , Italy) was an Italian-American police officer from New York City , who is considered a pioneer in the fight against organized crime .

Life

Petrosino was born in Padula in the Italian region of Campania . In 1874 the Petrosino family emigrated to the United States . Joseph and a cousin were raised by their grandfather. When he died in an accident, they were temporarily adopted by a judge of Irish descent. This gave them contact with the influential middle class and access to an education that poor Italian immigrants only rarely had access to. On October 19, 1883, Petrosino joined the NYPD . During his service he befriended Theodore Roosevelt , who at the time held a high position in the New York Police Department. On July 20, 1895, he became head of the Homicide Division. In 1901 he was involved in the discovery of the murder stable with sixty bodies. He was also involved in the identification of Benedetto_Madoni's body .

In 1908 he was promoted to head the Italian Squad , a special unit to fight Italian organized crime. In this context, he arrested gangsters who had tried to blackmail the singer Enrico Caruso . His investigations against the Mafia led to the arrest of Don Vito Cascioferro and to the discovery of crimes of the so-called Black Hand Gang .

In 1909 he was on an investigative trip to Sicily, where he was lured into a trap and murdered. According to investigations in 2014, he is said to have been shot by Paolo Palazzotto on behalf of the Sicilian godfather Cascio Ferro .

On April 12, 1909, 250,000 people attended his funeral in Manhattan . The city of New York had declared the day of his funeral a day of mourning, allowing workers and employees to participate.

additional

Three biographical films are about Petrosino: Sidney M. Goldins The Adventures of Lieutenant Petrosino (1912), Pay or Die (1960) with Ernest Borgnine and Auch Killer muss die ( La mano nera - prima della mafia, più della mafia ) (1973) with Lionel Stander .
The life story of Petrosino is the subject of Stephan Talty's book (2017), The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History (published in German by Suhrkamp under the title Black Hand - Jagd auf die Erste Mafia New Yorks , 2018, ISBN 978-3-518-46924-8 ).
The Joe Petrosino Prize for Investigative Reporting is named in his honor.
A park was named after him in Greenwich Village, New York City.

Individual evidence

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Petrosino, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Petrosino, Giuseppe; Petrosino, Joe (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Italian-American policeman
DATE OF BIRTH	August 30, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH	Padula , Italy
DATE OF DEATH	March 12, 1909
Place of death	Palermo , Italy

[Citycyclopedia-1] Kenneth T. Jackson : The Encyclopedia of New York City . Yale University Press , 1995.

[2] ttp://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27971542

[3] ttp://www.nycgovparks.org/about/history/historical-signs/listings?id=8723