Crime -- United States; Criminal justice, Administration of -- United States; Criminals -- United States
The prevention of kidnapping, bomb-throwing, and the other allied
manifestations of the Black Hand depends entirely upon the activity
of the police--particularly the Italian detectives, who should form an
inevitable part of the force in every large city. The fact of the matter
is that we never dreamed of a real "Italian peril" (or, more accurately,
a real "Sicilian peril") until about the year 1900. Then we woke up to
what was going on--it had already gone a good way--and started in to put
an end to it. Petrosino did put an end to much of it, and at the present
time it is largely sporadic. Yet there will always be a halo about the
heads of the real Camorrists and Mafiusi--the Alfanos and the Rapis--in
the eyes of their simple-minded countrymen in the United States.
Occasionally one of these big guns arrives at an American port of entry,
coming first-class via Havre or Liverpool, having made his exit from
Italy without a passport. Then the Camorrists of New York and Brooklyn
get busy for a month or so, raising money for the boys at home and
knowing that they will reap their reward if ever they go back. The
popular method of collecting is for the principal capo maestra, or
temporary boss of Mulberry Street, to "give" a banquet at which all
"friends" must be present--at five dollars per head. No one cares to be
conspicuous by reason of his absence, and the hero returns to Italy with
a large-sized draft on Naples or Palermo.
Meanwhile the criminal driven out of his own country has but to secure
transportation to New York to find himself in a rich field for his
activities; and once he has landed and observed the demoralization often
existing from political or other reasons in our local forces of police
and our uncertain methods of administering justice (particularly where
the defendant is a foreigner), he rapidly becomes convinced that America
is not only the country of liberty but of license--to commit crime.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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