Little Nicky

Nicodemo Scarfo
Born March 8, 1929 (age 85)
Brooklyn, New York, United States
Nationality American
Known for Boss of the Philadelphia crime family
Spouse(s) (first wife – unknown), Domenica Scarfo
Children Christopher Scarfo
Nicodemo Salvatore Scarfo Jr
Mark Scarfo
Family Phil Scarfo (father)
Catherine Piccolo (mother)
Nicholas Piccolo (uncle)
Joseph Piccolo (uncle)
Michael Piccolo (uncle)
Nancy Leonetti (sister)
Phillip Leonetti (nephew)
Joseph J. “The Shark” Scarfo (cousin)

Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Domenico Scarfo (born March 8, 1929) is a member of the American Mafia who eventually became the Boss of the Philadelphia crime family after the death of Angelo Bruno and Phil Testa. During his criminal career, Scarfo was by some accounts arrogant, nepotistic and full of avarice.

Scarfo orchestrated a particularly ruthless regime and ordered over a dozen murders during his time as boss. He was often described by informants as cold-hearted and narcissistic. He enjoyed the celebrity gangster life style and was an admirer of Chicago Outfit boss Al Capone. Scarfo would scan newspapers for his name and made sure his soldiers carried out murders in public to create a constant atmosphere of fear. Scarfo had very few scruples and approached organized crime activities such as drug trafficking to generate millions, while many other bosses avoided such activities known to bring law enforcement scrutiny. It was these methods which ultimately led to Scarfo’s downfall. Though Scarfo’s reign may have made him a rich man, in the long term, it almost destroyed the Philly mob that he dominated for a decade.
Family
Scarfo was born on March 8, 1929 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Phil, and Catherine née Piccolo, sister of Nicholas, Joseph and Michael Piccolo, who were made men in the Philadelphia crime family. Scarfo’s family was of Calabrian descent. Scarfo’s nephew was future mobster Phil Leonetti. When Leonetti’s father abandoned him and his mother, Scarfo’s sister, Nancy Scarfo, assumed responsibility for the boy. He is also the father and namesake of Nicky Scarfo Jr. whom he fathered with the wife from his first marriage. Scarfo’s first wife, Domenica Nistico, still resides in Ventnor, New Jersey.

Early career
As a young boy he spent his summers working as a farm hand picking blueberries in the fields of Hammonton, New Jersey. When he became a teenager in the late 1940s, Scarfo first worked as a bantamweight boxer boxing under the name “Nick Scarfo.” As a boxer he amassed an impressive record in small club fights on the Philadelphia boxing circuit. then took a job parking cars in a valet service for the 500 Club in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He was voted most talkative of his classmates at Benjamin Franklin High School, where he graduated from in 1947, and his senior yearbook declared that he was out to “lick the world.” The idols of his youth were actor Paul Muni and baseball player Ted Williams. His nephew Phil Leonetti said in Mafia Prince, “It’s sad to say, my uncle looked down on his own father because he was a hardworking guy and not a gangster. He was never outwardly disrespectful to his father, but they weren’t very close. My uncle’s only ambition in life was to be a gangster, even from the time he was young.” By the age of 25 he was taught by Felix “Skinny Razor” DiTullio on how to carry out murders. In the early 1950s, Scarfo’s uncle Nicholas “Nicky Buck” Piccolo, a caporegime in the Philadelphia family, gave Scarfo a bookmaking operation to run. At the time the Philadelphia family was led by boss Joseph Ida and controlled criminal activities in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, South Jersey, Delaware, Baltimore, Maryland and Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Scarfo soon received the nickname “Little Nicky” due to his short stature (five feet six inches, 1.67 m). Most people did not call him “Little Nicky” to his face, since he disliked the name. After several years of service, Scarfo became a made man in the family’s Calabrian faction. In the late 1950s, Scarfo befriended Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino who hadn’t turned 20 at the time, but was a promising associate to the mob. Scarfo once told his nephew Leonetti that he was inducted into the crime family by Joseph Ida in 1954 or 1955. The ceremony was held at the Sans Souci restaurant and bar near the race track traffic circle in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Scarfo’s cousin Anthony (Tony Buck) Piccolo and two maternal uncles Michael and Joseph were also inducted at the same ceremony. His uncle Nicholas had been inducted into the family about five years earlier. Between 1967 and 1970 Scarfo was a part-owner of The Penguin Club on the corner of North Virginia Avenue and Atlantic Avenue in Atlantic City with mob associate Thomas (Thomas Butch) Bucci. Leonetti would later say, “The Penguin Club was a “bust out” bar where strippers worked the bar and tables and tried to hustle the male customers. The strippers sat and flirted with the customers and tried to get them to buy over-priced bottles of champagne and drinks. On August 10, 1970 the liquor license was suspended for 100 days on charges that the strippers solicited drinks from patrons. He also had a hidden interest in The Haunted House bar in Atlantic City from September 1969 to June 29, 1972 and then again from 1972 to April 1, 1976. He first worked under Bruno family made man Felix (Skinny Razor) DiTullio as a mob associate. DiTullio took Nicky around and introduced him to many figures in La Cosa Nostra.

Relationship with nephew Phil
In 1962 Nicky implicated his nephew Phil Leonetti as an accessory after the fact in the murder of Dominick (Reds) Caruso. Caruso was murdered for disrespecting Joseph (Joe the Boss) Rugnetta, who was the consigliere of the family that served under Angelo Bruno. Caruso tried to extort Rugnetta for money and slapped him at his home in Southwark, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After Caruso’s body was dropped off at the intended burial site in Vineland, New Jersey Scarfo drove the pick-up truck to his parents’ apartment building in Atlantic City where Leonetti lived. Leonetti was about nine years old at the time. Scarfo picked up Leonetti and took him for a ride to Philadelphia to use him as a decoy. Scarfo figured that if anybody saw the killers using the truck in the murder and reported it to the police, the police would never think that a truck with a little kid in it had been used in a murder. Scarfo told Leonetti on the day of the murder that he had just “killed a very bad man” and explained to Leonetti why he wanted Leonetti to ride with him to Philadelphia. Scarfo drove the truck to Philadelphia for it to be destroyed so that it could never be used as evidence. Dominick “Reds” Caruso was reported missing by his wife on January 30, 1962. Caruso’s body has not been found.

The Bruno regime
In 1957, Ida moved to Italy and was replaced as boss by Antonio Pollina. However, in 1959 the New York Mafia Commission removed Pollina from power and replaced him with mobster Angelo Bruno. Pollina had previously plotted to murder Bruno, who then used his influence with Gambino boss Carlo Gambino on the commission to remove Pollina.

Scarfo soon engaged in several actions that created friction with the family leadership. Family consigliere Joe Rugnetta approached Scarfo about marrying Rugnetta’s daughter. Scarfo declined and allegedly implied that the girl was ugly. The enraged Rugnetta asked Bruno for permission to kill Scarfo, but Bruno refused out of respect for Scarfo’s uncle, Nicolos Piccolo. In the early 1960s, Scarfo’s friend Merlino was having a sexual relationship with the niece of made men Alfonse “Funzi” Marconi and Guarino “Mark” Marconi. When the Marconi brothers discovered the relationship, they demanded that Merlino be killed. Rugnetta arranged a sit down with Scarfo, Dominic “Mickey Diamond” DeVito, and the Marconis. During the meeting, Scarfo supported Merlino’s false claims that he wasn’t having an affair with the Marconis’ niece. Scarfo’s duplicity hurt his standing with Rugnetta even more. In 1963, Scarfo stabbed a longshoreman to death in the Oregon Diner in Philadelphia. He was eventually convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served under one year in prison. Scarfo was released in 1964.

At this point, Rugnetta wanted to kill Scarfo. However, Scarfo’s death would have alienated the Piccolo crew. To solve the problem, Bruno sent him to Atlantic City, ostensibly to revive the family’s fortunes there. In truth, however, Bruno sent him there as punishment for his brutality. Atlantic City was in the midst of a long-term decline, and Philadelphia bosses had begun sending members there after they’d stepped too far out of line.

Atlantic City
In Atlantic City, Nicky ran a bookmaking and loan sharking operation. He invested in an adult bookstore owned by Alvin Feldman. He moved into an apartment owned by his mother Catherine. He was soon joined there by his sister Nancy Leonetti and her eight-year-old son Phillip. Scarfo raised a family in the house with his second wife Domenica who gave birth to Nicodemo Salvatore Scarfo Jr and Mark Scarfo. Soon Scarfo’s first son Chris was living with them, as well.

In 1971 Scarfo met Nicholas “the Crow” Caramandi, a con man with connections to DeVito. The two began running scams together, two of which made $15,000. Scarfo was later incarcerated for contempt. During his incarceration he heard that Feldman had been stealing money from him; upon Scarfo’s release from prison Feldman disappeared.

“You won’t see him no more….” – Nicodemo Scarfo on Alvin Feldman

Caramandi kept in touch with Scarfo and every once in a while would run a scam with him. But Scarfo was struggling to survive in Atlantic City let alone rebuild his reputation within the Philly Mob, although his conviction for contempt had proven he could keep his mouth shut.

In 1972 Scarfo attempted to arrange a lenient sentence for Nicholas Virgilio who had been convicted in a murder case. Scarfo went to Edward Helfant and gave him $12,000 to reduce Virgilio’s sentence. But Virgilio got 12 years, hardly the lenient treatment he and Scarfo were expecting.

Scarfo’s fortunes changed with the legalization of casino gambling in 1976, which brought Atlantic City new prosperity and soon made Scarfo a powerhouse.

He soon established close ties with Local 54 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HEREIU). Scarfo’s longtime relationships with Frank Gerace (former local president) and Frank Lentino (former union business agent) gave him access to Atlantic City mayor Michael Matthews. Scarfo turned Local 54 into a cash cow for the mob. He began receiving monthly payments of about $20,000 from the union.

Around this time many members of the Family began to suspect that Bruno was allowing members of the Gambino crime family to engage in drug trafficking activities throughout New Jersey in exchange for a cut of the profits. This was in contradiction to Bruno’s zero-tolerance policy towards drug trafficking among his soldiers.

In 1977, Rugnetta died and was succeeded by Tony Caponigro as consigliere. Caponigro was the captain of the Newark branch of the Philadelphia crime family.

In 1978, Nicky Virgilio was released from prison after serving six years. Scarfo helped arrange for Virgilio to be able to get revenge on Helfant. Not long after Virgilio’s release, Eddie Helfant was shot five times as he sat in a bar with his wife.

Soon the first casinos were opening in Atlantic City and money was soon pouring into the former backwater. Scarfo took full advantage and set about squeezing the casinos of their income. As Atlantic City once again began booming, the heads of the Five Families became interested in the City. While Atlantic City had long been recognized as the domain of the Philadelphia crime family, the New York families wanted a piece of the action as well. However, under the rules of the Mafia, no other family could set up shop in another family’s territory without permission—and Bruno only let them in reluctantly.

In 1979, Scarfo helped arrange the murder of Mickey “Coco” Cifelli, a known drug dealer who was no longer “welcome” in Philadelphia. Coco was gunned down in a restaurant in South Philadelphia. Coco’s murder had been sanctioned by Bruno, but it wasn’t long until Scarfo would kill without permission.

By that time, Scarfo, Leonetti, and the Merlino brothers had set up a concrete company Scarf Inc. This was a way for them to insure that their families would get a “piece” of both the legitimate and illegitimate world. Vincent Falcone began belittling Scarfo and Leonetti behind their backs. It wasn’t long until they found out about Falcone’s “loose lips”.

Scarfo watched with glee as his beloved nephew Phil Leonetti took out a .38 and shot Falcone in the back of his head. Scarfo mocked Falcone’s body calling him a “cocksucker” and a “no good motherfucker.” Scarfo then bent down and listened to where Falcone’s heart would’ve been beating if he were alive. Scarfo then suggested that Leonetti shoot him once more and Phil did as told; he shot Falcone in the chest. Merlino helped Scarfo and Leonetti dispose of the body. Not long after, Falcone’s body was discovered stuffed in the trunk of a car.

Genovese Boss Frank Tieri began to try to gain a cut of the lucrative bookmaking operation Caponigro was running in New Jersey. The operation made $2 million a week. Bruno defended his consigliere’s propriety rights at a meeting with Funzi (Tieri) and the other heads of the New York families, who ruled in Bruno’s favor. Funzi humbly accepted the decision, on the surface.

The end of an era
In 1980 Bruno was shot in the back as he sat in a car driven by John Stanfa just outside his home. The shooter was Alfred Salerno acting on orders from Caponigro. Caponigro was attempting to seize control of the Philadelphia family by force; he was planning to promote Frank Sindone to underboss and to kill off Phil Testa, Scarfo and Frank “Chickie” Narducci.

Caponigro thought he had gained the backing of the Five Families through Tieri and would be elevated to head of the Philadelphia underworld. Caponigro and Salerno were summoned to a meeting in Manhattan expecting to meet with the heads of the Five Families and be elevated to Boss. Instead, Caponigro and Salerno were greeted by Vincent Gigante and his crew. The crew brutally tortured Caponigro and Salerno then left their bodies in the trunks of two separate cars parked three miles apart.

Rise to power
The Commission promoted underboss Phil Testa to Boss of the Philadelphia crime family. Testa promoted Scarfo to consigliere and Peter Casella to underboss. Ironically, being banished to Atlantic City had been a blessing in disguise for Nicky Scarfo. Once a disgraced soldier, he was now a success and had risen to the rank of consigliere in the Philadelphia crime family.

Though being indicted for the murder of Falcone was a sobering event in the lives of Scarfo, Leonetti, and Merlino, the trio was acquitted of the murder.

Testa decided it was time to “open the books.” Salvatore Testa, Leonetti, Salvatore “Wayne” Grande, Chuckie and Lawrence Merlino were all made official members of La Cosa Nostra.

The new administration began putting Caponigro’s loyalists in line. Felix Bocchino was the first to defect along with Dominic DeVito. Joseph “Chickie” Ciancaglini defected after Testa and Scarfo interrogated him at gunpoint in a garage about his involvement with Caponigro.

Scarfo had plans to kill DeVito. Despite this, their mutual friend Nick Caramandi stood by DeVito and Scarfo wouldn’t have DeVito killed out of respect to Caramandi. John Simone and Frank Sindone weren’t as lucky. Both met grisly ends at the trigger fingers of hit men sent by Testa and Scarfo.

John McCullough, president of the Philadelphia Roofers Union, Local 30, began infringing on Scarfo’s Atlantic City rackets and refused to stop his labor racketeering activities. McCullough was shot to death by a hit man posing as a deliveryman.

On March 15, 1981 Testa was killed by a nail bomb detonated beneath his porch. The murder was intended to look like retaliation by the Provisional Irish Republican Army, with which McCullough had close ties as well as the Roofer’s Union as evidenced by usage of roofing nails. The truth was that the killing was in fact done by members of Scarfo’s own crime family. Peter Casella had hoped to ascend to Boss by having Testa killed. Frank “Chickie” Narducci was in on the plot as well and Rocco Marinucci was the man who personally detonated the bomb by remote control. They also received backing from the New York families, as Testa had shared Bruno’s opposition to opening up Atlantic City.

The Scarfo regime
Pete Casella called a meeting with Scarfo soon after Testa’s death. Casella told Scarfo that, at a meeting with Paul Castellano and Fat Tony Salerno, he had been made the new Boss and that Narducci was to be the new underboss. Scarfo was suspicious and set up a meeting with the two New York Bosses the next day. At that meeting, Scarfo discovered that Casella had been lying.

Scarfo gave the Gambino and Genovese families permission to operate in Atlantic City in exchange for their backing for him to become Boss. With their backing, Scarfo easily took over the Philadelphia family, promoting Frank Monte to consigliere and Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino to underboss. Scarfo soon cut a deal with the other families allowing them a piece of the action in Atlantic City while keeping a significant slice for himself.

Little Nicky forced Casella into “retirement” in Florida and promoted Leonetti, Salvatore Testa, Lawrence “Yogi” Merlino and Ciancaglini to captains of their respective crews. When Scarfo became the Boss, he wanted to unify the organization and dreamed of running a smooth criminal empire.

Scarfo soon installed a mob practice somewhat alien to Philadelphia criminals. The “street tax” was enforced by soldiers like Tommy DelGiorno and associates like Nick “The Crow” Caramandi. The tax was paid by any criminal working independently from the Mafia. Drug dealers, bookmakers, pimps and guys running numbers in the territory that Scarfo deemed his own were forced to pay his “street tax” weekly. The money was then divided between the guys collecting the tax (who got 50%) and their caporegimes or bosses.

In April of that year, Scarfo was convicted in federal court in Camden, N.J. of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. But sentencing wasn’t until August of next year. So Nicky continued as normal.

Chelsais Bouras was enjoying a meal in a restaurant with his girlfriend Janette Curro and several other friends, including Ray Martorano, when a man entered and motioned for Martorano to get out of the way as he took aim. The hit man opened fire killing Bouras and his girlfriend Curro. Scarfo ordered the death of Greek Mob Boss Chelsais because he had been horning in on the methamphetamine trade in Philadelphia and not paying Scarfo’s “street tax.”

Johnny Calabrese and Ciancaglini walked from Cous’ Little Italy, a restaurant owned by Tommy DelGiorno, who had bought it from the Piccolo brothers. As Calabrese and Ciancaglini walked Tommy DelGiorno and Frank “Faffy” Iannarella ran up behind them. When the shooting started, Chickie casually walked away. Four bullets killed Calabrese, and his killers escaped in a car driven by Pat Spirito. Johnny Calabrese was a loan shark and drug dealer who operated through a chain of pawn shops in Atlantic City. Calabrese had refused to pay the “street tax.” Scarfo was more than pleased with how DelGiorno and Iannarella had handled the assignment.

“Jesus Christ, that was great. These guys are f—in’ great.”-Nicodemo Scarfo, Boss of the Philadelphia crime family (1981–1991)

After Calabrese was left dying in the gutter by Scarfo’s hit men, Frankie “Flowers” D’Alfonso was brutally beaten by Salvatore Testa and Joey Pungitore for refusing to pay the “street tax.”

In 1982, Tommy DelGiorno, “Faffy” Iannarella, Joseph J. Scarfo (aka “The Shark”) and Pat “The Cat” Spirito were formally inducted into the Philadelphia crime family. The ceremony was held at the Buena Tavern in Vineland, New Jersey.

Chickie Narducci’s borrowed time finally ran out when Scarfo gave Salvie Testa permission to kill him. Narducci was shot six times in the chest and face by Testa and Joey Pungitore. Narducci’s bullet riddled corpse was left in the gutter.

“I wish that m———– was alive so I could kill him again.” – Salvatore Testa on Frank Narducci

Nicky Scarfo wanted Dominic DeVito aka “Mickey Diamond” dead, but couldn’t have him killed because of the friendship DeVito had with his Scarfo’s friend Nick Caramandi. Finally, Scarfo decided that he’d have DeVito killed and anyone else that didn’t follow his orders as he saw fit. He gave the contract to Funzi and Mark Marconi to test their loyalty to him. They proved themselves loyal and shot DeVito in the head, then left his body in the trunk of a car.

In the aftermath of the hit, Pat “The Cat” Spirito was promoted to captain. Nick Caramandi acquired DeVito’s loan sharking books and began collecting from the debtors. He gave DeVito’s girlfriend $6,000 to pay for the funeral, but Caramandi made sure that every other penny went directly into Scarfo’s pockets. Nick the Crow had clearly shown himself deeply loyal to Scarfo.

It had been one year since Phil Testa’s murder when Salvie Testa shot Rocco Marinucci to death in a parking lot. In this act, Testa had finally got his revenge for his father’s death. The police later found three unexploded firecrackers lodged in Marinucci’s mouth, a reference to the explosion used to murder the elder Testa.

The Riccobene war
By August 1982, only one man stood in Little Nicky’s way. 70 year-old Harry Riccobene was the leader of a crew that were heavily involved in loan sharking, gambling, vending machines, and methamphetamine distribution. In the old days, the Riccobene faction would send Bruno a cut once a year around Christmas, and they were both content with that arrangement. Harry would have liked to continue the tradition with Little Nicky, but Scarfo wanted a weekly tribute as opposed to a yearly cut and lip service.

Harry the Hunchback balked at Scarfo’s demands, and Little Nicky put contracts out on Harry and his half brothers Sonny and Bobby. Chuckie Merlino began spreading rumors that Harry was an FBI informant; Frank Monte and Nicky came up with a plot to kill Harry. The plan was to persuade Sonny Riccobene who didn’t get along with Harry to set up the Hunchback.

Frank Monte went to Sonny Riccobene and attempted to persuade him to help set up his half brother Harry. But Sonny ran to his half-brother and told him of Scarfo’s intentions. The Riccobenes decided to strike first. Not long after Frank and Sonny’s meeting, Frank Monte was shot dead by a sniper named Joseph Pedulla. Pedulla was a hit man working for Harry Riccobene.

The day of the sentencing for Nicky’s gun conviction came up in August. Little Nicky planned to run things from his prison cell through his beloved nephew Phil Leonetti. In their last meeting, Nicky gave Pasquale “Pat the Cat” Spirito the Bobby Riccobene contract. Nicky received two years in prison for possessing an unlicensed firearm.

Whilst in prison, Nicky passed orders to his new consigliere Nicholas Piccolo and underboss Chuckie Merlino through Phil Leonetti. Salvie Testa took on a large role in running the Family in Scarfo’s absence. Also, he was going to marry Chuckie’s daughter Maria.

Harry Riccobene was making a call in a phone booth to his 23-year-old mistress when he was shot five times by Wayne Grande. Harry survived and attacked Grande, eventually taking his gun away from him. Harry recovered, but it wasn’t long until he would become a target again.

In retaliation, Harry ordered the murder of Salvie Testa, using Victor DeLuca and Joseph Pedulla again. DeLuca and Pedulla drove past a candy store where Salvie sat outside eating raw clams. A shotgun blast from their van hit Testa and almost severed his arm. Testa survived the shooting and his arm fully healed, as well.

Harry was sitting in his car when a man in a jogging suit ran past and opened fire. Harry ducked down under the dash board and the hit man only succeeded in shattering glass. A hit on Frank Martinez also went awry when he somehow survived when Nick “The Crow” Caramandi, Charlie Iannece, and Gino Milano riddled his vehicle with bullets. The media began to call Nicky’s organization the “Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight” which enraged Scarfo.

Drug dealer Robert Hornickle was later killed. When it became apparent that Pat Spirito was “talking treason” about Nicky Scarfo and his friends, he was also marked for death. Spirito was shot in the back of his head twice by Charlie Iannece. Iannece and Caramandi became proposed members after that murder. Riccobene associate Sammy Tamburrino met his end in a candy store at the hands of Scarfo’s hit men.

Little Nicky handpicked the target that would hurt Harry most and made it clear that there was no room for error. Four hit teams, each consisting of three or four hit men, were sent to kill Bobby Riccobene. “Faffy” Iannarella was the hit man who found Riccobene with his mother. Faffy knocked Mrs. Riccobene down with the butt of his gun and then shot Bobby dead with a shotgun as he tried to flee the scene.

Harry’s nephew Enrico Riccobene later shot himself when he thought he was being stalked by Scarfo’s hit men. After these events, Harry Riccobene gave up the war with Scarfo and surrendered his territory and operations to Scarfo’s men. Harry was later convicted of arranging the murder of Frank Monte.

With the war over, Scarfo could relax in his prison cell in Texas and his hit men could turn their attention from killing to making money. At the time, methamphetamine was the drug of choice in Philadelphia. Tommy DelGiorno and Nicky Caramandi began “taxing” drug dealers. In one such case they found meth dealers known as the Renzulli crew from 10th and Carpenter streets. They were importing gallons of P-2-P purposely mislabeled as “oil in from Europe” and using the “oil” to produce methamphetamine. Tommy Del and Nick the Crow “taxed” the Renzulli cousins John A. and John R. $2,000 per every gallon they imported. Salvie Testa began lending money to some drug traffickers in West Philadelphia.

Downfall
In March 1984 Nicky Scarfo was released from prison and was greeted at the prison gates by his nephew Phil Leonetti who was leading an entourage of young mobsters. Scarfo spent the day partying at a hotel. The next day he flew to Atlantic City where the celebrations continued. Little Nicky was at the height of his power.

Scarfo was the undisputed Boss of the Philly Mob. But the Riccobene war had left him paranoid. When Chuckie Merlino began to complain about Salvie Testa, his paranoia and greed grew worse. Testa had recently broken off the engagement to Merlino’s daughter and Merlino was determined to have Testa killed. He began telling Scarfo that Testa was trying to put together his own criminal organization, that he was using drugs and was going into business with an African-American street gang in West Philly.

Salvatore “Salvie” Testa had virtually led the Philadelphia crime family during the war with the Riccobene faction, for most of the war Little Nicky was in a prison cell in Texas. Salvie had even taken a bullet for Scarfo during the Riccobene war. Salvie survived and nearly lost his arm. Salvie Testa was loyal and the epitome of La Cosa Nostra, his father Phil had taught him well.

Salvie had accomplished more in the last four years than most other mobsters in the Philly Mob. Testa at 28 was a caporegime in the Scarfo Mob. He was a millionaire thanks to a successful real estate deal with Donald Trump. He owned a boat and lived in a mansion. He had great leadership abilities; he was charismatic, confident, popular and loyal.

In April, Scarfo had made up his mind and gave the order that Salvie Testa had to die. Despite the qualities Testa possessed, Scarfo clearly was convinced that he was a major threat to his position. It’s possible that he may have feared a Testa/Merlino alliance and was only too happy to arrange the murder of such a popular and ambitious individual.

Tommy DelGiorno and Faffy Iannarella were put in charge of supervising the Testa murder, Nick Caramandi and Charlie Iannece were going to be the shooters. But it was difficult, Testa was a professional hit man and knew all the tricks of the trade. He was extremely cautious and checked everyone who hugged him for a gun. The job seemed almost impossible and Little Nicky was getting restless.

So Tommy and Faffy brought Salvatore “Wayne” Grande and Joseph “Joey Pung” Pungitore into the conspiracy. Pungitore was Testa’s closest friend and would only go along with the job if he didn’t have to pull the trigger. Wayne Grande on the other hand jumped at the opportunity to put a bullet in Testa.

Joey Pung arranged a meeting with Testa. At that meeting in the back of a candy store Salvie greeted Wayne who was sitting on a couch in the back room. Salvie then turned to talk with Joe Pung; Wayne took out a gun from under the cushions on the couch and shot Testa in the back of his head. Wayne stood up to shoot Testa once more. Nicky the Crow, Charlie Iannece and Joe Grande helped clean up the scene and get Testa’s corpse out of the store. Salvie’s hogtied remains were found at the side of a dirt road in Gloucester Township, New Jersey.

Nicky Scarfo had Nick Caramandi, Charlie Iannece and Joe Grande made official members. He promoted Tommy Del and Faffy to acting Capos. Wayne Grande was given 25% of Testa’s business and Nicky took a third of the profits made by a major bookmaking operation Testa had put together with DelGiorno and Pungitore.

Mayor Matthews and Lentino were indicted for corruption. Matthews received 15 years in federal prison. In 1984, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission removed Grande from his position at Local 54. Scarfo escaped charge for his labor racketeering activities. Nicky soon had a new friend in City Hall and business resumed as usual.

That same year Nicky and Phil Leonetti used Nick Caramandi and Charlie Iannece to cheat two casinos in Atlantic City out of $2.7 million. By now Nicky was getting a reputation for greediness. He began to divide his time between Fort Lauderdale and Atlantic City, but began to spend much less time in Philadelphia.

By 1985 Little Nicky was a target of the New Jersey State Police in a major gambling investigation. But their wiretaps were useless because Nicky never talked business on the phone and very rarely in his home. He preferred face-to-face conversation in regards to business usually in public places like the boardwalk in Atlantic City.

Frank “JR” Forlini was found dead in his pickup truck near a K-mart in Marple Township, PA. He had been shot five times. Many including Scarfo believed that the killer was Tommy DelGiorno, who had been feuding with Forlini for months over the drug trade.

Nicky Scarfo decided to settle an old problem and send Frankie Flowers D’Alfonso one last message. He put Tommy Del in charge of overseeing the hit. Tommy used the Milano brothers and the Narducci brothers to execute Frankie Flowers. D’Alfonso was beaten with a hammer, shot 5 times and his body was left in the trunk of his car by two hit men who dumped their weapons and fled in a car driven by two other men.

In 1986 Nicky Scarfo’s world began to slowly unravel. His underboss Chuckie Merlino’s drunken behaviour had gone too far, he was arrested for drunk driving and attempting to bribe the cop who pulled him over.

Little Nicky called a meeting of his top associates and at that meeting he stripped Chuckie Merlino of his rank, reducing him to a soldier. Phil Leonetti replaced Merlino as underboss and capo Lawrence “Yogi” Merlino was demoted simply because he was Chuckie’s brother. Nicky then promoted Tommy DelGiorno and Faffy Iannarella to official captains of their crew. Scarfo help with part of Chester County Land Fill With Daniel Rubino. They Made lots of money of the Land fill.

Nick the Crow set up a large drug deal that profited $2 million. Caramandi was also involved in a bookmaking operation that made $60,000 a week and had a sports betting operation that could make up to $300,000 a week during football season. The shakedowns were making $200,000 a year. Caramandi and his friend Charlie Iannece had $500,000 invested in a loan sharking operation. They had made $150,000 from their shark business so far and had made a $375,000 from a methamphetamine deal. And Scarfo got a cut of it all.

Nick Caramandi later estimated that he generated between $5 and $7 million from 1982 until 1986. Scarfo got his cut of everything his soldiers made. Scarfo’s hacienda style mansion in Fort Lauderdale was worth nearly $750,000. He kept $3 million in cash hidden behind a wall.

In June Nick Caramandi was arrested attempting to extort $1 million from Willard Rouse III and had failed to get a penny out of Penn’s Landing. A drug dealer who had been ripped off by members of the DelGiorno/Iannarella crew was threatening to go to war with Scarfo. Now Nicky regretted promoting Tommy Del to capo. So Little Nicky demoted Tommy Del to the rank of soldier and gave Faffy all the responsibility of captain of that crew.

Whilst Nick the Crow was in prison Nicky Scarfo began talking of arranging his murder to avoid indictment himself. But a friend of Nick’s warned him that Scarfo was mad at him. Caramandi became an informant.

Nicky Scarfo was later indicted on extortion charges. But when he listened to the wiretaps the prosecution had made and had given to his defense attorneys he heard the voice of Tommy DelGiorno, belittling him and Phil Leonetti. Scarfo put Tommy Del at the top of his list, but DelGiorno disappeared into the Witness Protection Program and had become an informant.

The convictions
On May 6, 1987, Scarfo was convicted of conspiracy to commit extortion of the waterfront developer Willard Rouse III. DelGiorno and Caramandi testified against him in court. From his prison cell Scarfo continued to exercise authority over his men. Piccolo and Leonetti began to run things for him as he passed orders to them during visiting time in jail.

Scarfo experienced a brief moment of triumph when he was faced with federal drug conspiracy charges but was later acquitted on December 12, 1987. That moment didn’t last very long at all.

Things got worse as Scarfo was indicted on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) charges that included drug trafficking, loan sharking, extortion and murder. The murders of Helfant, Cifelli, Falcone, Narducci Sr, Calabrese, Spirito, Tamburrino, Riccobene and Salvatore Testa were among the counts of the indictment. Charges of attempted murder of Riccobene, Martines, Salerno Sr and Vento Jr were also included.

On November 19, 1988, Scarfo was convicted on all charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Merlino became an informant and gave damning testimony against him.

In 1989 Leonetti became an informant after being convicted of RICO charges and receiving a 55-year prison term. In February of that same year Piccolo died, but Scarfo continued to run things from prison and promoted his cousin, 78-year-old Anthony “Tony Buck” Piccolo, to acting Boss.

Scarfo’s son Nicky Jr swore that he would find a way to kill Leonetti. But he didn’t and instead had to flee Philadelphia for New Jersey after being shot eight times by Joey Merlino as he sat in Dante & Luigi’s Italian restaurant. Scarfo Jr luckily survived the shooting. Although police never charged anyone with the attempted murder, police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation believed Merlino was behind the shooting to avenge an earlier plot by Scarfo Sr. on Merlino’s father. Another motive for the attempted hit was to send a clear message that neither Scarfo nor his son were in charge of South Philadelphia any longer.

Already serving 14 years imprisonment for extortion and 45 years for violating numerous RICO predicates, on April 5, 1989 Scarfo was convicted in the Courts of Common Pleas of first-degree murder in the 1985 death of rival mobster Frank D’Alfonso, along with six of his lieutenants. Eugene “Gino” Milano, Tommy DelGiorno and Lawrence Merlino testified against him. He was convicted and received another life sentence.

Scarfo managed to keep control through Piccolo, who made sure that Scarfo’s wife Domenica was taken care of and that Mark’s medical bills were paid. But in 1991 Piccolo at the age of 80 stepped down as acting Boss and allowed the Gambinos to install John Stanfa as Boss of the Philadelphia crime family. It’s doubtful that Scarfo would have been able to stop the bosses in New York.

Prison time
He managed to overturn his life sentence and got transferred to the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta. As of 2012 he is incarcerated at Federal Medical Center, Butner, North Carolina. His scheduled release date is January, 2033. At age 103 it is effectively a life sentence.

Hezbollah’s Organized Criminal Enterprises in Europe

Hezbollah plots in Europe over the past year exposed a return to violent operations being conducted by the Iranian supported Lebanese Shi’ite group. Plots in Bulgaria and Cyprus led to a rigorous debate among European Union member states over whether or not to ban the organization’s military wing. But this only marks Hezbollah’s return to violent operations in Europe. Hezbollah has long used Europe as a staging ground for operations to be carried out elsewhere, as a logistical hub, and as a place where the group and its supporters could raise funds through a variety of criminal enterprises. The focus of this article is the wide variety of criminal activities Hezbollah engages in, revealing a global network that conducts extensive criminal operations throughout Europe.

Hezbollah plots in Europe over the past year have led to a rigorous debate among European Union (EU) member states over the efficacy of adding the military wing of Hezbollah to the EU’s list of banned terrorist groups (which they did in July of this year). But Hezbollah plots in places like Cyprus and Bulgaria are far from the totality of Hezbollah activities in Europe. Indeed, Hezbollah has long used Europe as a staging ground for operations to be carried out elsewhere, as a logistical hub, and as a place where the group and its supporters could raise funds through a variety of criminal enterprises. the latter is the focus of this article.

“Special Operations Abroad”

In June, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency reported that Hezbollah’s uses German-based mosques and their affiliated organizations to raise funds for the group.[1] In fact, Germany has long been a center of Hezbollah activity in Europe, and for years German security officials saw Hezbollah’s terrorist chief Imad Mughniyeh, in close concert with Iran, as the key leader of the group’s efforts related to “planning, preparing and carrying out terrorist operations outside of Lebanon.”[2] Bassam Makki’s 1989 plot to bomb Israeli targets in Germany offers one stark case in point but Hezbollah’s activities in Germany did not end there. In 1994, for example, Germany issued a warning related to the possible entry into the country of “a group sent by Mughniyeh to carry out attacks against U.S. targets.”[3] According to Hezbollah scholar Magnus Ranstorp, several senior Hezbollah commanders shared responsibility with Mughniyeh for the group’s “special operations abroad” in Europe, including Hussein Khalil, Ibrahim Aqil, Muhammad Haydar, Kharib Nasser, and Abd al-Hamadi.[4]

Over time, the Hezbollah support network in Germany would grow. According to the annual reports of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, some 800 members or supporters of Hezbollah lived in Germany in 2002. That number increased to around 850 by 2004 and to 900 by 2005. Among “Arab Islamist groups” in Germany, Hezbollah had become the second largest by 2005.[5]

That year, a German court deported a Hezbollah member who had lived in the country for twenty years. Though Germany had not banned Hezbollah as a terrorist group, the Dusseldorf court ruled the man was “a member of an organization that supports international terrorism” and refused to extend his visa.[6] German security agencies “intensively watch” groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, German minister of interior Wolfgang Schaeuble commented in summer 2006. He noted that one reason for his concern was that “in the past, there were attempts to recruit suicide attackers in Germany.”[7] The latest report shows that there are now 950 Hezbollah members, with 250 of them in Berlin. One way that money raised by supporters goes to the group is through a charity called Orphan Project Lebanon, which is also the branch that “promotes suicide bombings.”[8]

Currently in Germany, and in almost all of the EU member states, this type of fundraising is legal because Hezbollah is not listed as a terrorist organization (only fundraising that is explicitly for the military wing of Hezbollah is banned).This allows Hezbollah to raise money in Europe hand-over-fist like the Red Cross. However, Hezbollah raises funds in a variety of other ways that are explicitly criminal worldwide and notably in the EU where a debate on whether or not to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization is taking place.

Criminal Enterprises

Hezbollah’s involvement in crime stems from a few different motives, the basic necessity of funding, insurance from failure of patrons’ contributions, and as a way to establish independence from its patrons. In the past it was estimated that Hezbollah received somewhere between US $100-$200 million a year from Iran and additional resources from Syria. The past few years however, these partners have not been as generous with their funding. Iran is undergoing devastating economic sanctions and the Syrian state is caught up in a civil war. Today, these realities impact Europe as Hezbollah operatives’ criminal activity increases, including narcotics trafficking, money laundering, fraud and counterfeiting. And, once again, Hezbollah’s activities in Europe have turned violent, as exposed in the successful attack in Bulgaria in July 2012.

In March 2013 a Cypriot court convicted Hossam Yaccoub—a dual Swedish-Lebanese citizen—and sentenced him to four years. Among other charges, Hossam Yaccoub was convicted of participation in an organized crime group and the preparation of a criminal act. The head of the three-judge panel declared: “It has been proven that Hezbollah is an organization that operates under complete secrecy. There is no doubt that this group has multiple members and proceeds with various activities, including military training of its members. Therefore, the court rules that Hezbollah acts as a criminal organization.”[9] This is the most recent and prominent case of Hezbollah acting as an organized criminal group in Europe, but in fact, Hezbollah has been acting as an organized criminal group for years.

Despite being discovered in several cases, Hezbollah operatives continue to run one of the largest and most sophisticated global criminal operations in the world. These criminal activities have strengthened Hezbollah and made it more difficult for Western nations to counter. In the 2013 SOCTA (Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment) report, Europol identified several “crime enablers.” These included, “logistical hotspots, diaspora communities, corruption, the use of legal business structures, cross-border opportunities, identity theft, document forgery, and violence.[10] Hezbollah exploits all of these, not only in Europe, but worldwide. Much of the publicly available material regarding Hezbollah activities in Europe comes from US investigations. Hezbollah has long been designated as a terrorist organization by the US government; therefore its law enforcement and intelligence agencies have legal authority to pursue investigations into Hezbollah activities. This is now the case in Europe as well, but again only for alleged military wing members. Nearly all the cases involving Hezbollah are transnational in nature allowing even US investigations to uncover some Hezbollah activity in Europe. Due to these limitations, it is likely that there is more activity that has not been discovered.

Narco-Trafficking

Hezbollah has taken advantage of cross border opportunities to traffic arms, cash, and drugs. In 2008, German authorities at the Frankfurt airport arrested two Lebanese men carrying more than eight million euros raised by a Hezbollah cocaine smuggling ring. The two had trained in Hezbollah camps, however, they were not arrested for terrorist or militant activities, but for cocaine trafficking. The subsequent investigation led to a surprising discovery, traces of cocaine on the bills along with the fingerprint of an infamous Dutch drug kingpin.[11] A year later, two other men from the same ring involved in moving drugs from Beirut into Europe were arrested in house raid in Speyer.[12] In 2009, Admiral James Stavridis, then commander of U.S. Southern Command, noted an expanded presence of terrorist drug traffickers in West Africa, which had become their “springboard to Europe.”[13] By late February 2012, Yuri Fedotov, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, informed the UN Security Council that “The West African transit route feeds a European cocaine market which in recent years grew four fold… We estimate that cocaine trafficking in West and Central Africa generates some US $900 million annually.”[14]

In January 2011, one of the largest Hezbollah narcotics trafficking and money laundering schemes was disrupted. The U.S. Department of Treasury identified Ayman Joumma, along with an additional nine persons and nineteen businesses involved in the scheme. A Drug Enforcement Administration investigation revealed that Joumma laundered as much as US $200 million a month from the sale of cocaine in Europe and the Middle East through operations located in Lebanon, West Africa, Panama, and Columbia, using money-exchange houses, bulk cash smuggling, and other schemes. Joumma’s network laundered money through Lebanese Canadian Bank (LCB) accounts, which he used to execute sophisticated trade-based money laundering schemes. For example, LCB used U.S. correspondent banking relationships to send suspiciously structured electronic wire transfers to U.S.-based used car dealerships, some of which had already arisen in other, unrelated drug-related investigations. The proceeds of the used car sales were ultimately repatriated to Joumma’s network in Lebanon.[15] In June 2013, the LCB was fined US $102 million for its role in laundering the money.[16] Nine months after his designation as a narco-trafficker in February 2011, Ayman Joumma was indicted on charges of conspiracy to distribute narcotics and money laundering, including coordinating cocaine shipments for sale in the United States.[17] Joumma had first emerged on DEA agents’ radar when he placed a call to a phone tied to Chekry Harb, a Hezbollah-affiliated drug trafficker in Colombia. Joumma had arranged for the proceeds of cocaine sales to be picked up at a Paris hotel and then laundered back to Colombia, but the pickup turned out to be a sting operation. Listening in on the line, agents heard Joumma nonchalantly muse, “I just lost a million euros in France.” Cell phones seized at the Paris hotel tied Joumma, himself a Lebanese Sunni Muslim, to Hezbollah.[18]

Stolen Goods and Weapons Trafficking

This was not the only U.S. investigation to expose Hezbollah’s criminal links to Europe. For example, in the late 2000s Hassan Karaki was helping lead a broad criminal conspiracy to sell counterfeit and stolen currency to an undercover FBI informant posing as a member of the Philadelphia criminal underworld.[19] In a parallel plot overseen by Hezbollah politician Hassan Hodroj, Hezbollah sought to procure a long list of sophisticated weapons in a black market scheme involving Hezbollah operatives across the globe.

In the Philadelphia case an undercover officer posed as someone who could fence stolen goods to the group of suspected Lebanese criminals. Members of the group bought what they believed to be stolen property from the undercover agent and sent the merchandise to destinations as diverse as Michigan, California, Paraguay, Brazil, Slovakia, Belgium, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. The money for these purchases came from Danni Tarraf, a German-Lebanese procurement agent for Hezbollah with homes in Lebanon and Slovakia and significant business interests in China and Lebanon.[20] Tarraf wasted little time before asking whether the agent could supply guided missiles and 10,000 “commando” machine guns from the United States.[21] With that, a massive Hezbollah criminal fundraising and weapons procurement case was all but delivered to investigators on a silver platter.[22]

When Tarraf visited the United States in March 2009, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) and its member agencies put on a show, giving him a tour of a fake criminal network capable of procuring many of the weapons Tarraf sought for Hezbollah through his company, Power Express. Law enforcement officers concluded that Power Express essentially “operated as a subsidiary of Hezbollah’s technical procurement wing.”[23] In another meeting three months later, Tarraf was very clear about why he wanted guided and shoulder-fired missiles: they had to be able to “take down an F-16.” Tarraf showed the undercover agent exact weapons specifications on the internet as the FBI taped the conversations and captured the computer search records. Within weeks Tarraf and the undercover agent met in Philadelphia again, where Tarraf paid the agent a US $20,000 deposit toward the purchase of Stinger missiles and 10,000 Colt M4 machine guns. Tarraf noted that the weapons should be exported to Latakia, Syria, where Hezbollah could shut down all the cameras when the shipment arrived.[24]

In November 2009, Tarraf visited the United States one last time to inspect the missiles and machine guns the undercover agent had procured for him.[25] On November 21, 2009, Tarraf was arrested on terrorism and other charges and quickly confessed in full, admitting to being a Hezbollah member, receiving military training from the group, and “working with others to acquire massive quantities of weapons for the benefit of Hezbollah.”[26]

Given Tarraf’s global contacts, investigators saw him as the most valuable target of their operation. But their next priority was Dib Harb, the son-in-law of senior Hezbollah official Hassan Hodroj and a close associate of Hezbollah militant Hasan Karaki. While an undercover agent worked to build Tarraf’s trust, an FBI source worked another angle of the case, building rapport with Moussa Ali Hamdan, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Lebanon involved in petty crime but also well connected to senior Hezbollah officials.[27] In late 2007, Hamdan met with someone who promised to deliver a reliable flow of bulk stolen goods—cell phones, laptops, game consoles, and automobiles—that Hamdan could resell for a nice personal profit. But Hamdan’s new supplier was actually an FBI source, who helped authorities unwind an extensive international Hezbollah network.

Counterfeit and Stolen Currency

As the business relationship between the two men grew, Moussa Hamdan introduced the FBI source to the Hezbollah official mentioned earlier, Beirut-based Dib Hani Harb. In a conversation with the source, Harb explained that Iran produces high-quality counterfeit currencies in facilities staffed by people in the Baalbek working eighteen hours a day to produce the fake bills for Hezbollah’s use. Harb was shopping for a buyer. Hezbollah officials would need approval to sell the source this particular type of high-quality counterfeit currency, he added. The necessary approvals apparently came through, because two months later Hamdan and the source were hashing out the details of a deal for US $1 million in counterfeit U.S. currency to be sold at around forty cents to the dollar. But something strange happened when Hezbollah officials in Lebanon sent sample counterfeit notes to the source for inspection. The supposedly counterfeit notes were in fact genuine currency.[28]

Law enforcement officers thought Hezbollah was trying to scam the source by passing off genuine bills as extremely high-end forgeries and then providing low-end forgeries when the deal actually came through. In fact, Hezbollah suddenly had an acute interest in dumping a stockpile of genuine currency stolen by Hezbollah supporters around the world. In support of its international terrorist activities, Hezbollah had a program in place through which Hezbollah supporters sent stolen currency to Iran for later use by Imad Mughniyeh and members of Hezbollah’s IJO. Following Mughniyeh’s assassination, a decision was made to sell the stockpile of stolen money.[29]

So it was in early December 2008, just about a week after Moussa Hamdan and the source met outside Philadelphia to discuss plans for the sale of the counterfeit bills, that the source found himself on the phone with Dib Harb in Beirut discussing plans to buy stolen currency at a rate of about sixty-five cents to the dollar. The scene was now set for a meeting in person to firm up the relationships underpinning the source’s illicit dealings with Hezbollah. After receiving another photo album containing a new batch of stolen currency, the source traveled to Beirut in mid-February to meet Harb’s boss, Hasan Antar Karaki, who seemed at ease, unguardedly discussing Hezbollah and his own ties to the group.[30]

Karaki reiterated to the source that the stolen currency could not be spent in Lebanon because it was “blood money” Hezbollah smuggled from Iran through Turkey and Syria into Lebanon. Some of the money—just under US $10,000—was money stolen from Iraq, the source was told, explaining why Hezbollah was sensitive the funds be spent in small amounts only, and not in Lebanon. Karaki’s assistant followed up on the meeting, not only sending samples of counterfeit US $100 bills but European €200 notes as well.[31] In April 2009, Karaki sent Harb to meeting in southern Florida with the source and the source’s purported Philadelphia crime boss. The men negotiated terms for the sale of stolen U.S. currency and multiple counterfeit currencies. According to Harb, the eighteen- to twenty-hour days worked by Hezbollah’s representatives to counterfeit U.S. dollars also included currency from “Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the European Union.”[32] At one point, Harb showed the undercover agent a Swedish krona bill with stains from a dye-pack security system used by banks to mark stolen funds. According to Harb, the bill was part of a US $2 million bank heist Hezbollah supporters pulled off in Sweden. He explained that Hezbollah cells conduct robberies all over the world and send the money to Iran, where it is held before ultimately being distributed to Hezbollah in Lebanon.[33]

Karaki sent Dib Harb to an April 2009 meeting in southern Florida with the source and the source’s purported Philadelphia crime boss. The men negotiated terms for the sale of the stolen U.S. currency and multiple counterfeit currencies. All told, the Hezbollah officials provided the source a little less than $10,000 in counterfeit U.S. currency.[34]

Harb also explained that Hezbollah does not just produce counterfeit currency, but false European documents as well. Karaki is a major figure in Hezbollah’s forgery operations, a role that would also allow for the production of forged passports and visa stamps if desired. He offered several varieties of passports, explaining that the Italian passports he acquired were genuine books from Italian immigration officials. He also noted that Czech passports were possible to obtain as well. In fact, at the moment he had a man traveling to the Czech Republic for the purpose of obtaining passports. A few months after the meetings in Florida, Harb and Karaki delivered a couple other varieties in the form of fraudulent British and Canadian passports to the source using the pictures and biographical information he had provided.[35]

The meetings in southern Florida went so smoothly that the source was invited back to Beirut in mid-June to meet senior Hezbollah officials, including Karaki and Harb’s father-in-law, Hassan Hodroj, who served on Hezbollah’s political council. Publicly described as a Hezbollah spokesman and the head of its Palestinian issues portfolio, Hodroj was also involved in Hezbollah’s procurement arm.[36] Hodroj knew what he wanted: 1,200 Colt M4 assault rifles, which the source said he could procure for US $1,800 apiece. Hezbollah only needed “heavy machinery,” he added, for the “fight against the Jews and to protect Lebanon.” Like Dani Tarraf, Hodroj wanted the weapons shipped to the port of Latakia, Syria, which he described as “ours.”[37]

Before the meeting ended, Hodroj broached one more subject: Hezbollah’s desire to procure still more sensitive items from the United States, specifically communication and “spy” systems. Hodroj confided that he was involved not only in weapons but also technology procurement for Hezbollah and asked him to keep his eyes open for technologies that could help Hezbollah secure its own and spy on its adversaries’ communications. In the meantime, Hodroj directed the source to work through Dib Harb to complete the deal for the M4 machine guns.[38]

While investigators succeeded in luring Dani Tarraf back to the United States, bureaucratic infighting undermined their effort to do the same for Dib Harb.[39] The case came to a head in November 2009, when authorities rolled out three sets of indictments and exposed a Hezbollah politician’s role in global arms deals and criminal enterprises.

Money Laundering and Smuggling

Further US investigation exposed still other types of Hezbollah criminal activities with ties to Europe. With so many successful fundraising schemes at the ready, Hezbollah needed effective means of moving the proceeds of its criminal enterprises to Lebanon. Often, operatives would send money back with friends, relatives, or others from the Lebanese community who were traveling to Lebanon. Some were couriers by happenstance, pleased to help a friend transport money home, possibly not even aware the money was intended for Hezbollah. Others were knowing participants who willingly carried funds to Lebanon for Hezbollah, either out of ideological devotion or for a fee. But Hezbollah never put all its eggs in one basket, using hawala dealers (informal value transfer systems based on trust), money-service businesses such as Western Union, charities, and various old-fashioned smuggling techniques to move money to Lebanon. In some cases, the means Hezbollah operatives used to move their money also effectively laundered the money as well.

Whatever money he raised in the United States, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani who had furtively entered into the United States through Mexico in 2001,[40] was confident he could get it back to Hezbollah. Once, Kourani told an FBI informant that he had recently sent US $40,000 in money orders and cash to Hezbollah and could send as much money back to Lebanon as he liked because a friend who worked at the Beirut airport helped smuggle the money into the country.[41] Nine different FBI informants independently identified Kourani as a Hezbollah operative, alternately describing him as a Hezbollah fundraiser, member, and fighter.[42]

Hezbollah supporters in the United States also had access to an airport employee much closer to home. From 1999—three years after immigrating to the United States from Lebanon—until his arrest in 2007, Riad Skaff worked as a ground services coordinator for Air France at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. With an active airport security badge, Skaff had full access to all secure areas of an international terminal. For a fee, Skaff smuggled bulk cash packages onto airplanes, circumventing security inspections. At one point, Skaff told an undercover agent posing as an individual seeking to smuggle US $25,000 in cash to Lebanon, “I am in charge of the plane, everything…. It is dangerous, if they catch [me], they take me to jail….” Skaff did smuggle the money onto an Air France flight to Paris, noting to the undercover agent that millions of dollars pass through Paris to Lebanon daily. Skaff later smuggled US $100,000 and a cellular jammer on another Paris-bound flight for the undercover agent. A month later, he smuggled a package containing four night vision rifle scopes and two night vision goggles onto a Paris-bound flight.[43]

In a government sentencing memorandum filed after Skaff pleaded guilty to all the charges against him, prosecutors put Skaff’s illicit conduct in the context of Hezbollah support activity. Arguing that Skaff’s conduct “in essence was that of a mercenary facilitating the smuggling of large amounts of cash and dangerous defense items for a fee,” prosecutors noted he was fully aware the items were destined for Lebanon, “a war-torn country besieged by the militant organization, Hezbollah.”[44] Prosecutors never accused Skaff of being a Hezbollah supporter, just a criminal happy to accommodate the needs of potential Hezbollah supporters for a fee.[45]

Hossam Yaacoub in Cyprus

These investigations reveal a global criminal network, including longstanding and substantial networks in Europe. The latest example of Hezbollah’s ability to operate freely within Europe comes from the case of Hossam Yaacoub, whose trial and conviction in Cypriot court opened a window into the other types of activities that Hezbollah is involved with in Europe. In contrast to recent Hezbollah plots in Bulgaria in January and July 2012, which led to largely intelligence investigations that did not lend themselves to sharing much information publicly, a treasure trove of information has poured out of the trial in Cyprus of Hossam Yacoub, the Lebanese-Swedish dual citizen and self-confessed Hezbollah operative arrested just days before the Burgas, Bulgaria bombing.

Yaacoub was arrested—just two weeks prior to the deadly attack in Bulgaria, where five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver were killed when a bus exploded leaving the airport in Burgas—after performing a surveillance operation on the airport in Cyprus. Yaacoub not only was helping to plan similar operations in Cyprus but in fact had already helped carry out other “missions” in Europe. As a dual citizen, he used his legitimate Swedish passport to perform several courier missions for Hezbollah. In the first, in 2008, he delivered a large, thin envelope to a person in Antalya, Turkey. Then, in 2009, he traveled to Lyon France where he picked up a bag from one person using identification signs and code words and transported it to another, again using identification signs and code words. On the second mission, he went to Amsterdam, where he retrieved a cellphone, two SIM cards, and unknown object wrapped in newspaper, which he brought back to Lebanon.

Yaacoub was sent to Cyprus in 2009 for the express purpose, according to his account of the instructions his Hezbollah handler gave him, “to create a cover story for people to get to know me, to keep coming with a justifiable purpose and without giving rise to suspicions.” He traveled to Cyprus via Dubai to strengthen his cover, and spent a week vacationing in Ayia Napa at Hezbollah’s expense. When he returned to Cyprus two years later he would be able to say that the idea for importing merchandise from Cyprus came to him while on vacation there in 2009.[46]

Then, in December 2011 and again in January 2012, Aiman sent Yaacoub back to Cyprus “to create a cover story” as a merchant interested in importing to Lebanon juices from a specific local company in Cyprus. He was also tasked with collecting information about renting a warehouse in Cyprus. “I did all these things after receiving clear instructions from Hezbollah, so to have Cyprus as a basis [sic] and be able to serve the organization,” he said. Yaacoub maintained he did not know why Hezbollah wanted this base of operations, but speculated “perhaps they would commit a criminal act or store firearms and explosives.”[47]

Yaacoub conceded to police that his December 2011 visit to Cyprus actually involved several separate missions. First, his Hezbollah handler tasked Yaacoub with scoping out a parking lot behind the Limassol Old Hospital and near the police and traffic departments. He wanted Yaacoub to take pictures and be able to draw a schematic of the area on his return. Yaacoub was to specifically look for security cameras, if payment was required on entry, if car keys were left with a parking attendant, if there was a security guard, among other observations. Yaacoub was also told to find internet cafes in Lamassol and Nicosia, which he marked on a map, and to purchase three SIM cards for mobile phones from different vendors on different days, which he did. He also found good meeting places, such as at a zoo in Limassol and outside a castle in Larnaca. In the event a meeting was necessary, Yaacoub would receive a text message. A text about the weather meant to go to the Foinikoudes promenade in Larnaca that day at 6 PM. If no one showed up, Yaacoub was to return the following day at 2:00 PM, and then again the next day at 10:30 AM. Aiman also wanted Yaacoub “to spot Israeli restaurants in Limassol, where Jews eat ‘kosher,’” but an internet search indicated there were none. Later, in January 2012, Yaacoub was instructed to check out the Golden Arches hotel in Limassol, collect brochures and reconnoiter the area (he did survey the area, but the hotel was being renovated).[48]

“Hezbollah knows Cyprus very well,” Yaacoub told police, adding he thought his taskings were intended to update the group’s files “and create a database.” He insisted he was not part of any plot “to hit any target in Cyprus with firearms or explosives,” adding that he would have had the right to refuse the mission if asked to do such a thing.[49] Yaacoub expressed support for “the armed struggle for the liberation of Lebanon from Israel,” but was “not in favor of the terrorist attacks against innocent people.”[50]

Then, he added: “I don’t believe that the missions I executed in Cyprus were connected with the preparation of a terrorist attack in Cyprus. It was just collecting information about the Jews, and this is what my organization is doing everywhere in the world.”[51]

On March 21, a Cypriot criminal court convicted Yaacoub of helping to plan attacks against Israeli tourists on the island last July. In their 80-page decision, the judges rejected Yaacoub’s defense that he collected information for Hezbollah but did not know what it would be used for. There could be no “innocent explanation” of Yaacoub’s actions, the court determined, adding that he “should have logically known” his surveillance was linked to a criminal act.[52]

Conclusion

Hezbollah is once again extremely active in Europe, but no longer limits itself to fundraising and logistics as it did for many years. Speaking last August, just weeks after the Cyprus and Bulgaria plots, a senior US government official bluntly stated: “We assess that Hezbollah could attack in Europe or elsewhere at any time with little or no warning.”[53] More recently, in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism the US State Department noted that 2012 showed “a marked resurgence of Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism, through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), its Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), and Tehran’s ally Hizballah.”[54] Europe is no exception and as the debate on whether to designate the group as a terrorist organization continues it is important to bear in mind that under the EU’s Common Position 931, “a designation provides for a freezing of all funds, other financial assets and economic resources belonging to the persons, groups and entities concerned” and “are subject to enhanced measures relating to police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters.”[55] Given Hezbollah’s extensive criminal network, it is clear that such a designation would be a powerful policy prescription, and until the EU takes such a step Hezbollah’s criminal and terrorist activities will remain at high levels.

About the Author: Matthew Levitt is a senior fellow and director of The Washington Institute’s Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. This article draws material from Levitt’s forthcoming book, Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God (Georgetown University Press, 2013). The author wishes to thank research assistant Jonathan Prohov for his contribution to this article.

Notes

[1] Benjamin Weinthal, “German Mosque groups raising funds for Hezbollah,” Jerusalem Post, June 23, 2013, http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/German-mosque-groups-raising-funds-for-Hezbollah-317500

[2] German government reports referenced in Argentina, Buenos Aries, Investigations Unit of the Office of the Attorney General. Office of Criminal Investigations: AMIA Case. Report by Marcelo Martinez Burgos and Alberto Nisman, October 25, 2006, p. 305.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Magnus Ranstorp, “Hizbollah’s Command Leadership”, p.309.

[5] German Government, Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Annual Report of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution 2005, (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV) 2005, p. 166, 191.

[6] Agence France-Presse, “Lebanese Hezbollah Official Forced to Leave Germany,” January 5, 2005.

[7] “German Interior Minister ‘Worried’ About Islamist Radicalization,” Bild (Hamburg), July 24, 2006

. [8] Benjamin Weinthal, “German Mosque groups raising funds for Hezbollah,” Jerusalem Post, June 23, 2013, http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/German-mosque-groups-raising-funds-for-Hezbollah-317500.

[9] Nicholas Kulish, “Hezbollah Courier Found Guilty in Plot to Attack Israeli Tourists in Cyprus,” New York Times, March 12, 2013

[10] Europol SOCTA 2013, “EU Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment,” March 2013, p. 9, https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/publications/socta2013_0.pdf

[11] “Hezbollah Will Profit from the Cocaine Trade in Europe,” Der Spiegel, January 9, 2010.

[12] “Germans Trace Hezbollah Coke Smuggling Profits,” The Local (Berlin), January 9, 2010.

[13] Admiral James Stavridis, “U.S. Southern Command 2009 Posture Statement,” U.S. Southern Command, 2009, p. 15, http://www.docstoc.com/docs/84880244/SOUTHCOMs-2009-Posture-Statement—United-States-Southern-Command; See also Admiral James G. Stavridis, Partnership for the Americas: Western Hemisphere Strategy and U.S. Southern Command, (Washington DC: National Defense University Press, 2010), p. 11. http://www.ndu.edu/press/lib/pdf/books/stavridis.pdf

[14] Edith M. Lederer, “UN: W. Africa Cocaine Trade Generates US $900M a Year,” Associated Press, February 22, 2010

. [15] Finding that the Lebanese Canadian Bank SAL is a Financial Institution of Primary Money Laundering Concern,” Financial Crimes Enforcement (FinCEN), Treasury Department, February 14, 2011. http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/pdf/LCBNoticeofFinding.pdf

[16] AFP, “U.S. fines ‘Hezbollah’ bank US $102M for laundering,” Daily Star, June 26, 2013, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2013/Jun-26/221621-us-fines-hezbollah-bank-102-mn-for-laundering.ashx#axzz2XITndPiF.

[17] United States of America v. Ayman Joumaa, Indictment, Crim. No. 1:11-CR-560, United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, November 23, 2011.

[18] Jo Becker, “Beirut Bank Seen as a Hub of Hezbollah’s Financing,” New York Times, December 13, 2011

. [19] Author interview with law enforcement officials, March 11, 2010.

[20] Author interview with law enforcement officials, Philadelphia, PA, March 11, 2010; for “Guardian” see, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Connecting the Dots: Using New FBI Technology,” September 19, 2008.

[21] Author interview with law enforcement officials, Philadelphia, PA, March 11, 2010; United States Department of Justice, Press Release, “Arrests Made in Case Involving Conspiracy to Procure Weapons, Including Anti-Aircraft Missiles,” November 23, 2009; United States of America v. Dani Nemr Tarraf et al, Indictment, Crim. No. 09-743 01, United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, November 20, 2009.

[22] Author interview with law enforcement officials, Philadelphia, PA, March 11, 2010; United States of America v. Sadek Mohamad Koumaiha et al, Indictment, United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, November 23, 2009.

[23] Author interview with law enforcement officials, Philadelphia, PA, March 11, 2010.

[24] Author interview with law enforcement officials, Philadelphia, PA, March 11, 2010; U.S. Department of Justice, “Conspiracy to Procure Weapons, Including Anti-Aircraft Missiles;” United States of America v. Dani Nemr Tarraf et al, Indictment and Criminal Complaint, Crim. No. 09-743-01, United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, November 20, 2009.

[25] United States of America v. Dani Nemr Tarraf et al, Supplement to Government’s Motion for Pretrial Detention, Crim. No. 09-743-01, United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, December 3, 2009; for photo see trial exhibits.

[26] United States of America v. Dani Nemr Tarraf et al, Pretrial Detention Order.

[27] United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Affidavit Samuel Smemo, Jr.; Newall, “Road to Terrorism;” Author interview with law enforcement officials, March 11, 2010

. [28] United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Indictment; Newall, “Road to Terrorism;” Author interview with law enforcement officials, March 11, 2010; United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Affidavit Samuel Smemo, Jr.

[29] Author interview with law enforcement officials, March 11, 2010; United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Affidavit Samuel Smemo, Jr.; United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Indictment.

[30] United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Affidavit Samuel Smemo, Jr.

[31] United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Affidavit Samuel Smemo, Jr.; United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Indictment; Author interview with law enforcement officials, March 11, 2010.

[32] United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Indictment.

[33] United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Affidavit Samuel Smemo, Jr.

[34] United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Indictment.

[35] United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Indictment; Author interview with law enforcement officials, March 11, 2010.

[36] Spencer Hsu, “Hezbollah Official Indicted on Weapons Charge,” Washington Post, November 25, 2009; “Sayyid Nasrallah, Hamas Call for Resumption of Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue,” Al Manar TV, December 2, 1999, (supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring); Stewart Bell, “10 People Charged with Supporting Hezbollah,” National Post (Canada), November 24, 2009; Author interview with law enforcement officials, March 11, 2010; United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Affidavit Samuel Smemo, Jr.

[37] United States of America v. Hassan Hodroj et al, Affidavit Samuel Smemo, Jr.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Mike Newall, “Ex-Camden County Resident Indicted in Alleged Terror Cell Held in Paragu” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 17, 2010.

[40] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 9/11 Commission Report, released July 22, 2004. p. 240-1; United States of America v. Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, Indictment Crim. No. 03-81030, United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, November 19, 2003.

[41] United States of America v. Sealed Matter, Affidavit of FBI Agent Timothy T. Waters . Misc. No. 03-x-71722, United States District Court Eastern District Court, Easter District of Michigan, Southern Division, April 15, 2004.

[42] USA v. Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, Government’s Written Proffer in Support of Detention Pending Trial, Crim. No. 03-81030, United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, January 20, 2004.

[43] United States of America v. Riad Skaff, Government’s Sentencing Memorandum, No. 07CR0041, United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, May 27, 2008;

[44] USA v. Riad Skaff, Government’s Sentencing Memorandum; USA v. Riad Skaff, Affidavit of ICE Special Agent Matthew Dublin, January 29, 2007.

[45] USA v. Riad Skaff, Affidavit of Colonel Kevin M. McDonnell, April 24, 2008.

[46] Depositions of Hossam Taleb Yaacoub (some spelled Yaakoub), Criminal Number ∑/860/12, File Page 110, by interviewing police officer Sergeant Michael Costas. Depositions taken on, July 14, 2012.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Depositions of Hossam Taleb Yaacoub (some spelled Yaakoub), Criminal Number ∑/860/12, File Page 134, by interviewing police officer Sergeant Michael Costas. Depositions taken on, July 16, 2012.

[49] Ibid.

[50] Depositions of Hossam Taleb Yaacoub (some spelled Yaakoub), Criminal Number ∑/860/12, File Page 187, by interviewing police officer Sergeant Michael Costas. Depositions taken on, July 22, 2012.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Menelaos Hadjicostis, “Cyprus court convicts Hezbollah Member,” Associated Press, March 21, 2013, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/cyprus-court-convicts-hezbollah-member.

[53] Nicholas Kulish, “Despite Alarm by US, Europe Lets Hezbollah Operate Openly,” The New York Times, August 15, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/world/europe/hezbollah-banned-in-us-operates-in-europes-public-eye.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[54] US State Department, “Country Reports on Terrorism 2012,”Bureau of Counterterrorism, May 2013, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/210204.pdf.

[55] European Union, “Factsheet: the EU list of persons, groups and entities subject to specific measures to combat terrorism,” February 6, 2008, http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/080206_combatterrorism_EN.pdf.

- A gang of pizza-munching, Honda-loving car thieves who cut a swath through the East Bay was sniffed out by police after they left a sloppy trail of clues inside the stolen vehicles. The ring of nine teenagers, all from Oakland, allegedly stole at least 26 Honda Accords in Oakland and in BART stations throughout Contra Costa County and burglarized dozens more over the past two months, until alert investigators noticed a pattern.

The thieves would drive the cars around for a couple of days while munching pizza, strip the vehicles of anything valuable, and then abandon them with boxes inside and half-eaten pizza slices on the seats.

“All the pizza boxes had the name of the establishment on them, but none of them had the tag that comes with a pizza when you buy it,” said BART police Sergeant Mike Miller. “Speculation was it was probably someone working in a pizza shop.”

The hunch was right. Investigators with the BART and Oakland police departments followed the trail to its source – an Oakland pizza parlor with a 17-year-old suspected car thief working the counter.

It was a key factor in the eventual arrest of eight other suspects, all 16 and 17 years old, between September 25 and October4. They were all booked on charges of auto theft.

The pizza boxes weren’t the only clue. BART investigators and Oakland police also found a scrap of paper with a name on it inside a school book left in one of the cars. Detectives tracked the name to Skyline High School in Oakland, where they noticed a stolen Honda Accord sitting in the parking lot.

A 16-year-old boy eventually hopped in the car – and into the hands of police. He had purchased a Club device to protect the car from theft.

- Peter Fimrite, Chronicle East Bay Bureau.

- The following is a direct quote from the Center for Strategic and International Studies report on GLOBAL ORGANIZED CRIME; the author who introduces the story swears it’s true.

FBI agents conducted a raid of a psychiatric hospital in San Diego that was under investigation for medical insurance fraud. After hours of reviewing thousands of medical records, the dozens of agents had worked up quite an appetite. The agent in charge of the investigation called a nearby pizza parlor with delivery service to order a quick dinner for his colleagues.

The following telephone conversation took place and was recorded by the FBI because they were taping all conversations at the hospital.

Agent: Hello. I would like to order 19 large pizzas and 67 cans of soda.

Pizza Man: And where would you like them delivered?

Agent: We’re over at the psychiatric hospital.

Pizza Man: The psychiatric hospital?

Agent: That’s right. I’m an FBI agent.

Pizza Man: You’re an FBI agent?

Agent: That’s correct. Just about everybody here is.

Pizza Man: And you’re at the psychiatric hospital?

Agent: That’s correct. And make sure you don’t go through the front doors. We have them locked. You will have to go around to the back to the service entrance to deliver the pizzas.

Pizza Man: And you say you’re all FBI agents?

Agent: That’s right. How soon can you have them here?

Pizza Man: And everyone at the psychiatric hospital is an FBI agent?

Agent: That’s right. We’ve been here all day and we’re starving.

Pizza Man: How are you going to pay for all of this?

Agent: I have my checkbook right here.

Pizza Man: And you’re all FBI agents?

Agent: That’s right. Everyone here is an FBI agent. Can you remember to bring the pizzas and sodas to the service entrance in the rear? We have the front doors locked.

Pizza Man: I don’t think so.

Agent: Click!

03.12.09

The Diamond District, Antwerp, Belgium.

Leonardo Notarbartolo strolls into the prison visiting room trailing a guard as if the guy were his personal assistant. The other convicts in this eastern Belgian prison turn to look. Notarbartolo nods and smiles faintly, the laugh lines crinkling around his blue eyes. Though he’s an inmate and wears the requisite white prisoner jacket, Notarbartolo radiates a sunny Italian charm. A silver Rolex peeks out from under his cuff, and a vertical strip of white soul patch drops down from his lower lip like an exclamation mark.
In February 2003, Notarbartolo was arrested for heading a ring of Italian thieves. They were accused of breaking into a vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and making off with at least $100 million worth of loose diamonds, gold, jewelry, and other spoils. The vault was thought to be impenetrable. It was protected by 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, a seismic sensor, and a lock with 100 million possible combinations. The robbery was called the heist of the century, and even now the police can’t explain exactly how it was done.
The loot was never found, but based on circumstantial evidence, Notarbartolo was sentenced to 10 years. He has always denied having anything to do with the crime and has refused to discuss his case with journalists, preferring to remain silent for the past six years.
Until now.
Notarbartolo sits down across from me at one of the visiting room’s two dozen small rectangular tables. He has an intimidating reputation. The Italian anti-Mafia police contend he is tied to the Sicilian mob, that his cousin was tapped to be the next capo dei capi—the head of the entire organization. Notarbartolo intends to set the record straight. He puts his hands on the table. He has had six years to think about what he is about to say.
“I may be a thief and a liar,” he says in beguiling Italian-accented French. “But I am going to tell you a true story.”
It was February 16, 2003 — a clear, frozen Sunday evening in Belgium. Notarbartolo took the E19 motorway out of Antwerp. In the passenger seat, a man known as Speedy fidgeted nervously, damp with sweat. Notarbartolo punched it, and his rented Peugeot 307 sped south toward Brussels. They hadn’t slept in two days.
Speedy scanned the traffic behind them in the side-view mirror and maintained a tense silence. Notarbartolo had worked with him for 30 years—they were childhood buddies—but he knew that his friend had a habit of coming apart at the end of a job. The others on the team hadn’t wanted Speedy in on this one—they said he was a liability. Notarbartolo could see their point, but out of loyalty, he defended his friend. Speedy could handle it, he said.
And he had. They had executed the plan perfectly: no alarms, no police, no problems. The heist wouldn’t be discovered until guards checked the vault on Monday morning. The rest of the team was already driving back to Italy with the gems. They’d rendezvous outside Milan to divvy it all up. There was no reason to worry. Notarbartolo and Speedy just had to burn the incriminating evidence sitting in a garbage bag in the backseat.
Notarbartolo pulled off the highway and turned onto a dirt road that led into a dense thicket. The spot wasn’t visible from the highway, though the headlights of passing cars fractured through the trees. Notarbartolo told Speedy to stay put and got out to scout the area.
He passed a rusty, dilapidated gate that looked like it hadn’t been touched since the Second World War. It was hard to see in the dark, but the spot seemed abandoned. He decided to burn the stuff near a shed beside a small pond and headed back to the car.
When he got there, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Speedy had lost it. The contents of the garbage bag was strewn amongst the trees. Speedy was stomping through the mud, hurling paper into the underbrush. Spools of videotape clung to the branches like streamers on a Christmas tree. Israeli and Indian currency skittered past a half-eaten salami sandwich. The mud around the car was flecked with dozens of tiny, glittering diamonds. It would take hours to gather everything up and burn it.
“I think someone’s coming,” Speedy said, looking panicked.
Notarbartolo glared at him. The forest was quiet except for the occasional sound of a car or truck on the highway. It was even possible to hear the faint gurgling of a small stream. Speedy was breathing fast and shallow—the man was clearly in the midst of a full-blown panic attack.
“Get back in the car,” Notarbartolo ordered. They were leaving. Nobody would ever find the stuff here.
The job was done.

Location along the E19 Motorway north of Brussels where Speedy dumped the garbage bag of evidence.

Patrick Peys and Agim De Bruycker arrived at the Diamond Center the next morning. They had just received a frantic call: The vault had been compromised. The subterranean chamber was supposed to be one of the most secure safes in the world. Now the foot-thick steel door was ajar, and more than 100 of the 189 safe-deposit boxes had been busted open. Peys and De Bruycker were stunned. The floor was strewn with wads of cash and velvet-lined boxes. Peys stepped on a diamond-encrusted bracelet. It appeared that the thieves had so much loot, they simply couldn’t carry it all away.
Peys and De Bruycker lead the Diamond Squad, the world’s only specialized diamond police. Their beat: the labyrinthine Antwerp Diamond District. Eighty percent of the world’s rough diamonds pass through this three-square-block area, which is under 24-hour police surveillance and monitored by 63 video cameras. About $3 billion worth of gem sales were reported here in 2003, but that’s not counting a hidden world of handshake deals and off-ledger transactions. Business relationships follow the ancient family and religious traditions of the district’s dominant Jewish and Indian dealers, known as diamantaires. In 2000, the Belgian government realized it would require a special type of cop to keep an eye on things and formed the squad. Peys and De Bruycker were the first hires.
De Bruycker called headquarters, asking for a nationwide alert: The Antwerp Diamond Center had been brazenly robbed. Then he dialed Securilink, the vault’s alarm company.
“What is the status of the alarm?” he asked.
“Fully functional,” the operator said, checking the signals coming in from the Diamond Center. “The vault is secure.”
“Then how is it that the door is wide open and I’m standing inside the vault?” De Bruycker demanded, glancing at the devastation all around him.
He hung up and looked at Peys. They were up against a rare breed of criminal.

The Diamond Centre’s vault after the robbery.

About 18 months earlier, in the summer of 2001, Leonardo Notarbartolo sipped an espresso at a café on Hoveniersstraat, the diamond district’s main street. It was a cramped, narrow place with a half-dozen small tables, but from the corner by the window Notarbartolo could look out on the epicenter of the world’s diamond trade. During business hours, Hasidic men wearing broad-brimmed hats hurried past with satchels locked to their wrists. Armored cars idled tensely while burly couriers with handguns wheeled away small black suitcases. There were Africans in bright blue suits, Indian merchants wearing loupes around their necks, and bald Armenians with reading glasses pushed up on their mottled heads.
Billions of dollars in diamonds pass by the café’s window. During the day, they travel from office to office in briefcases, coat pockets, and off-the-shelf rollies. At night, all those gems are locked up in safes and underground vaults. It’s one of the densest concentrations of wealth in the world.
It’s also a thief’s paradise. In 2000, Notarbartolo rented a small office in the Diamond Center, one of the area’s largest buildings. He presented himself as a gem importer based in Turin, Italy, and scheduled meetings with numerous dealers. He bought small stones, paid cash, dressed well, and cheerfully mangled the French language. The dealers probably never knew that they had just welcomed one of the world’s best jewel thieves into their circle.
By his own account, Notarbartolo had pulled off dozens of major robberies by 2000. It wasn’t just about the money anymore. He stole because he was born to be a thief. He still remembers every detail of his first robbery. It was 1958—he was 6. His mother had sent him out for milk, and he came back with 5,000 lira—about $8. The milkman had been asleep, and young Leo rifled through his drawers. His mother beat him, but it didn’t matter. He had found his calling.
In elementary school, he filched money from his teachers. As a teenager, he stole cars and learned to pick locks. In his twenties, he devoted himself to the study of people, tracking jewelry salesmen around Italy for weeks just to understand their habits. In his thirties, he began to assemble teams of thieves, each with their own specialty. He knew lock-picking experts, alarm aces, safecrackers, guys who could tunnel under anything, and a man who could scale the sleek exteriors of office buildings. Each job brought a different mix of thieves into play. Most, including Notarbartolo, lived in or near Turin, and the group came to be known as the School of Turin.
Notarbartolo’s specialty was charm. Acting the part of the jolly jeweler, he was invited into offices, workshops, and even vault rooms to inspect merchandise. He would buy a few stones and then, a week or a month later, steal the target’s entire stock in the middle of the night.
Antwerp provided a wealth of opportunity and a good place to fence hot property. A diamond necklace stolen in Italy could be dismantled and its individual gems sold for cash in Antwerp. He came to town about twice a month, stayed a few days at a small apartment near the Diamond District, then drove home to his wife and kids in the foothills of the Alps.
When he had stolen goods to sell, he dealt with only a few trusted buyers. Now, as he finished his espresso, one of them—a Jewish dealer—came in and sat down to chat.
“Actually, I want to talk to you about something a little unusual,” the dealer said casually. “Maybe we could walk a little?”
They headed out, and once they were clear of the district, the dealer picked up the conversation. His tone had changed however. The casualness was gone.
“I’d like to hire you for a robbery,” he said. “A big robbery.”
The agreement was straightforward. For an initial payment of 100,000 euros, Notarbartolo would answer a simple question: Could the vault in the Antwerp Diamond Center be robbed?
He was pretty sure the answer was no. He was a tenant in the building and rented a safe-deposit box in the vault to secure his own stash. He viewed it as the safest place to keep valuables in Antwerp. But for 100,000 euros, he was happy to photograph the place and show the dealer how daunting it really was.
So he strolled into the Diamond District with a pen poking out of his breast pocket. At a glance, it looked like a simple highlighter, but the cap contained a miniaturized digital camera capable of storing 100 high-resolution images. Photography is strictly limited in the district, but nobody noticed Notarbartolo’s pencam.
He began his reconnaissance at the police surveillance booth on the Schupstraat, a street leading into the center of the district. Behind the booth’s bulletproof glass, two officers monitored the area. The three main blocks of the district bristled with video cameras: Every inch of street and sky appeared to be under watch. The booth also contained the controls for the retractable steel cylinders that are deployed to prevent vehicular access to the district. As Notarbartolo walked past, he began taking pictures.
He headed toward the Diamond Center itself, a gray, 14-story, fortresslike building on the south end of the district. It had a private security force that operated a nerve center located at the entrance. Access was blocked by metal turnstiles, and visitors were questioned by guards. Notarbartolo flashed his tenant ID card and breezed through. His camera captured crisp images of everything.
He took the elevator, descending two floors underground to a small, claustrophobic room—the vault antechamber. A 3-ton steel vault door dominated the far wall. It alone had six layers of security. There was a combination wheel with numbers from 0 to 99. To enter, four numbers had to be dialed, and the digits could be seen only through a small lens on the top of the wheel. There were 100 million possible combinations.
Power tools wouldn’t do the trick. The door was rated to withstand 12 hours of nonstop drilling. Of course, the first vibrations of a drill bit would set off the embedded seismic alarm anyway.
The door was monitored by a pair of abutting metal plates, one on the door itself and one on the wall just to the right. When armed, the plates formed a magnetic field. If the door were opened, the field would break, triggering an alarm. To disarm the field, a code had to be typed into a nearby keypad. Finally, the lock required an almost-impossible-to-duplicate foot-long key.
During business hours, the door was actually left open, leaving only a steel grate to prevent access. But Notarbartolo had no intention of muscling his way in when people were around and then shooting his way out. Any break-in would have to be done at night, after the guards had locked down the vault, emptied the building, and shuttered the entrances with steel roll-gates. During those quiet midnight hours, nobody patrolled the interior—the guards trusted their technological defenses.
Notarbartolo pressed a buzzer on the steel grate. A guard upstairs glanced at the videofeed, recognized Notarbartolo, and remotely unlocked the steel grate. Notarbartolo stepped inside the vault.
It was silent—he was surrounded by thick concrete walls. The place was outfitted with motion, heat, and light detectors. A security camera transmitted his movements to the guard station, and the feed was recorded on videotape. The safe-deposit boxes themselves were made of steel and copper and required a key and combination to open. Each box had 17,576 possible combinations.
Notarbartolo went through the motions of opening and closing his box and then walked out. The vault was one of the hardest targets he’d ever seen.
Notarbartolo leans toward me in the Belgian prison and asks if I have any questions so far. It is a rare break in his fast-moving monologue. There is a sense of urgency. He is allotted only one hour of visiting time per day.
“You’re telling me that the heist was organized by an Antwerp diamond dealer,” I say.
“Bravo,” he replies, smiling.
“What about your cousin?”
His smile disappears.
Notarbartolo was born in Palermo, Sicily, and members of his extended family have long been dogged by accusations of Mafia connections. Those accusations reached a crescendo last year when anti-Mafia police arrested Notarbartolo’s cousin Benedetto Capizzi, claiming he was about to become the new leader of the Sicilian Mafia. Notarbartolo says the Italian authorities traveled to Belgium soon after the heist to question him about Capizzi’s possible role in the robbery. If there is an organized-crime link, Notarbartolo might be inventing a story about the Jewish diamond dealer to distract attention from what really happened.
Notarbartolo scoffs at this idea and insists that his cousin had nothing to do with the heist. The reality, Notarbartolo says, is that he thought the vault was impregnable. He didn’t believe it could be robbed until the dealer went to extraordinary lengths to prove him wrong.

The 3-ton steel vault door.

The Door
1. Combination dial (0-99)
2. Keyed lock
3. Seismic sensor (built-in)
4. Locked steel grate
5. Magnetic sensor
6. External security camera
The Vault
7. Keypad for disarming sensors
8. Light sensor
9. Internal security camera
10. Heat/motion sensor (approximate location)
Illustration: Joe McKendry

It took five months for the diamond dealer to call back after Notarbartolo told him the heist was impossible. He had even given him the photographs to prove it. Notarbartolo thought that would be the end of it, but now the dealer wanted to meet at an address outside Antwerp. When Notarbartolo arrived, the dealer was waiting for him in front of an abandoned warehouse.
“I want to introduce you to some people,” he said, unlocking the battered front door.
Inside, a massive structure was covered with black plastic tarps. The dealer pulled back a corner and they ducked underneath.
At first, Notarbartolo was confused. He seemed to be standing in the vault antechamber. To his left, he saw the vault door. He was inside an exact replica of the Diamond Center’s vault level. Everything was the same. As far as Notarbartolo could tell, the dealer had reconstructed it based on the photographs he had provided. Notarbartolo felt like he had stepped into a movie.
Inside the fake vault, three Italians were having a quiet conversation. They stopped talking when they saw the dealer and Notarbartolo. The dealer introduced them, though Notarbartolo refuses to reveal their names, referring to them only by nicknames.
The Genius specialized in alarm systems. According to the dealer, he could disable any kind of alarm.
“You can disable this?” Notarbartolo asked, pointing at the replica vault.
“I can disable most of it,” the Genius said with a smile. “You’re going to have to do one or two things yourself, though.”
The tall, muscular man was the Monster. He was called that because he was monstrously good at everything he did. He was an expert lock picker, electrician, mechanic, and driver and had enormous physical strength. Everybody was a little scared of him, which was another reason for the nickname.
The King of Keys was a quiet older man. His age set him apart from the others—he looked like somebody’s grandfather. The diamond dealer said that the wizened locksmith was among the best key forgers in the world. One of his contributions would be to duplicate the nearly impossible-to-duplicate foot-long vault key.
“Just get me a clear video of it,” the man told Notarbartolo. “I’ll do the rest.”
“That’s not so easy,” Notarbartolo pointed out.
The King of Keys shrugged. That wasn’t his problem.
“Don’t worry,” the Genius said. “I’ll help.”
In September 2002, a guard stepped up to the vault door and began to spin the combination wheel. It was 7 am. He was right on schedule.
Directly above his head and invisible behind the glare of a recessed light, a fingertip-sized video camera captured his every move. With each spin, the combination came to rest on a number. A small antenna broadcast the image. Nearby, in a storage room beside the vault, an ordinary-looking red fire extinguisher was strapped to the wall. The extinguisher was fully functional, but a watertight compartment inside housed electronics that picked up and recorded the video signal.
When the guard finished dialing the combination, he inserted the vault’s key. The video camera recorded a sharp image of it before it disappeared inside the keyhole.
He spun the handle, and the vault door swung open.
Thursday morning, February 13, 2003. Two days before the heist. The thud-thud-thud of a police helicopter beat over a convoy of police cars escorting an armored truck through the heart of Antwerp. They blew past posters of Venus Williams—she was due in town to compete in the Proximus Diamond Games tennis tournament.
The escorts bristled with firepower. They belonged to a special diamond-delivery protection unit, and each cop carried a fully automatic weapon. Their cargo: De Beers’ monthly shipment of diamonds, worth millions.
De Beers is the world’s largest diamond-mining company. In 2003, it controlled 55 percent of the global diamond supply and operated mines in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana, among others. The rough, unpolished gems were flown to London, where they were divided and placed in 120 boxes—one for each official De Beers distributor, many of which were headquartered in Antwerp.
Every month, Antwerp’s share of the boxes was flown into Belgium and transferred to a Brinks armored truck. Once the truck’s doors slammed shut, the convoy sped away, sirens wailing. The vehicles rocketed past the guard gate at the entrance of the district, and the giant metal cylinders rose out of the ground behind them, blocking any further automotive access.
The armed escorts fanned out on foot around the armored truck to form a perimeter. No one was allowed near the vehicle. The doors swung open, and the boxes were quickly carried through an unremarkable entrance in the middle of the block. It was payday. The Diamond District was flush.
Notarbartolo was buzzed into the vault the next day, Friday, February 14—the day before the robbery. He was alone. In his jacket pocket, he carried a can of women’s hair spray.

Notarbartolo used women’s hair spray to temporarily disable the vault’s combined heat/motion sensor.

A security camera recorded his movements—police would later watch the footage—but the guard had gotten used to the Italian’s frequent visits and wasn’t paying attention. Notarbartolo stepped away from the safe-deposit boxes and pulled out the aerosol can. With a quick, practiced circular movement, he covered the combined heat/motion sensor with a thin coat of transparent, oily mist.
The vault was momentarily filled with the smell of a woman’s hair.
It was a simple but effective hack: The oily film would temporarily insulate the sensor from fluctuations in the room’s temperature, and the alarm went off only if it sensed both heat and motion.
Still, it was hard to guess how long the trick would work. Once the Monster was in the vault, he had to install the sensor bypass before his body heat penetrated the film. He might have five minutes—he might have less. Nobody knew for sure.
Venus Williams smashed the ball crosscourt with a yelp, overwhelming her leggy Slovakian opponent. It was Saturday night, and Williams was dominating the semifinals of the Diamond Games, an event that hyped Antwerp’s predominant position in the gem world. Many of the city’s diamantaires watched as Williams beat down the Slovak and moved one step closer to winning a tennis racket encrusted with nearly $1 million worth of stones.
Across town, the Diamond District was deserted. Notarbartolo drove his rented gray Peugeot 307 past the city’s soot-covered central train station and turned onto Pelikaanstraat, a road that skirted the district. He pulled to the curb, and the Monster, the Genius, the King of Keys, and Speedy stepped out carrying large duffel bags. The King of Keys picked the lock on a run-down office building, and they disappeared through the door. It was a little past midnight.
The Genius led them out the rear of the building into a private garden that abutted the back of the Diamond Center. It was one of the few places in the district that wasn’t under video surveillance. Using a ladder he had previously hidden there, the Genius climbed up to a small terrace on the second floor. A heat-sensing infrared detector monitored the terrace, but he approached it slowly from behind a large, homemade polyester shield. The low thermal conductivity of the polyester blocked his body heat from reaching the sensor. He placed the shield directly in front of the detector, preventing it from sensing anything.
The balcony was now safe. While the rest of the team scrambled up, the Genius disabled an alarm sensor on one of the balcony’s windows. One by one, the thieves climbed through the window, dropped into a stairwell, and descended to the darkened vault antechamber. They covered the security cameras with black plastic bags and flipped on the lights. The vault door stood imposingly before them. The building was quiet—no alarms had been triggered. The police never determined how the men had entered the building.
The Genius pulled a custom-made slab of rigid aluminum out of his bag and affixed heavy-duty double-sided tape to one side. He stuck it on the two plates that regulated the magnetic field on the right side of the vault door and unscrewed their bolts. The magnetic plates were now loose, but the sticky aluminum held them together, allowing the Genius to pivot them out of the way and tape them to the antechamber wall. The plates were still side by side and active—the magnetic field never wavered—but they no longer monitored the door. Some 30 hours later, the authorities would marvel at the ingenuity.

The Genius used this custom-made slab of aluminum to reposition the magnetic field away from the vault door.

Next, the King of Keys played out a hunch. In Notarbartolo’s videos, the guard usually visited a utility room just before opening the vault. When the thieves searched the room, they found a major security lapse: The original vault key was hanging inside.
The King of Keys grabbed the original. There was no point in letting the safe manufacturers know that their precious key could be copied, and the police still don’t know that a duplicate was made.
The King of Keys slotted the original in the keyhole and waited while the Genius dialed in the combination they had gleaned from the video. A moment later, the Genius nodded. The Monster turned off the lights—they didn’t want to trigger the light detector in the vault when the door opened. In the darkness, the King of Keys turned the key and spun a four-pronged handle. The bolts that secured the door retracted and it swung heavily open.
Speedy ran up the stairwell. It was his job to stay in touch with Notarbartolo, but there was no cell phone reception down in the vault. Upstairs, he got a signal and dialed his old friend.
“We’re in,” he said and hung up.
Notarbartolo put his phone back on the dashboard. He was sitting in the Peugeot and could see the front of the Diamond Center a block and a half away. His police scanner was quiet. He took a sip of cold coffee and waited.
In the antechamber, the King of Keys deftly picked the lock on the metal grate. He shuffled backward as the Monster propped the grate open with two cans of paint he found in the storeroom. Like the rest of the team, the Monster wore plastic gloves—the police would find no prints on the cans. It was now up to him to disable the remaining systems.
The Monster oriented himself in the darkness at the vault entrance. The only sound was the steady breathing of the others behind him. His body was already projecting heat into the vault—the hair spray on the infrared sensor wouldn’t last. Every second he was there would raise the ambient temperature. He had to move quickly but keep his heart rate low.

The Monster bypassed the vault security system’s main inbound and outbound wires and then covered this light sensor with tape, rendering it useless.

As he’d practiced in the warehouse, he strode exactly 11 steps into the middle of the room, reached for the ceiling, and pushed back a panel. He felt the security system’s main inbound and outbound wires. An automatic electric pulse constantly shot into the room and back out along these wires. If any of the sensors were tripped, the circuit would break. When a pulse shot into the room, it expected an answer. If it didn’t get one, it activated the alarm.
With his hands over his head, the Monster used a tool to strip the plastic coating off the wires. It was a delicate task. One slip could cut through, instantly breaking the circuit and tripping the alarm.
The police would later discover stripped wires in the ceiling and guess that the thieves considered cutting them, only to lose their nerve. But Notabartolo says that the Monster knew exactly what he was doing. Once the copper wires were exposed, he clipped a new, precut piece of wire between the inbound and outbound cables. This bridge rerouted the incoming electric pulse over to the outbound wire before the signal reached the sensors. It no longer mattered what happened further down the line. The sensors were out of the loop. It was now safe for the others to enter.
Still, the men were cautious. They blinded the heat/motion detector with a Styrofoam box, covered the light detector with tape, and then set to work. The King of Keys unloaded a homemade, hand-cranked drill and fitted it with a thin shaft of metal. He jammed the shaft into one of the locks and cranked for about three minutes—until the lock broke, snapping open the box.
The guys took turns yanking the contents out. Since they had memorized the layout of the vault in the replica, they worked in the dark, turning on their flashlights only for split seconds—enough to position the drill over the next box.
But in those muffled flashes, they could glimpse their duffel bags overflowing with gold bars, millions in Israeli, Swiss, American, European, and British currencies, and leather satchels that contained the mother lode: rough and polished diamonds. They resisted the urge to examine their haul; they were running out of time.
By 5:30 am, they had opened 109 boxes. A tamped-down giddiness pervaded the dark vault, but they had to stop. The streets would fill with people soon, and they needed to transfer their bags into Notarbartolo’s car. Speedy relayed the message to him. They were coming out.
It took almost an hour for the team to haul the bags up the stairs, pass by the infrared sensor, lower the loot down the ladder, and gather in the hallway of the decrepit office building. Notarbartolo idled at the curb while on the phone with Speedy. A bus came and went, and then the street was empty.
“Now,” he hissed.
In the predawn half-light, the four men raced out of the building. They jammed the bags in the car, slammed the doors, and headed off on foot for Notarbartolo’s apartment. He put the car in gear and slowly pulled away.
In half an hour, they were huddled around the bags in the apartment. The Monster unzipped one and pulled out a leather satchel. It was time to celebrate.
He opened the satchel and looked up, bewildered. It was empty.
He took out another. It was also empty. A wave of anxiety swept the room. They unzipped all the other duffel bags and rifled through the satchels. More often than not, there was nothing in them.
Something had gone wrong. The diamonds should have been there.
“We’ve been set up,” Notarbartolo said.
Notarbartolo stepped into a scalding-hot shower while the others made salami sandwiches in the kitchen. He needed some clarity—the fatigue was weighing on him. In the weeks preceding the heist, he had seen many of the satchels in the offices of the diamantaires, and they were always filled with inventory. He expected the total take to exceed $100 million. Now they were looking at a fraction of that—probably about $20 million.
Notarbartolo reflected on his interactions with the diamond dealer, and a thought flashed through his mind: Maybe the dealer wasn’t operating alone. If he tipped off a group of his fellow merchants, they could have pulled their inventory out of the vault before the heist. Each could then claim that their gems were stolen and collect the insurance while secretly keeping their stones. Most had safes in their offices—they could have simply kept the stock there. Notarbartolo realized that the heist he had spent so much time planning might have actually been part of an elaborate insurance scam.
He shut off the water. A half hour earlier he was a king. Now he felt like a pawn.
Speedy and Notarbartolo were on the E19 heading out of Antwerp. It was 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Notarbartolo settled in for the 10-hour drive back to Turin. The garbage bag filled with incriminating evidence sat in the backseat. Notarbartolo planned to stop in France and burn it, leaving no trace of the crime.
But Speedy was having trouble. His face was ashen, and his eyes darted madly at the cars around them. Finally, after only 20 minutes on the road, he snapped.
“I can’t do the drive,” he said.
The guy was melting down. Notarbartolo told him to take it easy. He’d drop him at the train station in Brussels if that’s what he wanted. It might actually be nicer to do the trip without his friend driving him crazy.
“We can’t take the garbage into Brussels,” Speedy stammered. The city was crawling with cops—maybe they would be looking for them. They couldn’t run the risk. They had to drop the bag immediately.
“Pull off up here,” he said abruptly from the passenger seat.
“This is a ridiculous time to be having a panic attack,” Notarbartolo muttered.
“Just pull off,” his friend snapped.
Notarbartolo took the exit and surveyed the darkened surroundings.
“There’s a dirt road,” Speedy said, peering into a forest. “It’ll be perfect.”

August Van Camp likes weasels. The 59-year-old retired Belgian grocer had two—he called them Mickey and Minnie—and he enjoyed sending them down holes in the forest. Typically, a rabbit came rocketing out the other end. It was a lot of fun.
In 1998, he bought a narrow strip of forest alongside the E19 motorway. It was about a five-minute drive from his house, and if you ignored the sound of cars hurtling past at 80 miles an hour, it was a pretty 12 acres of trees with a gurgling stream. There were also a lot of holes with rabbits in them.
But because it adjoined the highway, Van Camp found a lot of garbage. The local teenagers once decided to have a party there and burned down a little hut he’d built. It made him fume with anger.
When he found garbage, he phoned the police, who had gotten used to his calls. A typical conversation:
“The kids have made a mess on my land again.”
“I am sorry to hear that, Mr. Van Camp.”
“I demand that you send someone to investigate.”
“We will pass along your request.”
Van Camp rarely heard back.

The garbage Van Camp found on his property that led to Notarbartolo’s arrest.

While hunting one morning—Monday, February 17, to be exact—Van Camp was incensed to find yet another pile of junk in the underbrush. After a flash of pique that made him puff out his cheeks, throw up his arms, and wonder what the world was coming to, he knelt down and glared at the refuse. He wanted to be able to describe to the cops what he had to put up with. There was videotape strewn all over the place. A wine bottle rested near a half-eaten salami sandwich. There were also some white envelopes printed with the words DIAMOND CENTER, ANTWERP. Van Camp’s irritation increased.
“Kids,” he grumbled.
At home, he punched in the number for the police and asked to lodge a complaint. The officer listened as Van Camp tallied the mess. When Van Camp mentioned Diamond Center envelopes, the officer broke in. “What was that?” he said.
“Antwerp Diamond Center envelopes,” Van Camp sputtered.
This time, the police came running.
By mid-afternoon, a half-dozen detectives swarmed the forest, painstakingly gathering the garbage and collecting stray gems. Van Camp watched with satisfaction. The police were finally treating his litter situation with the proper respect.
Within hours, the trash began to fill the evidence room at the Diamond Squad headquarters in Antwerp. A member of the squad bent over the clear plastic bags, looking for immediate clues. A pile of torn paper seemed promising. It didn’t take long to reassemble the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. It was an invoice for a low-light video surveillance system. The buyer: Leonardo Notarbartolo.
Back at Van Camp’s property, another detective knelt among the thorny brambles and peered at a small, jagged piece of paper poking out of the mud. He carefully lifted it free and held it up to the light.
It was a business card that bore the address and phone number of Elio D’Onorio, an Italian electronics expert tied to a series of robberies. Notarbartolo has consistently refused to identify his accomplices, but all evidence indicates that D’Onorio is the Genius.
The lab techs also bagged a half-eaten salami sandwich. They found Antipasto Italiano salami packaging nearby and sent it along to Diamond Squad headquarters.
Four days later, the detectives executed a search warrant on the apartment Notarbartolo rented in Antwerp. In a cupboard, they found a receipt from a local grocery store for Antipasto Italiano salami. The receipt had a time-stamp.
A detective drove to the grocery and asked the manager to rewind his closed-circuit television to 12:56 pm on Thursday, February 13. When the video came to a halt and snapped into focus, there was an image of a tall, muscular Italian purchasing salami. His name: Ferdinando Finotto—the man most likely to be the Monster.
On Monday — about 36 hours after the job was completed—the team of thieves reassembled at a bar in Adro, Italy, a small town about 50 miles northeast of Milan. They had agreed to meet the diamond dealer there and divide the loot. The dealer would get a third for financing the operation and putting the team together. The others would split the rest. They had anticipated a haul in the tens of millions each. Now they were looking at roughly $3 million per man. It was still a lot of money, but they couldn’t help feeling they’d been played. Everybody had a lot of questions for the dealer.
Hour after hour, he didn’t arrive. Notarbartolo was already uneasy about what had happened in the forest. He knew he had made a mistake—he should have turned around after he dropped off Speedy at the train station and gone back to burn the garbage. It was an embarrassing oversight, but what really irked him was that he had vouched for his friend, and the guy had cracked.
They waited at the bar until closing, drinking espressos and then beer. The dealer never showed.
On Thursday night, Notarbartolo ate dinner with his family at home outside of Turin. He tried to pretend that everything was normal. As usual, his 3-year-old granddaughter played with his cell phone and made him laugh. He momentarily forgot his worries.
His biggest problem was that he needed to go back to Belgium; the rental car was due in Antwerp the next day. The plan had always been to return it and show his face at the Diamond Center. That way, if the cops were looking for tenants who’d disappeared, he wouldn’t be on the list. It would also give him an opportunity to clean his apartment more thoroughly. He told his family that he’d be leaving early the next morning. His wife decided to come along; she hadn’t seen much of him lately. They could even have a nice dinner party with some friends from the Netherlands.
The next morning, as the Notarbartolos blew through the Swiss Alps, the police surrounded their home in Italy. Acting on the surveillance-system invoice discovered on Van Camp’s land, the Belgian diamond detectives had asked the Italian police to search Notarbartolo’s house. His 24-year-old son, Marco, was there and refused to open the front door. He frantically dialed his father’s cell phone while the police smashed the door open.
In Notarbartolo’s jacket pocket, his phone flashed but made no sound. His granddaughter had accidently turned off the ringer the night before. Marco called his mother’s phone—it was turned off. He tried his dad’s phone repeatedly. It just rang and rang.
Unaware, Notarbartolo sped toward Antwerp.

Notarbartolo’s invoice for a low-light video surveillance system.

Leonardo Notarbartolo was part of a five-man team behind the heist of the century.
Photo Courtesy Leonardo Notarbartolo

As Notarbartolo drove back to Belgium, Peys and De Bruycker wondered whether they’d ever catch the thieves. They could be anywhere by now: Brazil, Thailand, Russia. It never occurred to the detectives that one of the robbers would walk right back into the district.
But that’s exactly what Notarbartolo did. While one of his friends from the Netherlands waited on the street outside the Diamond Center, Notarbartolo waved at the security guard and dropped in to collect his mail. The guard knew that the police were investigating Notarbartolo and phoned the building manager, who immediately called the detectives.
When the police arrived, they found Notarbartolo chatting with the building manager and began peppering him with questions. The friend took off as Notarbartolo stalled for time, pretending to have trouble understanding French and claiming that he couldn’t remember the exact address of his own apartment. He just knew how to walk there.
“Let’s go then,” Peys said and loaded the Italian into a car.
Eventually, Notarbartolo pointed out the apartment.
As the police car pulled to the curb, Notarbartolo’s wife and the friends who’d come for dinner stepped out of the building. They were loaded down with bags and one carried a rolled-up carpet. Another minute and they would have been gone.
The police took everyone into custody.
The bags contained critical evidence. The police dug out a series of prepaid SIM cards that were linked to cell phones used almost exclusively to call three Italians: Elio D’Onorio, aka the Genius; Ferdinando Finotto, alias the Monster; and the person most likely to be Speedy, an anxious, paranoid man named Pietro Tavano, a longtime associate of Notarbartolo’s. On the night of the heist, a cell tower in the Diamond District logged the presence of all three, plus Notarbartolo. During that time, Tavano stayed in constant contact with Notarbartolo.
The day Notarbartolo was arrested, Italian police broke open the safe at his home in Turin. They found 17 polished diamonds attached to certificates that the Belgian diamond detectives traced back to the vault. More gems were vacuumed out of the rolled-up carpet from Notarbartolo’s Antwerp apartment.
The Belgian courts came down hard. They found Notarbartolo guilty of orchestrating the heist and sentenced him to 10 years.
With the cell phone records and the peculiarly precise salami sandwich evidence, the Belgian detectives persuaded French police to raid the home of Finotto’s girlfriend on the French Riviera. They retrieved marked $100 bills that the detectives say belonged to one of the Diamond Center victims. Legal proceedings dragged on, but Finotto was finally arrested in Italy in November 2007 and is serving a five-year sentence there.
When questioned by police in Italy, D’Onorio admitted that he had installed security cameras in Notarbartolo’s office but denied any involvement in the crime. Nonetheless, his DNA was found on some adhesive tape left in the vault. He was extradited to Belgium in November 2007 to begin a five-year sentence.
The high-strung Pietro Tavano is serving a five-year sentence in Italy for the crime. He has refused to allow his attorney to make any statements on his behalf.
A fifth thief has never been identified, though police know of his existence via cell phone records and DNA traces. The King of Keys was never apprehended.
On January 4, 2009, I see Notarbartolo for the last time. Over the past 14 weeks, we have met seven times in the prison visiting room, and yet questions remain. Was $100 million stolen as the police estimate, or just $20 million as Notarbartolo insists? Does it make sense that the heist was part of a larger insurance scam or is Notarbartolo’s story a decoy to throw suspicion on others? Perhaps Notarbartolo’s cousin, the Mafia don, was behind the whole thing. Whatever the truth, where is the loot now?
The murky nature of the diamond trade makes it difficult to get clear answers. For instance, detective De Bruycker says that three-quarters of the business is done under the table. Since there were roughly $25 million in legitimate claims at the time of the heist, he calculated that at least another $75 million in goods was stolen. That brought the total value of the heist to about $100 million.
If Notarbartolo’s insurance scam theory is correct, it went down like this: The dealers who were in on it removed their goods—both legal and illegal—from the vault before the heist and then filed claims on the legitimate gems. Denice Oliver, the adjuster who investigated the robbery for insurers, calls this the “double whammy”—these dealers would have gotten the insurance payouts and kept their stock. The $20 million found by the thieves belonged to traders not in on the scam.
Or: There was no insurance scam. The thieves actually found $100 million in the vault and Notarbartolo has spun a story to cloud the true origins of the heist.
Regardless of which theory is correct, there is agreement that the thieves got away with millions that were never recovered. Notarbartolo refuses to talk about what happened to the goods, adding that it is something best discussed once he is out of prison.
In the meantime, his share may very well be waiting for him, hidden somewhere in the foothills of the Italian Alps.

- Joshua Davis

June 1, 2013

Oksana Yushko for The New York Times

WANTED Mr. Tokhtakhounov’s Interpol wanted poster accuses him of “bribery in sport contests,” along with fraud and other malfeasance.

The waiters hovered as Alimzhan T. Tokhtakhounov worked through a platter of chilled mussels, shrimp and octopus one afternoon last month at the restaurant Palazzo Ducale, one of the finest here. The staff could afford to be attentive: there was no one else to serve.
Despite the hour, toward the end of what is usually a busy lunchtime, the restaurant was empty when Mr. Tokhtakhounov came in to speak with a reporter about recent racketeering charges in the United States.

American law enforcement officials view Mr. Tokhtakhounov as a leading figure in Russian organized crime, a member of a storied order of Russian mobsters who is accused of, among other activities, fixing skating matches at the Salt Lake City Olympics and running a high-stakes, trans-Atlantic gambling and money-laundering ring.

But aside from the eerie void in the restaurant and a guard outside, Mr. Tokhtakhounov’s life here seems open and even somewhat ordinary.

Like other men whom the American authorities have identified as Russian mobsters, he walks the streets freely, albeit with a bodyguard. He has his picture taken smiling alongside the glitterati at concerts, fashion shows and soccer matches. He invests in real estate and has recently taken up fiction writing. He showed his guest one of his novels, “Angel From Couture,” a semiautobiographical story that focuses on the love affair of a young model and an older man.

Whatever else he may be, he insisted over lunch, he is innocent of all charges against him.

“I am not bad, like you think,” he said, spearing an octopus tentacle with his fork and washing it down with sparkling mineral water. “I am not the Mafia, I am not a bandit.”

Federal authorities in the United States have been pursuing Mr. Tokhtakhounov (pronounced toe-TAH-hoon-ov) since 2002, when he was charged with fixing ice dancing and pairs skating competitions at the Salt Lake City Olympics.

In the more recent case, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged him in April with being a leader of a sports betting ring with operations in New York, Los Angeles, Russia and Ukraine. The setup drew in billionaire gamblers and laundered money through accounts around the world, prosecutors say.

Their indictment identifies Mr. Tokhtakhounov as a particular type of Russian criminal known as a “Vor v Zakone,” or “thief in law,” sometimes known as a Vor: a member of an almost priestly order, originally forged from prison hierarchies in the gulags. Vors are said to live by a strict code: They never marry, work or tell lies.

Mr. Tokhtakhounov, who is in his mid-60s, is “one of the last of the older generation of godfathers,” said Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University and an authority on Russian criminality. And his is among a handful of names that virtually every Russian gangster recognizes, he said.

Despite that reputation and the American charges, Russian authorities leave Mr. Tokhtakhounov alone. Russia has no extradition treaty with the United States and no outstanding charges against him. His thin criminal history here, an internal passport violation and an infraction for being unemployed, dates from the Soviet era and is no longer on the books.

Russian police officials say they have nothing on Mr. Tokhtakhounov; a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Interior Affairs, which oversees the police, confirmed he is on no wanted list here.

Russia under Vladimir V. Putin has arrived at a sort of détente with organized crime. In the 1990s, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia was besieged by mob wars in which gangsters publicly killed their enemies, but such violence has dropped sharply over the past decade.

Mr. Putin, who was president in the early 2000s and is again now, let it be known that such overt displays of gangsterism undermined the authority of the state and would not be tolerated, but he otherwise left the underworld hierarchy intact, Dr. Galeotti said.

Many violent crime figures have evolved into semilegitimate businessmen who carry on their activities through somewhat more acceptable means. Some now operate so openly that they have held gatherings on pleasure boats in the Moscow River in the heart of the city, the police say.

Whatever the benefits of such an arrangement inside Russia, thieves in law remain a menace in émigré communities abroad, said Sergei Kanev, a reporter covering organized crime at the newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

“Even in America the thieves have a huge influence on former Soviet immigrants,” he said. “Criminal threads still tie them together. All their relatives are here in Russia. A thief might say, ‘Play along, or your uncle and aunt will get it.’ ”

Mr. Tokhtakhounov, however, contested the F.B.I.’s characterization of him. He has been married, though he is now single. The police outside Russia, he said, often mistake his penchant for flashy clothes and high-priced meals for the lifestyle of a mobster.

“Let me explain something,” he said. “A thief in law, if he is a thief, he should not say, ‘I am not a thief.’ He should say, ‘I am a thief.’ And I say, ‘I am not a thief.’ You understand.”

Asked if he had ordered the restaurant cleared out for the interview, he just smiled, shrugged and suggested it was not a busy time.

American authorities say in the recent case that Mr. Tokhtakhounov served as a ringleader along with two others, Vadim Trincher and Anatoly Golubchik, of one of two overlapping illegal gambling operations. One operation, prosecutors say, was led in part by the scion of a New York art dealing family, Hillel Nahmad, which hosted poker games for celebrities and financial titans in New York and Los Angeles.

In the other operation, Mr. Tokhtakhounov is accused of funneling Russian oligarchs’ losses to shell companies in Cyprus, disguised as phony loans. The scheme, prosecutors say, laundered more than $50 million.

All the suspects have pleaded not guilty except Mr. Tokhtakhounov, who has not left Russia for a decade, he said, because of his fugitive status. Lawyers for Mr. Golubchik, Mr. Trincher and Mr. Nahmad said their clients were wrongly charged. The lawyer for Mr. Nahmad, Benjamin Brafman, said his client had never met or spoken to Mr. Tokhtakhounov, and even the indictment does not claim that.

Mr. Tokhtakhounov attributed his latest troubles to American agents’ eavesdropping on his phone calls with Mr. Trincher and Mr. Golubchik when he was placing bets, up to $20,000 on individual soccer games. The bets were his own, he said, not those of gambling clients; the agents misinterpreted his Russian slang.

“I speak openly on the phone,” he said, waving his gold-colored clamshell Samsung. “That is my whole problem.”

“If I’m a dealer, catch me,” he said. “They just catch my words. Ah ha! An organizer. How could I organize gambling in America? It’s impossible. And why would I? This is not my business.”

As he tells it, he is a real estate investor in Moscow, an organizer of Russian pop concerts and fashion shows, and now a writer. “I live peacefully on this business and raise my children,” he said.

Mr. Tokhtakhounov owned casinos in Moscow before gambling was outlawed there in 2009. His novel “Angel From Couture,” published in 2010, is subtitled “A Novel From the Life of High Fashion.” In the 1990s, he represented a Russian modeling association in Paris. The inside cover summarizes the story as “What happens when a young beauty falls for the charms of an older man.” Last year, he fathered twin girls with a woman 40 years younger than he is.

He lives in a prestigious apartment building in central Moscow and owns a palatial country home outside the city. He is also something of a celebrity, famously friendly with Joseph Kobzon, a crooner known as the Russian Frank Sinatra.

After the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, the F.B.I. said he had directed a scheme to secure a gold medal for the top Russian pairs skaters and for the top ice dancers representing France, one of whom was a Russian. The Russian pairs skaters won the gold, but after questions were raised about the judging, the Olympic committee awarded duplicate gold medals to the second-place Canadian team.

The authorities in Italy, where he then lived, detained him briefly on the charges but released him to Russia rather than extradite him to the United States.

His Interpol wanted poster accuses him of “bribery in sport contests,” fraud and other malfeasance and says he is affiliated with Semyon Y. Mogilevich, a man the American authorities consider a Russian Mafia godfather who is on the F.B.I.’s Ten Most Wanted list. Mr. Mogilevich also lives freely in Russia.

Mr. Tokhtakhounov denied knowing Mr. Mogilevich.

But he glumly recounted friendships with several others reputed to be Mafia leaders, including those known by the nicknames Grandpa Hassan and Yaponchik, or the Little Japanese, who were killed in recent years in two rare occurrences of mob violence. They were shot by snipers while leaving Moscow restaurants after meals.

At the Palazzo Ducale, as Mr. Tokhtakhounov’s own guard waited, he denied, line by line, the allegations against him. Three waiters continually circled, topping off the water glasses until one wandered too close during conversation and Mr. Tokhtakhounov told him to go away.

“Alimzhan,” the waiter responded, “Don’t worry, you know us: we’re deaf.”

- By ANDREW E. KRAMER and JAMES GLANZ

Nov 2, 2011

- Aliaksei Yafimau shudders at the memory of the burly thug who threatened to kill his relatives. Yafimau, who installs satellite television systems in Babrujsk, Belarus, answered an advertisement in 2010 offering easy money to anyone willing to sell a kidney.

He saw it as a step toward getting out of poverty. Instead, Yafimau, 30, was thrust into a dark journey around the globe that had him, at one point, locked in a hotel room for a month in Quito, Ecuador, waiting for surgeons to cut out an organ, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its December issue.

The man holding Yafimau against his will was Roini Shimshilashvili, a former kickboxer who was an enforcer for an international organ-trafficking ring, according to evidence gathered by police in Kiev. Yafimau says that when he pleaded with Shimshilashvili to let him get out of the deal and go home, the big man sliced the air with Thai-boxing moves and threatened him.

“He said if I didn’t go through with it, he would leave me in Ecuador and kill my family,” Yafimau says.

Doctors removed Yafimau’s left kidney in July 2010 and transplanted it into an Israeli woman, according to the Kiev police investigation. On the plane back to Belarus, on the western border of Russia, Shimshilashvili told Yafimau that if he wanted to live, he shouldn’t talk to police.

“I am afraid for my life,” says Yafimau, standing outside his mother’s Babrujsk apartment building, a nine-story, Soviet-era edifice that’s surrounded by weeds and trash. The traffickers paid Yafimau $10,000. He says it wasn’t worth the fear that haunts him today.

Violence and Coercion

Yafimau is one of the faceless and neglected victims in a sprawling global black market in organs — where brokers use deception, violence and coercion to buy kidneys from impoverished people, mainly in underdeveloped countries, and then sell them to critically ill patients in more-affluent nations.

The middlemen form alliances with doctors in leading hospitals who do these transplants for a fee, no questions asked.

Organ trafficking is on the rise, as desperate people seek transplants in a world that doesn’t have enough donors. About 5,000 people sell organs on the black market each year, according to Francis Delmonico, an adviser on transplants to the World Health Organization.

It’s against the law to buy or sell an organ in every country except Iran, says Delmonico, who is president-elect of the Montreal-based Transplantation Society, which lobbies governments to crack down on illicit procedures.

‘Exploit Shortages’

“There have been successes fighting organ trafficking around the world,” Delmonico says. “But organ trafficking continues to flourish because criminals exploit shortages of organ donors.”

Bloomberg Markets reported in June that U.S. citizens and others from the Americas suffering from kidney failure were going to Nicaragua and Peru to buy organs in a shadowy trade that injured and killed donors and recipients.

That U.S.-Latin American connection is dwarfed by a network of organ-trafficking organizations whose reach extends from former Soviet Republics such as Azerbaijan, Belarus and Moldova to Brazil, the Philippines, South Africa and beyond, a Bloomberg Markets investigation shows.

Many of the black-market kidneys harvested by these gangs are destined for people who live in Israel.

Not Enough Donors

With a generally well-educated population of 7.4 million and a modern medical system, Israel has an acute shortage of organs, in part because of religious beliefs. Just 12 percent of Israelis are registered donors, meaning they have consented to let their organs be used for transplants after they die, according to the Israeli National Transplant Center.

That compares with 40 percent of Americans. About 730 Israelis are currently waiting for a transplant, which is 13 times more than the number of such surgeries performed legally in Israel in 2010, according to the center.

Delmonico, a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, has spent the past six years lobbying governments and doctors around the world to combat organ trafficking. He says Israel’s government is cracking down.

The Knesset, Israel’s legislative body, passed the Organ Transplant Law in 2008, setting penalties, including imprisonment of up to three years, for buying and selling organs and requiring hospitals to scrutinize transplants by nonrelatives and foreigners.

Breaking up Gangs

In an effort to draw more legal organ donors, the law also offers volunteers compensation for lost wages and travel expense and provides them with additional health insurance. Israeli police have been among the most aggressive in the world against organ traffickers, breaking up three international gangs since 2008.

The government has also banned insurers from funding most transplants outside Israel.

The dearth of available organs in Israel has spawned a new class of criminals, mainly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, says Jerusalem Police Superintendent Gilad Bahat.

Investigators on five continents say they have uncovered intertwining criminal rings run by Israelis and eastern Europeans that move people across borders — sometimes against their will — to sell a kidney.

“The criminal here is the middleman who profits from the sick and the poor,” says Bahat, who investigated an organ- trafficking ring in Jerusalem. “It touches my heart that people will sell part of their body because they need money to live.”

‘Obscene Profit’

Criminals see an opportunity to make big money in the organ trade, where they can sell a kidney for 15 to 20 times what they pay, police throughout Europe say.

“They recognize the obscene profit that can be made in the expanding black market in body parts,” says Jonathan Ratel, a Pristina, Kosovo-based prosecutor who has been investigating organ trafficking over the past two years. “It keeps happening because there is so much money in this.”

Traffickers typically pay $10,000 to a seller for a kidney and collect $150,000 when selling it to a patient.

Traffickers prey on the most-vulnerable people. Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, is one of their prime hunting grounds.

Dorin Razlog, a shepherd with an eighth-grade education who lives in Ghincauti, says recruiters for a trafficking ring told him cash for a kidney would lift him out of poverty. After doctors in Istanbul cut out the organ in August 2002, they paid him $7,000 — $3,000 less than they’d offered. Of that, $2,500 was in counterfeit bills, he says.

Writhing From Pain

“They told me they would send people to destroy my house and kill my family if I went to the police,” Razlog, 30, says. Today, the money is long gone, and he sleeps on a musty mattress inside the rusting hulk of an abandoned Russian van next to a pigsty. At the end of some days, Razlog says, he’s writhing from pain in his remaining kidney.

“The only way out is death,” he says.

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry broke up the ring that bought Razlog’s kidney and arrested its leader — a Ukrainian-born Israeli national — in 2007.

In Mingir, Moldova, the organ black market cost a man his life. Vasile Diminetz, a frail retired farmer, says his son Vladimir grew ill after a broker bought his kidney in Turkey for $2,000 in 1999.

Haunted by Memories

Vladimir died in 2003 at the age of 25, after his remaining kidney failed, according to the Renal Foundation of Moldova, which has documented dozens of cases of organ trafficking.

Vasile, 70, stands outside the stone cottage where he lives alone, haunted by the memories.

“If I only knew, I could have saved my boy,” he says. “Maybe I could have done more, and I will regret that until I die.”

Prosecutors in nine countries have been conducting criminal probes of organ trafficking involving Israeli patients since 2003. The largest case dates to that year, when the Brazilian Federal Police noticed people from two slums of Recife, a coastal city 2,110 kilometers (1,311 miles) from Sao Paulo, flying to Durban, South Africa.

They returned home in so much pain from incisions across their abdomens that they needed assistance to get off the plane, says Karla Gomes de Matos Maia, the investigator who led the probe.

‘Suspect Organ Trafficking’

“Here you had people who didn’t fit the profile of tourists going to a strange destination and coming back after having major surgery,” Maia says. “We began to suspect organ trafficking.”

The Brazilian case is still wending its way through international courts. In November 2010 in Durban, Netcare Ltd. (NTC) — South Africa’s largest hospital company — pleaded guilty to violating the Human Tissue Act, which prohibits buying and selling organs.

Netcare paid 7.8 million rand ($848,464) in fines and penalties. It admitted to allowing 92 transplants in which donors from Brazil, Israel and Romania sold kidneys to Israeli patients. Four doctors are awaiting trial on trafficking charges.

In Brazil, 12 people connected to the Netcare case were convicted and jailed, with sentences from 15 months to 11 years.

In Kosovo, Ratel, who has dual citizenship in Canada and Great Britain and was appointed by the European Union to help restore the country’s criminal justice system, is overseeing a pivotal organ-trafficking case. It includes participants and victims from Belarus, Moldova, Turkey and four other countries.

Center for Trafficking

The EU has administered the courts in Kosovo since 2008, the year the country the size of Connecticut declared independence from Serbia after a civil war. Ratel, who arrived in March 2010 as part of the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo, says the country has become a center for organ trafficking.

Ratel built a case against nine doctors, hospital administrators and recruiters on charges of buying and selling kidneys for patients in Georgia, Germany, Israel, Poland and Ukraine, as well as Canada and the United States.

The trial began in October and is expected to continue into 2012. He has sought assistance from investigators in 11 countries in the case.

Ratel says he’s stunned by the callousness of the criminals who run the organ rings. Traffickers in Kosovo threatened one kidney seller with death if he testified in court, so the court had the man placed into a witness protection program.

‘Threats of Violence’

“This is organized crime,” Ratel says. “There is significant coercion and threats of violence.”

Organ traffickers search the world for hospitals willing to perform illicit transplants. Sometimes, sellers are flown to cities just to wait for procedures, and then traffickers move them to other parts of the globe when they find a recipient and a hospital willing to cooperate.

While the illegal organ trade may be run by seasoned criminals, it depends on the complicity of doctors and hospitals, says Oleg Liashko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament.

“I doubt this could happen without the hospital and doctors knowing about it,” says Liashko, who has investigated organ trafficking and is calling for more-severe criminal penalties in organ transplant laws. “They either know or look the other way because of the money involved. This is corruption, pure and simple.”

Doctors must be held criminally accountable when they perform surgery with an organ that’s been sold, Ratel says.

‘Willful Blindness’

“Ignorance is not a defense,” he says. “That is willful blindness. A doctor involved should know all the relevant facts, including whether the donor is a blood relative or not.”

People have two kidneys that filter toxins out of the bloodstream. A patient with failure in both kidneys will die quickly unless he or she is hooked up to a dialysis machine or gets a transplant.

Transplants prolong lives, and patients who receive organs from living donors have better survival rates than those who receive organs from deceased donors.

Of patients who get organs from a living donor, 90 percent survive at least five years; for those receiving an organ from a dead donor, the figure is 82 percent, according to the Washington-based Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Legitimate organ donors are usually relatives of the patient.

Religious Debate

In Israel, an unresolved religious debate hampers organ donation — from both the living and the dead. Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, a leading arbiter of Jewish law in Israel, advises that donating body parts violates religious tradition, which holds that upon death, a body should be buried intact.

“It is not permitted to remove any organ,” Elyashiv, who’s 101 years old, said in a public statement in March 2008.

Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed, Israel, is leading a drive to get 100 colleagues to sign a document advocating organ donation. He says the Torah tells people to help others when they can, especially if it means saving a life. He says donating an organ is a mitzvah, or good deed.

“I hope that many more Jews will become part of the organ donation network,” Eliyahu says.

Aliaksei Yafimau has never been to Israel. He says he was drawn into the organ-selling business in Belarus in 2009. Yafimau, a wiry man with gray eyes and close-cropped blond hair, wanted cash to win back an ex-girlfriend, he says. So he answered an Internet advertisement offering cash for organs.

Painless Way

Two Ukrainian recruiters for the Kiev ring — Ruslan Yakovenko and Ievgen Sliusarchuk — told Yafimau by e-mail that selling a kidney was a painless way to earn $10,000, according to an October 2010 indictment.

“They lied to me,” Yafimau says.

After an exchange of e-mails and phone calls, the traffickers wired Yafimau $100 to buy a ticket on an all-night train to Kiev. Yakovenko and Sliusarchuk took him to a one-room apartment in Kiev, where two other kidney sellers were staying, he says. That was a base for men and women waiting their turn to sell a kidney, according to Yafimau.

In mid-June 2010, the traffickers told Yafimau they had found an Israeli woman who would buy his kidney and the transplant would be done in Ecuador, 11,000 kilometers west of Kiev. The gangsters had Yafimau fly from Kiev to Quito, with a stopover in Amsterdam.

In Quito, he met two other organ sellers and Shimshilashvili, the stocky former kickboxer, according to the Ukraine criminal case.

‘Locked in That Room’

When they arrived in Quito, on June 26, 2010, Shimshilashvili confined the three organ sellers to a small, cream-colored unit at Lugano Suites, a nine-story hotel, Yafimau told investigators.

“We were locked in that room with him, and he watched us all the time,” Yafimau says in Russian, his first language. “He wouldn’t let anyone go outside alone, and we didn’t have any money.”

They spent the time sleeping and watching so much television in Spanish that they picked up some of the language. As they waited, their minders took them often to Metropolitano Hospital for medical tests, Yafimau says.

Soon, a 55-year-old Israeli woman suffering from kidney failure arrived from Tel Aviv, documents in the Ukrainian investigation show. The traffickers put a sworn statement — in English, Spanish and Russian — in front of Yafimau and told him to sign it, saying he was voluntarily donating a kidney.

‘I Can’t Investigate’

They took him to Metropolitano Hospital, where kidney specialist Gustavo Salvador sat down with Yafimau. Salvador, who did his medical training at Central University of Ecuador, says Yafimau showed him the document saying he wanted to donate a kidney.

“If someone comes to me and says, ‘I come to voluntarily say that I want to donate,’ then that’s as far as we go,” says Salvador, sitting in an office adorned with Salvador Dali prints. “I can’t investigate the life of the person. That’s not my job.”

Salvador says he was paid $800, his normal fee for referring a patient to a surgeon.

Surgeons removed Yafimau’s left kidney on July 27, 2010, documents compiled by Ukrainian police show.

The Ecuadoran government began an investigation into organ trafficking in 2010 and found 11 cases of transplants of kidneys from mostly Ukrainian donors to Israeli patients since 2009, says Diana Almeida, the director of the nation’s organ transplant agency.

Ecuador Law

The probe, which is looking into Metropolitano Hospital, led Ecuador’s congress in March 2011 to pass a law banning foreigners from having transplant procedures in the nation’s hospitals. No one at Metropolitano has been charged.

Alfredo Vega, Metropolitano Hospital’s medical director, says in an e-mailed statement that the hospital hasn’t broken any laws and can’t talk about transplant cases because of patient privacy concerns.

“We want to make it clear that we reject any claims of wrongdoing by Metropolitano Hospital or its employees,” he says.

Damage from the international organ trade extends beyond the donors.

In Belarus, Karina, a thin 22-year-old woman with short blond hair, sits in her kitchen, weeping about her husband, Sasha. Prosecutor Ratel placed her husband in witness protection, and the District Court of Pristina on July 12 prohibited publication of the family name.

‘I Don’t Know’

Sasha left his family suddenly after he agreed to sell a kidney to the same gang that bought Yafimau’s organ. That ring worked with another gang in Kosovo led by an Israeli of Turkish descent, investigators in Ukraine and Kosovo say.

“I don’t know where he is,” Karina says, whose cramped apartment is in a country that suffered widespread poisoning from radioactive fallout caused by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 25 years ago. “I don’t know if he’s OK, sick, anything.”

As her 2-year-old daughter plays in a corner, Karina describes how her world began to fall apart in late 2008. Sasha, 29, wanted cash to pay off debts, she says. One day, he told his wife that he’d found work abroad and was leaving home for that reason. The truth was that he had answered an Internet ad offering $10,000 for a kidney.

What followed was a frenzied journey across eastern Europe, from Belarus to Istanbul and, finally, to a hospital in Pristina, Kosovo, according to investigators. He had been recruited by Yuri Katzman, a Belarussian-born Israeli.

Lying at the Border

Halfway into the journey, Katzman handed Sasha over to an organ-trafficking gang led by Moshe Harel, an Israeli who was born in Istanbul, according to charges filed in Kosovo. Sasha landed in Pristina on Oct. 26, 2008. Katzman had told Sasha to lie to border guards, claiming he was getting treatment for a urinary tract infection, according to the Kosovo criminal case.

A man working for Harel rushed him to Medicus, a private clinic in a small, run-down building in Pristina, where doctors ordered him to shave his own pubic area and put on a green smock. They took him into surgery and a Turkish surgeon removed Sasha’s kidney, according to the criminal charges.

The surgeon transplanted the organ into an elderly Israeli man who lives in New York, according to the court case. Sasha awoke in pain after the procedure, and when he looked at his belly, he saw a surgical drainage tube coming out of a long incision, according to the charges. The doctor is free on bail, as the Kosovo trial continues.

Two days later, Katzman paid Sasha $8,000 and minders hustled him onto a flight back home, according to court-filed documents.

24 Illegal Transplants

Doctors performed 24 illegal transplants at Medicus Clinic in 2008, for patients from Canada, Israel, Germany, Poland and the U.S. who paid for the life-saving operations, according to the Kosovo criminal charges. Ratel’s office accused Harel on June 6 of leading that organ-trafficking gang.

Harel was released on bail, and prosecutors say he fled to Israel. Harel, 61, who is wanted by Interpol, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Back home, after the surgery, Sasha slid into a reclusive life of depression and heavy drinking, his wife says. Finally, he abandoned his family. What his wife didn’t know was that Sasha’s descent came as thugs were threatening his life. That’s why Sasha, who is the principal witness in the Kosovo case, is being protected by the court.

Across Eastern Europe

The gang that bought Sasha’s kidney used a system to move other sellers across eastern Europe to hospitals willing to participate in their scheme, according to the indictment by Ukraine’s Interior Ministry. Doctors performed at least 18 transplants for the ring for patients from Israel, Ukraine and Georgia, according to the Ukrainian indictment of the surgeon.

Most of the surgeries were done at ABU Clinic in Baku, Azerbaijan, where doctors performed at least 13 of the transplants for the Katzman group, mostly for Israelis, according to his indictment.

Katzman recruited two men with promises that having a kidney removed was as safe as an appendectomy, court records show.

In September 2009, Renat Abdullin, a computer programmer from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, traveled to Kiev, where he waited in an apartment in Akademmistechko, a sprawling, garbage-strewn slum. It was one of three apartments in Kiev that traffickers used as a way station for kidney sellers, documents in the criminal case show.

‘A Way to Make Money’

Abdullin says six other people from across eastern Europe came and went as buyers were found for their organs.

“They saw us only as a way to make money,” says Abdullin, 28, a thin, bespectacled man with pale skin and dark hair. Katzman told Abdullin within a week that he’d found a recipient for his kidney in Baku.

Abdullin and Andriy Kuleshov, a former professional gymnast from Bila Tserkva, Ukraine, went to the Kiev airport and met Ukrainian vascular surgeon Vladyslav Zakordonets, the two men say.

In Baku, the organ traffickers ran into a snag. They lost a suitcase carrying drugs needed for the transplants. The traffickers kept the organ sellers in a room at ABU Clinic for three days as Zakordonets sent to Kiev for more drugs, according to evidence gathered in the Kiev criminal case.

“When I saw the hospital, I wanted to backtrack,” Abdullin says. “But I didn’t have any money for the tickets back, and I was afraid.”

‘So Much Pain’

Once the drugs arrived, Zakordonets removed a kidney from each man. Three days later, Katzman took the two men from the hospital to the Baku airport, along with Zakordonets, Abdullin and Kuleshov say.

“I was in so much pain, I could barely sit, but no one seemed to care,” Abdullin says. On the five-hour flight to Kiev, Kuleshov sat next to an anesthesiologist who assisted in the surgery, Kuleshov says. “Of course, the doctor knew what was going on,” he says.

Zakordonets is now in Lukyanivskyi Detention Center in Kiev, where he’s been jailed on human-trafficking charges with Katzman and four other men since October 2010. The doctor says in a written statement from jail that he performed about 40 transplants in Baku, starting in May 2009.

He says he never met the patients until the day of the operation and didn’t know donors were paid.

“It was an opportunity to work at an international level, an opportunity to grow in my profession,” he says. “I have not been a human trafficker.” The case isn’t yet scheduled to go to trial.

First U.S. Prosecution

The Israeli-eastern European organ-trafficking rings have also extended their reach to the U.S. In July 2009, the Justice Department charged Levy Rosenbaum, an Israeli living in New York, with conspiracy to commit human organ trafficking.

A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent says he caught Rosenbaum, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, offering to sell a kidney for $160,000. Rosenbaum was the first, and so far the only, person arrested for organ trafficking in the U.S. since the activity was outlawed in 1984.

Rosenbaum, 60, pleaded guilty on Oct. 27 to brokering the sale of human kidneys. Free on bail, he could be sentenced to five years in prison. He declined to comment.

Rosenbaum worked with Sammy Shem-Tov in Jerusalem to lure young men and women to sell kidneys, according to Avichai Osuna, who says he was recruited to sell a kidney by both men.

Osuna, an unemployed 27-year-old man in Be’er Sheva, a city in the Negev Desert south of Jerusalem, moonlighted as an apprentice for Shem-Tov, before he became a seller. Shem-Tov paid Osuna 1,500 shekels ($410) a month to use his ability to speak English to arrange illegal organ transplants with foreign hospitals, Osuna says.

‘Off My Back’

Shem-Tov, 67, asked Osuna to sell his own kidney in June 2008, says Osuna, a heavyset man who wears an earring in his left ear.

“Just to get him off my back and because I needed a little cash, I said all right,” he says.

Soon, Osuna told Shem-Tov that he had changed his mind, concerned about the dangers of giving up an organ, according to Shem-Tov’s indictment in Jerusalem District Court.

Late one evening, Shem-Tov called Osuna to a meeting in Be’er Sheva. Next to him were two men Shem-Tov described as mafia enforcers, the indictment says. Shem-Tov told Osuna that if he didn’t sell a kidney, he’d be in debt to the two men and the mafia group, the indictment says.

“He said, ‘You don’t want to back out now,’” Osuna says. “I felt trapped.”

Constantly Watched

Shem-Tov flew him from Tel Aviv to New York on July 31, 2008, because the trafficker thought he could arrange a transplant in New York, according to Shem-Tov’s indictment. Rosenbaum met Osuna at the gate and took his mobile phone and passport.

He had Osuna and other prospective organ sellers housed and constantly watched by a minder in a house near Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.

Rosenbaum kept Osuna waiting for six months, Osuna says. While in New York, Rosenbaum brought Osuna to Mount Sinai Medical Center for a blood test, Osuna says. Sander Florman, director of Mount Sinai’s Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute, says the hospital does all it can to avoid illicit procedures.

“We make them jump through incredible hoops,” he says. “We have all the rules. People find ways around them.”

Threats of Retaliation

The transplant recipient backed out, and Osuna says Rosenbaum sent him back to Israel. A year later, Shem-Tov flew Osuna from Israel to Manila. Osuna tried again to cancel the deal, and his minders threatened him with mafia retaliation, the indictment says.

He says he felt trapped, and a few days later was taken to Cardinal Santos Medical Center. Surgeons removed his left kidney on Oct. 21, 2009, the indictment says.

Four days later, Osuna was on a flight back to Israel, and the recipient, a Tel Aviv man, paid him 94,000 shekels ($26,000). Osuna says he couldn’t recover in peace, for fear of what would happen when he got home.

“When I look in the mirror and see that scar, it’s a daily reminder of what I went through,” he says. “I feel this raw grievance inside.”

Cardinal Santos Ethics Committee Chairman Juanito Billote says the hospital can’t comment on specific cases to protect patient privacy. The hospital scrutinizes every transplant to ensure it complies with all laws, he says.

‘We Make Sure’

“In doing any foreign-to-foreign transplant, we make sure that the rules are adequately addressed,” he says.

The laws and rules designed to prevent the trafficking in organs aren’t working. While prosecutors in places such as Israel, Brazil, Kosovo and Ukraine have successfully crippled some of the organ-trading gangs, they’re fighting powerful economic forces.

As long as there’s a worldwide shortage of legal donors for life-saving transplants, the exploitation of the poor will only grow, Kosovo-based prosecutor Ratel says.

“There’s burgeoning organized-crime activity in trafficking of human organs,” he says. “It will take serious efforts by governments and hospitals to stop it.”

Governments around the world need to cooperate to enforce existing laws on illicit procedures, Harvard’s Delmonico says. Nations have to ensure they have systems making it safe and easy for people to donate voluntarily, he says. Unless that happens, the traffickers will continue to cultivate a growing legion of impoverished organ sellers who can end up with a quick infusion of cash — and a lifetime of humiliation, pain and illness.

- By Michael Smith, Daryna Krasnolutska and David Glovin

- The Afro-Creole Detective: John Baptiste Jourdain and The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case of 1870
In the summer of 1870, John Baptiste Jourdain became the first African- American detective ever to make national news. New Orleans Chief of Police Algernon Badger made Jourdain lead detective in the sensational Digby kidnapping case, in part, for political reasons. 1870 was the height of Radical Reconstruction and the New Orleans police force had just been integrated. If a black detective found the Digby baby or her abductors, Badger hoped it might dispel white fears that black law officers were not up to the task.
Detective Jourdain was forty years old and relatively new to the police force when he was thrust into the national spotlight. He was tall, grey-eyed, delicately featured, and dapper. The press described him as “intelligent and well-educated.” Born in New Orleans in June 1830, Jourdain was the son of a free woman of color who had once been enslaved and a white Creole descendant of one of Louisiana’s founding families. Relationships like his parents’ were common in pre-Civil War New Orleans, where wealthy, white, Francophone men often had children with “mulatto” partners. Unlike the Americans who had settled in New Orleans after the United States acquired Louisiana in 1803 who opposed racial “amalgamation,” Jourdain’s parents were part of a lingering French and Spanish colonial culture that tolerated interracial relationships.
As a Creole of color, Detective Jourdain belonged to a class of mixed-race men and women unique to the Gulf Coast. Although the term creole had different meanings in different societies, in colonial Louisiana anyone born in the colony was called a Creole. Over time, Louisianans, black and white, who identified with French culture and language and feared being overwhelmed by the American parvenus who arrived in New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase, self-identified as Creoles. Black Creoles of Jourdain’s class considered themselves to be cosmopolitan gentlemen and ladies. Bilingual and mannerly, they looked to Paris for aesthetic inspiration. Many elite Afro-Creole men wore stylish silk pants, leather slippers, and fine jackets. They dined with silver utensils, filled their homes with books and mahogany furniture, attended the opera, published their own newspaper, studied classical literature, formed exclusive Masonic lodges, and drew inspiration from the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution. Their ranks included writers, poets, painters, sculptors, and composers, as well as doctors, merchants, and skilled artisans.
During Reconstruction, Louisiana’s Republican Governor Henry Clay Warmoth counted on educated Afro-Creoles to fill key positions in his biracial administration and Warmoth knew no roles were more important than those in law enforcement. The Republican government had to prove that it could ensure the safety of persons and property. While rough and illiterate men had previously dominated the police ranks, Warmoth and Chief Badger wanted only educated, healthy, honest, and diligent officers who would lead by example and uphold Victorian ideals of manly self-restraint. New regulations prohibited officers from using “coarse, profane, or insolent language” and required them to “set an example of sobriety, discretion, skill, industry, and promptness.” Rules required officers to pay their debts on time, to “be quiet, civil and orderly,” and to “maintain decorum and command of temper.” These skills were second nature for Afro-Creoles like Jourdain who had long relied on their manners and erudition to distinguish themselves from slaves and poor whites. Jourdain could now use those skills to further his career and to demonstrate that African Americans deserved full equality.
For Jourdain and other Creoles of color, Radical Reconstruction provided a singular opportunity to prove that they numbered among society’s “best men.” Given the right to vote, hold office, and serve on juries, Afro-Creoles seized the moment. Confident that men of their class could govern as well as (or better than) white men, Creoles ran for office, accepted patronage posts, or, like Jourdain, joined the integrated police force. During Reconstruction, almost all of the black elected officials from New Orleans and 80 percent of the black officers on the Metropolitan Police came from the Afro-Creole community. Afro-Creoles took on these roles knowing that their success or failure could affect the status of all black people in Louisiana. If they failed, they would confirm the prejudices of ex-Confederate reactionaries bent on restoring white supremacy. If they succeeded, they might convince moderate whites to join a biracial coalition committed to economic prosperity and democratic rule. Jourdain immediately helped the cause by leading several successful investigations that received notice in the newspapers, including a case that led to the arrest of two jewel thieves. But the public pressure to solve the Digby case would be far greater than anything Jourdain had experienced. The press so sensationalized the Digby kidnapping that it became a crime that could not go unsolved.

- Michael Ross

June 4 2012

Bill Fleisher is a connoisseur of cold cases.

- A former cop and F.B.I. agent, he co-founded the Vidocq Society, a club of experts—retired police detectives, pathologists, prosecutors, and other inquisitive types—who regularly gather for lunch in his hometown of Philadelphia to pick over unsolved murders. The society is named for a 19th Century French detective, the model for some of the first fictional sleuths, and Fleisher is full of grisly erudition when it comes to the history of violent crime. He is not easily baffled.

But Fleisher sounded highly uncertain when I called him the other day to talk about the disappearance of Etan Patz.

“You’ve got a very tough case,” the detective said.

It has been 11 days since Pedro Hernandez, a disabled construction worker from Maple Shade, New Jersey, confessed to killing the six-year-old back in 1979. The initial shock of resolution—the Post went with “Etan Case Solved” on the front, while the News had “And Here’s His Killer”—has given way to unsettling doubts about the truthfulness of the mentally unstable prime suspect.

Though it is certainly possible that compelling corroborating evidence will emerge, with an intense investigation underway, the case currently appears to rest on Hernandez’s account of impulsively killing the boy in the basement of a bodega, and disposing of his body in an alley.

At a press conference Thursday, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said it was “really premature” for him to answer questions about his confidence in the arrest.

“You need to make sure that accountability is levied on the right person,” he said. “Now our task is to make sure justice is brought.”

As Hernandez remains in custody at Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric evaluation, however, and procedural deadlines loom, the prosecutor will soon face wrenching legal and political choices about how, when—and perhaps even whether—to move forward.

Through his spokeswoman, Vance declined to comment.

But to veterans of cold case prosecutions, an exclusive fraternity, his cautious public statements have a familiar ring.

“The stakes are very high for the D.A.,” said Fleisher.

Though the detective has never been directly involved in investigating the Patz case, he’s been following it closely, and he told me that he foresaw a difficult road for the prosecution based on the facts so far disclosed.

“There’s a lot of factors in this case that are alarming,” he said. “You don’t have a body. You don’t have a viable crime scene.”

Then, there’s the rogues gallery of suspects that police have considered over the years—including Jose Ramos, an imprisoned pedophile who was long thought to be the most likely killer—and the possibility, raised by Hernandez’s defense attorney, that this new confession is a schizophrenic delusion.

“If this thing falls apart, it’s going to be an orphan,” said Christopher Morano, former chief state’s attorney for Connecticut, who secured the 2002 conviction of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel for the murder of a neighbor more than 20 years before. “The last one to touch it is going to take the heat, and that’s going to be the prosecutor.”

Facing reelection next year, Vance cannot afford to gamble—with either the burden of proof or the expectations of his electorate. Both he and his principal opponent in 2009, Leslie Crocker Snyder, campaigned on promises to reopen the Patz investigation. (Patz’s father endorsed Snyder.)

But Vance has a had rough first term, marred by the collapse of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case, and he suffers by comparison to his iconic predecessor, Robert Morganthau. Little wonder, then, that he is proceeding carefully with Hernandez. Vance was conspicuously absent from New York Police Department commissioner Ray Kelly’s press conference announcing the arrest. On Friday, the Post quoted anonymous sources saying the D.A. was initially reluctant to jail the suspect so quickly.

BY THEIR NATURE, LONG-UNSOLVED CRIMES like the Patz disappearance inevitably present prosecutors with difficult decisions.

“These are cold cases for a reason, because they were challenging originally, and the passage of time doesn’t make them any less challenging,” said Clay Thompson, state’s attorney for DeKalb County, Illinois.

In 2008, Thompson reopened the investigation of the murder of Maria Ridulph, a girl whose 1954 disappearance was an Eisenhower-era precursor to the Patz case. For more than three years, investigators focused attention on Jack McCollough, a 71-year-old ex-cop, finding new evidence that undermined the alibi that had originally eliminated him as a suspect. Ridulph’s body, found about five months after she went missing, was exhumed for a forensic examination, and police convinced witnesses to come forward and testify that McCollough preyed on young girls.

For all his painstaking work, though, Thompson has struggled with his burden: Two months ago, a judge acquitted the defendant on a related rape charge, making it more difficult to prove a history of sex offenses.

“It’s unavoidable that high-profile cases like this involve intense pressure from the public, and cases involving the murder of children make that pressure even more intense,” Thompson said. “You are really putting yourself out there, as a law enforcement professional and as a prosecutor, and obviously there’s politics involved in it.”

The Patz case, though, presents several complications that raise the stakes even further. First, you have the confession. On television, it always comes at the end of the episode, but in real life, investigators often have to work backward from an admission of guilt. A common law principle, dating to the 17th century, holds that defendants may not be convicted based solely on their own word. The validity of that rule has been demonstrated by modern psychological research.

“False confessions are nothing new,” said Richard Walton, a former police detective and professor of criminal justice at Utah State University, and author of the textbook Cold Case Homicides: Practical Investigative Techniques.

And the more notorious the murder, the more confessors there are. Morano told me that when he worked the Skakel case, he kept a thick folder known as a “nut file.” Sometimes, the nuts manage to fool prosecutors. In 2006, a man named John Karr was extradited from Thailand to Colorado after he falsely claimed to have killed JonBenét Ramsey. The state’s governor later attacked district attorney Mary Lacy for ordering “the most expensive D.N.A. test in Colorado history.” (Neither Lacy, now retired, nor Karr, who has reportedly undergone hormone therapy and now goes by the name Alexis Reich, could be reached for comment.)

Of Hernandez, Fleisher said: “Obviously, he’s a tormented individual. But what’s tormenting him?”

The fact that the suspect apparently made prior confessions, to family members and in church settings, is suggestive but not dispositive. For example, I once wrote about a preacher who often boasted of committing a murder in order to dramatize his own redemption; charges against him were later dropped for lack of evidence. The Skakel case involved several confessions that were problematic because they could be considered hearsay, or were excluded because they took place in counseling sessions.

“Michael, he came with some mental health issues, but it’s not unbeatable,” Morano said. “He had access to the murder weapon, which came from his house. He placed himself at the scene of the crime, at the time of the crime.”

In the Patz case, by contrast, there is no murder weapon, and little physical evidence of any kind. By most accounts, the police department handled the original investigation incompetently—why was the disturbed stock boy at the neighborhood bodega apparently never interviewed?—and such errors will only grow more glaring if the case moves to trial, where prosecutors will have to deal with what they call “the ‘CSI’ effect.”

“I think there’s an expectation on the part of the public, and juries, that there is going to be some kind of forensic proof, particularly D.N.A.,” said Andy Rosenzweig, former chief investigator for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and the subject of Philip Gourevitch’s book A Cold Case. “That’s not always the case, particularly in old cases, when evidence collection was not as good as it is today.”

Right now, investigators are sure to be turning over every detail of Hernandez’s life, looking for incriminating patterns.

“If he’s a pedophile, then there are other cases out there somewhere,” said James Adcock, a professor, former coroner and author of a book on cold cases.

Though Hernandez was inconspicuous, detectives are working with the cooperation of family members and a three-hour interview, from which few details of have emerged. A crucial issue will be how well his account jibes with the department’s “holdback information”—details of the case that were never released to the public.

Though the Post reported that Hernandez did disclose such details, their significance remains to be seen: It’s unclear how much information the police had to hold back. The investigators’ task has been further complicated by the speed with which the case has unfolded. Usually, time is one of the few luxuries that cold case investigators enjoy. With expectations low, and the suspect off-guard, investigators can gradually overcome their deficient evidence.

“Nobody knows that you’re working the case until you bring it forth,” Walton said. But with Hernandez, the typical timeline has been severely compressed.

“You’ve played your hand once he’s arrested, and then you’re somewhat limited in an investigative sense,” Rosenzweig said. “Unless the guy is going to flee, you’ve waited this long, so what’s the urgency? But the other side of the argument is, if the guy is a pedophile, he could hurt other children.”

Publicity can serve a strategic purpose in cold case investigations. After all, it was news coverage about the excavation of a Soho basement—and the accompanying scrutiny of a handyman who used to work there—that seems to have inspired Hernandez’s family to call the police.

“I really wondered when they started doing all that digging,” Adcock said. “The F.B.I. behavioral guys probably said, ‘Let’s stir the pot and see what falls out.’”

Once suspicion refocused on Hernandez, however, the investigating authorities appear to have split. Since the arrest, newspapers have been filled with anonymous leaks, indicating a covert war over the confession’s credibility. On Memorial Day, the eve of the crime’s 33rd anniversary, Kelly declined to comment when reporters confronted him with questions about a Daily News article citing sources inside the F.B.I. who were “very skeptical.” While such law enforcement factionalism is hardly rare, it is unusual for it to break quite so publicly, and bodes poorly for the prosecution.

“If you’ve got 500 different detectives who worked the case, you’ve probably got 400 different opinions” about the profile of the likely perpetrator, Fleisher told me. “They become dogmatic about their view about what happened.”

For years, many people—most notably, the Patz parents—were sure they knew the identity of the killer: Jose Ramos, a boyfriend of Etan’s babysitter who was later convicted of molesting children. According to Lisa Cohen’s definitive book After Etan, Stanley Patz would regularly send copies of his son’s “missing” poster to Ramos at his prison in Pennsylvania, with a message on the back: “What did you do to my little boy?” Although federal prosecutors went to extraordinary lengths to build a case against Ramos, they were never able to charge him. But in 2004, a New York judge found Ramos responsible for Patz’s wrongful death in civil suit bought by his parents.

“With cold cases, over time, there are always different lead suspects,” Morano said.

But another former prosecutor said the civil court judge’s decision against Ramos creates unusual problems. Ironically, the efforts of an earlier generation of investigators could provide Hernandez’s defense team with an unusually strong argument for reasonable doubt. And what if Ramos really is the right guy? Lingering suspicion has kept him in prison through multiple parole dates, but he has another one coming up in November, and his term expires regardless in 2014.

These are all issues that Vance must weigh—very quickly. While the procedural rules are somewhat flexible in practice, and Hernandez’s mental condition could allow for an involuntary commitment, at some point soon, Vance will have to decide whether to proceed with an indictment.

“Once they indict, they’re on a judge’s schedule,” said Daniel Gitner, a former federal prosecutor who is now a criminal defense attorney at Lankler, Siffert & Wohl. “They have to feel like they’re ready.”

In theory, the district attorney could delay an indictment, buying time to fully develop his evidence and witnesses. But such a step could also be seen as signaling weakness in the case, and would raise the possibility—however remote—that Hernandez could walk out of the hospital, free.

“They would have to be willing to take that publicity hit,” Gitner said. “And secondly, once he’s free, he’s free. If something happens, it’s on their watch.”

So, while the case could still spring more surprises—maybe Hernandez kept a memento, or maybe he will plead guilty—the most likely scenario is that Vance will have to assess an imperfect collection of facts.

Juries have proven willing to look past evidentiary weaknesses in other cold cases: even, very rarely, the absence of a body. The Vidocq Society, for instance, helped to solve the case of Scott Dunn, who was bludgeoned to death in Lubbock, Texas in 1991. Just two weeks ago, more than a decade after two people were convicted, Dunn’s remains were finally unearthed near the murder scene.

“By accident,” Fleisher said. “The utility company found a bag full of bones.”

When he thinks about the Patz disappearance, though, Fleisher compares it to the most bewildering mystery he’s ever encountered. In the that one, Philadelphia’s so called “boy in the box” case, investigators found a bruised body of a four-year-old, but despite an exhaustive publicity campaign, were never able to determine his identity. A few years ago, a woman came forward with a story involving her dead mother, child trafficking and abuse. The witness was mentally unstable, but Fleisher found her account credible. “Yet you couldn’t prove anything, and you couldn’t disprove anything,” he said.

Fleisher believes that Vance may have found himself in a similar predicament. “What you do have is a guy who was a person of interest back then, who fell through the cracks,” the detective said. “What you do have is a man who has over the years confessed several times to the crime, to various people.”

Hernandez may in fact be insane, but that doesn’t mean he’s innocent: Obviously, anyone deranged enough to murder a child is also unlikely to make a reliable witness against himself. Even the heartbreaking account of the body’s fate—scooped up heedlessly as trash—has a plausibly random ring to it. But will that be enough to satisfy a jury, the public and the long-grieving family?

“Prosecutors—and I’m going to offend a lot of people here—but prosecutors are very politically astute. They don’t want to be perceived as losers,” Fleisher said. “Vance is distancing himself. But just because he’s distancing himself, it doesn’t mean they don’t have the right guy. Maybe it just means they have an unwinnable case.”

June 4 2012

Bill Fleisher is a connoisseur of cold cases.

- A former cop and F.B.I. agent, he co-founded the Vidocq Society, a club of experts—retired police detectives, pathologists, prosecutors, and other inquisitive types—who regularly gather for lunch in his hometown of Philadelphia to pick over unsolved murders. The society is named for a 19th Century French detective, the model for some of the first fictional sleuths, and Fleisher is full of grisly erudition when it comes to the history of violent crime. He is not easily baffled.

But Fleisher sounded highly uncertain when I called him the other day to talk about the disappearance of Etan Patz.

“You’ve got a very tough case,” the detective said.

It has been 11 days since Pedro Hernandez, a disabled construction worker from Maple Shade, New Jersey, confessed to killing the six-year-old back in 1979. The initial shock of resolution—the Post went with “Etan Case Solved” on the front, while the News had “And Here’s His Killer”—has given way to unsettling doubts about the truthfulness of the mentally unstable prime suspect.

Though it is certainly possible that compelling corroborating evidence will emerge, with an intense investigation underway, the case currently appears to rest on Hernandez’s account of impulsively killing the boy in the basement of a bodega, and disposing of his body in an alley.

At a press conference Thursday, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said it was “really premature” for him to answer questions about his confidence in the arrest.

“You need to make sure that accountability is levied on the right person,” he said. “Now our task is to make sure justice is brought.”

As Hernandez remains in custody at Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric evaluation, however, and procedural deadlines loom, the prosecutor will soon face wrenching legal and political choices about how, when—and perhaps even whether—to move forward.

Through his spokeswoman, Vance declined to comment.

But to veterans of cold case prosecutions, an exclusive fraternity, his cautious public statements have a familiar ring.

“The stakes are very high for the D.A.,” said Fleisher.

Though the detective has never been directly involved in investigating the Patz case, he’s been following it closely, and he told me that he foresaw a difficult road for the prosecution based on the facts so far disclosed.

“There’s a lot of factors in this case that are alarming,” he said. “You don’t have a body. You don’t have a viable crime scene.”

Then, there’s the rogues gallery of suspects that police have considered over the years—including Jose Ramos, an imprisoned pedophile who was long thought to be the most likely killer—and the possibility, raised by Hernandez’s defense attorney, that this new confession is a schizophrenic delusion.

“If this thing falls apart, it’s going to be an orphan,” said Christopher Morano, former chief state’s attorney for Connecticut, who secured the 2002 conviction of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel for the murder of a neighbor more than 20 years before. “The last one to touch it is going to take the heat, and that’s going to be the prosecutor.”

Facing reelection next year, Vance cannot afford to gamble—with either the burden of proof or the expectations of his electorate. Both he and his principal opponent in 2009, Leslie Crocker Snyder, campaigned on promises to reopen the Patz investigation. (Patz’s father endorsed Snyder.)

But Vance has a had rough first term, marred by the collapse of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case, and he suffers by comparison to his iconic predecessor, Robert Morganthau. Little wonder, then, that he is proceeding carefully with Hernandez. Vance was conspicuously absent from New York Police Department commissioner Ray Kelly’s press conference announcing the arrest. On Friday, the Post quoted anonymous sources saying the D.A. was initially reluctant to jail the suspect so quickly.

BY THEIR NATURE, LONG-UNSOLVED CRIMES like the Patz disappearance inevitably present prosecutors with difficult decisions.

“These are cold cases for a reason, because they were challenging originally, and the passage of time doesn’t make them any less challenging,” said Clay Thompson, state’s attorney for DeKalb County, Illinois.

In 2008, Thompson reopened the investigation of the murder of Maria Ridulph, a girl whose 1954 disappearance was an Eisenhower-era precursor to the Patz case. For more than three years, investigators focused attention on Jack McCollough, a 71-year-old ex-cop, finding new evidence that undermined the alibi that had originally eliminated him as a suspect. Ridulph’s body, found about five months after she went missing, was exhumed for a forensic examination, and police convinced witnesses to come forward and testify that McCollough preyed on young girls.

For all his painstaking work, though, Thompson has struggled with his burden: Two months ago, a judge acquitted the defendant on a related rape charge, making it more difficult to prove a history of sex offenses.

“It’s unavoidable that high-profile cases like this involve intense pressure from the public, and cases involving the murder of children make that pressure even more intense,” Thompson said. “You are really putting yourself out there, as a law enforcement professional and as a prosecutor, and obviously there’s politics involved in it.”

The Patz case, though, presents several complications that raise the stakes even further. First, you have the confession. On television, it always comes at the end of the episode, but in real life, investigators often have to work backward from an admission of guilt. A common law principle, dating to the 17th century, holds that defendants may not be convicted based solely on their own word. The validity of that rule has been demonstrated by modern psychological research.

“False confessions are nothing new,” said Richard Walton, a former police detective and professor of criminal justice at Utah State University, and author of the textbook Cold Case Homicides: Practical Investigative Techniques.

And the more notorious the murder, the more confessors there are. Morano told me that when he worked the Skakel case, he kept a thick folder known as a “nut file.” Sometimes, the nuts manage to fool prosecutors. In 2006, a man named John Karr was extradited from Thailand to Colorado after he falsely claimed to have killed JonBenét Ramsey. The state’s governor later attacked district attorney Mary Lacy for ordering “the most expensive D.N.A. test in Colorado history.” (Neither Lacy, now retired, nor Karr, who has reportedly undergone hormone therapy and now goes by the name Alexis Reich, could be reached for comment.)

Of Hernandez, Fleisher said: “Obviously, he’s a tormented individual. But what’s tormenting him?”

The fact that the suspect apparently made prior confessions, to family members and in church settings, is suggestive but not dispositive. For example, I once wrote about a preacher who often boasted of committing a murder in order to dramatize his own redemption; charges against him were later dropped for lack of evidence. The Skakel case involved several confessions that were problematic because they could be considered hearsay, or were excluded because they took place in counseling sessions.

“Michael, he came with some mental health issues, but it’s not unbeatable,” Morano said. “He had access to the murder weapon, which came from his house. He placed himself at the scene of the crime, at the time of the crime.”

In the Patz case, by contrast, there is no murder weapon, and little physical evidence of any kind. By most accounts, the police department handled the original investigation incompetently—why was the disturbed stock boy at the neighborhood bodega apparently never interviewed?—and such errors will only grow more glaring if the case moves to trial, where prosecutors will have to deal with what they call “the ‘CSI’ effect.”

“I think there’s an expectation on the part of the public, and juries, that there is going to be some kind of forensic proof, particularly D.N.A.,” said Andy Rosenzweig, former chief investigator for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and the subject of Philip Gourevitch’s book A Cold Case. “That’s not always the case, particularly in old cases, when evidence collection was not as good as it is today.”

Right now, investigators are sure to be turning over every detail of Hernandez’s life, looking for incriminating patterns.

“If he’s a pedophile, then there are other cases out there somewhere,” said James Adcock, a professor, former coroner and author of a book on cold cases.

Though Hernandez was inconspicuous, detectives are working with the cooperation of family members and a three-hour interview, from which few details of have emerged. A crucial issue will be how well his account jibes with the department’s “holdback information”—details of the case that were never released to the public.

Though the Post reported that Hernandez did disclose such details, their significance remains to be seen: It’s unclear how much information the police had to hold back. The investigators’ task has been further complicated by the speed with which the case has unfolded. Usually, time is one of the few luxuries that cold case investigators enjoy. With expectations low, and the suspect off-guard, investigators can gradually overcome their deficient evidence.

“Nobody knows that you’re working the case until you bring it forth,” Walton said. But with Hernandez, the typical timeline has been severely compressed.

“You’ve played your hand once he’s arrested, and then you’re somewhat limited in an investigative sense,” Rosenzweig said. “Unless the guy is going to flee, you’ve waited this long, so what’s the urgency? But the other side of the argument is, if the guy is a pedophile, he could hurt other children.”

Publicity can serve a strategic purpose in cold case investigations. After all, it was news coverage about the excavation of a Soho basement—and the accompanying scrutiny of a handyman who used to work there—that seems to have inspired Hernandez’s family to call the police.

“I really wondered when they started doing all that digging,” Adcock said. “The F.B.I. behavioral guys probably said, ‘Let’s stir the pot and see what falls out.’”

Once suspicion refocused on Hernandez, however, the investigating authorities appear to have split. Since the arrest, newspapers have been filled with anonymous leaks, indicating a covert war over the confession’s credibility. On Memorial Day, the eve of the crime’s 33rd anniversary, Kelly declined to comment when reporters confronted him with questions about a Daily News article citing sources inside the F.B.I. who were “very skeptical.” While such law enforcement factionalism is hardly rare, it is unusual for it to break quite so publicly, and bodes poorly for the prosecution.

“If you’ve got 500 different detectives who worked the case, you’ve probably got 400 different opinions” about the profile of the likely perpetrator, Fleisher told me. “They become dogmatic about their view about what happened.”

For years, many people—most notably, the Patz parents—were sure they knew the identity of the killer: Jose Ramos, a boyfriend of Etan’s babysitter who was later convicted of molesting children. According to Lisa Cohen’s definitive book After Etan, Stanley Patz would regularly send copies of his son’s “missing” poster to Ramos at his prison in Pennsylvania, with a message on the back: “What did you do to my little boy?” Although federal prosecutors went to extraordinary lengths to build a case against Ramos, they were never able to charge him. But in 2004, a New York judge found Ramos responsible for Patz’s wrongful death in civil suit bought by his parents.

“With cold cases, over time, there are always different lead suspects,” Morano said.

But another former prosecutor said the civil court judge’s decision against Ramos creates unusual problems. Ironically, the efforts of an earlier generation of investigators could provide Hernandez’s defense team with an unusually strong argument for reasonable doubt. And what if Ramos really is the right guy? Lingering suspicion has kept him in prison through multiple parole dates, but he has another one coming up in November, and his term expires regardless in 2014.

These are all issues that Vance must weigh—very quickly. While the procedural rules are somewhat flexible in practice, and Hernandez’s mental condition could allow for an involuntary commitment, at some point soon, Vance will have to decide whether to proceed with an indictment.

“Once they indict, they’re on a judge’s schedule,” said Daniel Gitner, a former federal prosecutor who is now a criminal defense attorney at Lankler, Siffert & Wohl. “They have to feel like they’re ready.”

In theory, the district attorney could delay an indictment, buying time to fully develop his evidence and witnesses. But such a step could also be seen as signaling weakness in the case, and would raise the possibility—however remote—that Hernandez could walk out of the hospital, free.

“They would have to be willing to take that publicity hit,” Gitner said. “And secondly, once he’s free, he’s free. If something happens, it’s on their watch.”

So, while the case could still spring more surprises—maybe Hernandez kept a memento, or maybe he will plead guilty—the most likely scenario is that Vance will have to assess an imperfect collection of facts.

Juries have proven willing to look past evidentiary weaknesses in other cold cases: even, very rarely, the absence of a body. The Vidocq Society, for instance, helped to solve the case of Scott Dunn, who was bludgeoned to death in Lubbock, Texas in 1991. Just two weeks ago, more than a decade after two people were convicted, Dunn’s remains were finally unearthed near the murder scene.

“By accident,” Fleisher said. “The utility company found a bag full of bones.”

When he thinks about the Patz disappearance, though, Fleisher compares it to the most bewildering mystery he’s ever encountered. In the that one, Philadelphia’s so called “boy in the box” case, investigators found a bruised body of a four-year-old, but despite an exhaustive publicity campaign, were never able to determine his identity. A few years ago, a woman came forward with a story involving her dead mother, child trafficking and abuse. The witness was mentally unstable, but Fleisher found her account credible. “Yet you couldn’t prove anything, and you couldn’t disprove anything,” he said.

Fleisher believes that Vance may have found himself in a similar predicament. “What you do have is a guy who was a person of interest back then, who fell through the cracks,” the detective said. “What you do have is a man who has over the years confessed several times to the crime, to various people.”

Hernandez may in fact be insane, but that doesn’t mean he’s innocent: Obviously, anyone deranged enough to murder a child is also unlikely to make a reliable witness against himself. Even the heartbreaking account of the body’s fate—scooped up heedlessly as trash—has a plausibly random ring to it. But will that be enough to satisfy a jury, the public and the long-grieving family?

“Prosecutors—and I’m going to offend a lot of people here—but prosecutors are very politically astute. They don’t want to be perceived as losers,” Fleisher said. “Vance is distancing himself. But just because he’s distancing himself, it doesn’t mean they don’t have the right guy. Maybe it just means they have an unwinnable case.”

Wednesday 25 Sep 2013

- There have been plenty of warnings but love-struck Australians continue to part with more than $20 million a year in online romance scams.

There are now calls for a national approach to combat the fraud, which can have a devastating – and potentially fatal – fallout.

Earlier this year, a West Australian woman was found dead, presumed murdered, in South Africa after travelling there to see a Nigerian man she had met online.

Since then, the state’s police have stopped other scam victims from travelling if they believe they are heading for a similar fate.

The prevalence of the scams has prompted the Western Australia’s fraud squad to join forces with the state’s consumer-protection watchdog to take on the organised crime gangs responsible.

But it is a huge effort, and those witnessing the impact first-hand say Australia needs to set up an effective national taskforce to come anywhere close to winning the battle

Neil Johnstone, a 50-year-old divorcee, turned to the internet to find companionship.

He was bombarded with attention from Mavis Mensah, who claimed to be an Australian living in west Africa.

You just believe within yourself that they’re real, they are the best person … and anything they ask for or anything they want – you give it to them no matter what.

But there was heartbreak ahead.

“I finished work – I was on night shift – and I got that message and I was over the moon it was all happening,” he told 7.30.

“I jumped in the car, drove to Perth very excited. Got to the airport – nothing.”

This plane ticket, one of five Mr Johnstone paid for over their year-long relationship, turned out to be fake.

And so was Mavis, whose photos belonged to a US-based model.

“You just believe within yourself that they’re real, they are the best person, that’s the person I want and anything they ask for or anything they want – you give it to them no matter what,” Mr Johnstone said.

He borrowed most of the $100,000 he sent to west Africa, and says he was upfront with the banks over what he needed most of the loans for.

“It’s pretty close to D-day where all the banks want their money back now,” he said.

Detective Sergeant Rob Martin from the Western Australian Major Fraud Squad has heard it all before.

“It’s a very unpleasant job to actually have to turn up on the victims doorstep and break the news that the person that has made them feel better than they’ve felt for a very long time isn’t real and the romance that they thought they were involved in is just a fantasy,” he said.

Perth resident Tracey Holmes, 48, is still coming to terms with the fact that she has been conned.

She thought a US man called Todd Hamilton was in love with her. Over the past year she sent him $25,000 to help with his business.

He was the second online identity she has lost money to in recent years.

I actually thought he was a lovely gentleman. And I thought he had the most sexy voice I’ve heard from a man.

“I actually thought he was a lovely gentleman. And I thought he had the most sexy voice I’ve heard from a man,” she said.

But the romance turned ugly when Ms Holmes discovered his photographs were of an unknown man and were probably lifted from a social media site.

Now, the scammer is blackmailing her over revealing photos she sent to him online. He had also taken secret footage of her.

“He has scantily clad pictures – not fully exposed but pretty scantily clad,” she said.

“I had no idea that he was videoing me but he videoed me. So he’s been accumulating information about me all this time and using it against me to now blackmail me into paying him $10,000.”

Ms Holmes was also duped into becoming a so-called “money mule” – someone used by the scammers to funnel stolen cash through Australian bank accounts.

“He started doing transactions through my account,” she said.

“When the money went into my account they would ask for an SMS code and I would give him the code and wherever the money was going … it was going.”

With about 300 new scam victims a month in Western Australia, the state’s fraud squad has pooled resources with the Department of Consumer Protection to take on the fraudsters.

Called Operation Sunbird, it is identifying scams by tracking large money transactions from WA to west African countries, and then contacting the victims.

Initially they are contacting the victims by post.

“In 63 per cent of cases, we’re not seeing any further transactions following that first letter,” said Ann Driscoll from the Department of Consumer Protection.

But others refuse to face the truth and keep sending the money.

To me they seem like trained psychologists, the way they’re able to actually manipulate the victim. They’re able to tap into the things that actually push the buttons of the victim.

Detective Sergeant Martin says while the victims might seem naive, the scammers are convincing and constantly refining their techniques.

“To me they seem like trained psychologists, the way they’re able to actually manipulate the victim. They’re able to tap into the things that actually push the buttons of the victim,” he said.

But the costs can go well beyond financial loss.

In March, 67-year-old West Australian woman Jette Jacobs was found dead in South Africa, after she travelled there to meet a man who she had been sending money to online.

Since then police have stopped several others from travelling overseas.

“We had an occasion where a gentleman from here, in his 70s, was about to travel to Ghana,” said Detective Senior Sergeant Dom Blackshaw.

“We were able to get the name of the person who was going to collect him from the airport.

“He was going to meet a love interest – a young girl. She’d actually provided the name of her so-called brother to this gentleman.

“Once we did the check, we identified he was a member of the Sakawa Boys – they were an organised crime gang based in Ghana”

- Claire Moody

- My direct exposure to the French criminal justice system is very limited. In December 1984, my family and I were trapped on a traffic island on our way to the Louvre. I was carrying our 19 month old son in my arms. My wallet was, very foolishly, bulging in my hip pocket. My wife was some metres ahead of me and not aware of a small group of gypsies who, spying an easy prey, descended on me and relieved me of the wallet. One of them had the cover of a sign protesting what was then happening in the former Yugoslavia.

Almost immediately an official car pulled over and one of its occupants made a call on a radio telephone. A group of Frenchmen raced across to the traffic island and apprehended the gypsies. A young Englishman, selling paintings outside the Louvre, lit out after the girl who had raced off with my wallet, caught her down by the Seine and retrieved the wallet and, having refused her offer of half the contents, brought it back to me. By then a van full of police had arrived, summoned by the radio telephone. We and the gypsies were bundled into the van and taken off to a nearby police station where I made a statement, a procès-verbal.

Ever hopeful of another trip to Paris, I asked the young plain clothes detective wearing jeans and taking the statement whether this meant that I would be needed to give evidence at the trial (and come back, I hoped, at the expense of the French State!). “Oh no” was her answer. My statement was now on the dossier and my oral evidence would not be needed.

I did return to Paris of course, some time later on the same holiday, found the English artist and bought a painting of the church of Sacré Coeur from him. I was never called as a witness unfortunately but I must say that I was very impressed by the speed and efficiency of the French criminal justice system. Bearing in mind the comparative nature of this essay, I must also pay tribute to the honesty of the young Englishman.

Now that misdemeanour would never have come before a cour d’assises1 in France, the court where French criminal juries are used. It would have come before a lower court and would, very likely, have been disposed of speedily. If you are interested and can track it down there is a good French documentary film, Le 10e Chambre, Instants d’Audience, which will show you how the system of summary justice for less serious offences works there. You can see extracts of it on YouTube but you will need to speak good French to follow it.2

Those tribunals, where the vast bulk of criminal cases are dealt with, do not use juries and reflect more clearly the popular view of the French criminal justice system here. We think of it as an inquisitorial rather than an adversarial system and many believe inaccurately that it operates with a presumption of guilt rather than innocence. The more accurate analysis is that the French system requires the court to convince itself of the guilt of the accused. In that context another surprising feature of the French system for us is that there has been, historically speaking, no system for pleading guilty. The accused has to be proved guilty to the satisfaction of the court. The process of investigation will weed out many suspects whose prosecutions will not proceed.

I Cours d’assises

That the French use juries, historically inspired by the English jury system and introduced in 1791 to bolster revolutionary democratic principles, is not so well known. Trial by jury is reserved for the most serious offences where the potential minimum sentence is greater than 10 years. Those offences are known as crimes in the French system. It is probably useful to call them felonies in English translation.3

Since 2011 the court hearing those charges is constituted by three judges and six jurors at the first instance. There used to be three judges and nine jurors. There is now, since 2000, provision for an appeal from such a court to an appellate cour d’assises consisting of nine lay people and three judges, an institution which I shall discuss shortly. Again, until 2011, it consisted of twelve jurors and three judges. Typically the serious felonies dealt with before these courts are murder, manslaughter, rape and drug trafficking.

II Focus on the investigation – production of the dossier

Another different feature of the French system compared to ours is that the focus is not so much on the trial as on the investigation of the charge through the court system, controlled, in cases such as these, by the juge d’instruction who supervises the collection of the evidence by the judicial police. The government of President Sarkozy threatened to replace the juge d’instruction by normal prosecutors, to much opposition from members of the judiciary and the general populace. That particular change was not made. I gather that the current administration supports the continued use of the juge d’instruction.

There is no right to silence as we conceive of it. A person under investigation may refuse to answer questions but the normal expectation is that he or she will respond to inquiries. If a suspect fails to do so adverse inferences can and will be drawn. There is also a system of criminal legal aid which is extensive and available from the start of an investigation. During a typical investigation there will be several occasions when the accused will be examined by the juge d’instruction, normally with his lawyers present, in respect of the progress of inquiries by the police.

This is the process of the development of the dossier or file which lays the basis for the prosecution and of the evidence which will be led at the trial. The dossier will consist of documents similar to those gathered in a police investigation here, such as witness statements, photographs, scientific evidence including expert evidence and recordings including transcripts of statements made by the accused. It will also include the results of interviews before the juge d’instruction where the evidence, as it is gathered, will be presented to the accused and his comments requested.

A significant and separate part of the dossier will focus on the character of the accused, something which does not normally become relevant in our system until and if any sentence is to be imposed. The accused’s general character is regarded as relevant in the French system, not only in respect of penalty but also in respect of guilt on the basis that the court’s focus is on the nature of the person being charged as much as on the nature of the acts said to constitute the charge. In French terms they judge the person not the crime.
The rules of evidence are far less technical than apply in common law systems and focus on relevance, taking a much broader view than in our system where, of course, we normally exclude “propensity” reasoning in considering whether a crime has occurred.

III Expert evidence

Expert evidence will often be sought in the investigation and called at the trial. The courts themselves in France keep lists of relevantly qualified experts who are called on to examine the scientific issues in the individual cases. It is a mark of prestige to be appointed to the courts’ panels. Typically a case may require ballistic or other scientific evidence and there will often be medical and psychological reports concerning the condition of any victims and the mental state of the accused. The accused is given the opportunity before the trial to examine those reports and, if he or she wishes, to ask for further reports either from the same or from another expert to deal with particular issues.

IV The trial

At the trial the dossier will be in the hands of the three judges but is not made available to the jurors. They are selected by a process similar to ours where jury panels are drawn from the electoral roll to sit in court for particular periods.

In a normal criminal trial conducted without a jury the dossier would supply the evidence required for the hearing without the need for oral evidence unless a party wanted to cross-examine a witness. The accused would still be interrogated by the judge. In jury trials, however, the important witnesses are called. That may reflect the orality connected with the English jury system as well as the wish that the jurors observe the witnesses to assist them in reaching their decision. The parties may agree that certain witnesses need not be called.
Accordingly, a significant body of oral evidence may be led before the French jury but much of it focuses on what may be called an audit of the dossier rather than a detailed exposition of all the facts contained in that file. In other words it is not necessary to lead orally all the evidence obtained by the investigation. The accuracy of the most important information on the file is what is most commonly addressed.

The questioning in a French criminal court is traditionally conducted by the judge presiding. In 2000, their Code of Criminal Procedure was amended to permit the parties also to examine witnesses.4 Previously the system was that the judge would examine witnesses and parties could suggest lines of questioning to him or her. I understand that continues to be the normal procedure. There is, however, an increasing incidence of the use of cross-examination by the lawyers, perhaps stimulated by the expectations of French citizens used to seeing television crime dramas from English speaking countries.

As I indicated earlier, there is no general right to silence in the sense that inferences can and will be drawn against an accused who does not answer questions. Normally the accused is interrogated before the jury, another significant distinction from standard practice in our courts where the calling of an accused is the exception rather than the rule.
A complicating feature of the French system is that civil parties, those who have been affected by the crimes alleged, normally appear and pursue claims for civil damages or other relief in parallel proceedings at the same time as the criminal trial is heard.

When the judges and jury retire together to consider their verdict, the issue is not whether the accused is guilty or not guilty. Rather the jury is asked to answer a series of questions relevant to the issues raised by the charge, the answers to which will determine whether or not the accused is guilty. The judges and jurors consider the issues in conference, including questions of penalty. To that extent, at least, the interaction between judge and jury is quite unlike our system.

Four years ago my associate was a young French judge and one of the differences between our systems which drew his attention was the care we judges use to make sure that we do not speak to the jury except in the court room and then in a very formal way.

Nor is the decision one that must be arrived at unanimously or by a majority of ten out of twelve as may occur in most cases here now. There has to be a two-thirds majority of the combined numbers of the jury and the judges. They need to be thoroughly convinced of the accused’s guilt, or in the French term, have an intime conviction of it, guilt, in the “sincerity of their conscience.” Before the court retires, the president of the court is required to read the following instruction which is also placed in the jury conference room prominently in large letters:5

The law does not ask the judges to account for the means by which they convinced themselves; it does not charge them with any rule from which they shall specifically derive the fullness and adequacy of evidence. It requires them to question themselves in silence and reflection and to seek in the sincerity of their conscience what impression has been made on their reason by the evidence brought against the accused and the arguments of his defence. The law asks them but this single question, which encloses the full scope of their duties: ‘Are you inwardly convinced?’.

The language is not the same as our formula of “beyond a reasonable doubt” but the gravity of the conclusion required is just as obvious.

V Appellate cours d’assises

Traditionally there was no appeal from a decision of the cour d’assises. That approach stemmed from the view that the jury’s verdict was inviolable, itself derived from the revolutionary belief that the voice of the people was equivalent to the voice of God.6 Yet, in 2000, the decision was made to create the appellate cours d’assises. This was partly driven by concerns raised by France’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights and the view of the European Court of Human Rights that there should be a system of appeals and a system equivalent to providing reasons for decisions.

What seems unusual to us is that the appeal is conducted as a retrial. The evidence is called again before a slightly larger jury, nine instead of six with the same number of professional judges. It is curious for us to see a trial court substituting its decision for an earlier trial court as part of an appeal process. We leave the appellate process to a panel of judges who review the evidence and the conduct of the trial below. Even if we do give our judges wide powers to set aside a jury verdict they will either quash the conviction or send the decision back to the trial court if a new trial is needed. Our courts of appeal sometimes receive fresh evidence but do not conduct a complete new trial.

It seems likely that the sacrosanct nature of the jury’s verdict requires any review to occur before a court which also includes a jury, and, at least for form’s sake, a larger number of jurors. Moreover, there is no system in French courts to transcribe oral evidence. The appeal must, therefore, necessarily be one constituting what we would think of as a hearing de novo on fresh evidence. The record, the dossier, does not contain the oral evidence that was before the original jury. The appellate jury court does, however, receive evidence of the answers provided by the earlier jury. When it began, the appellate system was not used frequently but is used more now as the legal system becomes more familiar with the new institution.

A final appeal, solely on points of legal principle, lies to the Cour de Cassation, France’s highest court in the normal court structure.7

VI Conclusion

The criminal jury trial in France began as a legal transplant from England. The revolutionaries believed in the importance of citizens’ involvement in the criminal trial to reflect democratic principles. The English system was an obvious model to adapt. The system is still an important aspect of French democracy and legal culture, although there have been differing dynamics affecting it over the years depending upon politicians’ perception of the severity on crime of judges compared to jurors. Limitations have also been imposed over the years on the types of charges that may be dealt with by jury trial.

In my view, the jury trial in our system similarly retains its importance as a protector of democratic principles. The fascination, as with many aspects of comparative law, lies in examining how an idea takes root in foreign soil and is transformed, often dramatically, by its adaptation to a different society. The examination of the French jury trial system throws an interesting light on how the closed bureaucratic investigative system, otherwise typical of French criminal law, can be opened to the scrutiny of ordinary French citizens, if rather differently from the way the jury operates in the common law.

From the comparative viewpoint understanding the French system can assist when considering possible changes to ours. The converse is also true. The introduction of cross-examination into the French system is one example of the common law’s influence there. Bron McKillop in his 1997 monograph, Anatomy of a French Murder Case,8 describes three features of the French system of which we could take advantage: greater control by the judiciary over the legality and propriety of the use of police powers to obtain evidence; the use of independent experts from panels supervised by the courts; and the ability to draw adverse inferences from the silence of the accused. England and some Australian jurisdictions have adopted legislative changes reflecting those sorts of concerns, sometimes controversially.

While the International Criminal Court and the specialised international criminal tribunals do not use juries, their criminal procedure is essentially a hybrid of civilian and common law systems. They provide further examples of the internationalisation of legal norms. Complaints about the dilatory pace at which cases proceed in those courts suggest, however, that a greater focus needs to be placed on improving their procedures. Informed comparative analysis about ways to improve that system should start from a proper understanding of the procedural sources, a course which needs to draw on an understanding of how the rules reflect the particular societies from which they came. Legal transplants or hybrids do not always grow as expected. They may need pruning and fertilising to achieve their potential, a useful task for cooperation among comparative lawyers.

The Hon Justice James Douglas*

* Judge, Supreme Court of Queensland. This paper was first published in Pandora’s Box, the journal of the Justice and the Law Society, University of Queensland, and appears courtesy of the Society.

It means literally ‘the court of the seated’. You can see in it the etymological origins of the English Assizes.

Article 131-1 of the Code Pénal. The French Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure can be found here in French and English: http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/Traductions/en-English/Legifrance-translations
See Article 442-1 and my paper given at a symposium organised by Bond University which can be found at: http://archive.sclqld.org.au/judgepub/2012/douglas241112.pdf
Using the translation at the Légifrance website. The original in French is:
“La loi ne demande pas compte aux juges des moyens par lesquels ils se sont convaincus, elle ne leur prescrit pas de règles desquelles ils doivent faire particulièrement dépendre la plénitude et la suffisance d’une preuve; elle leur prescrit de s’interroger eux-mêmes dans le silence et le recueillement et de chercher, dans la sincérité de leur conscience, quelle impression ont faite, sur leur raison, les preuves rapportées contre l’accusé, et les moyens de sa défense. La loi ne leur fait que cette seule question, qui renferme toute la mesure de leurs devoirs: ‘Avez-vous une intime conviction?’.”
Vox populi, vox dei. See V.P. Hans and C.M. Germain, ‘The French Jury at a Crossroads’ (2011) 86 Chicago-Kent Law Review 737, 757.
They have a separate system of courts dealing with the review of administrative decisions which culminates in the Conseil d’État. There is also a body called the Conseil Constitutionnel which reviews the constitutional validity of legislation.
(Hawkins Press, 1997) 100-102.

Select Bibliography

I have tried to limit the citing of references but the following sources located by my current associate, Mr Hamish Clift, have provided much of the information as have my conversations with and observations in court of M. Charles Tellier, my former associate, now a judge attached to the Court of Appeal in Nîmes. I am indebted to both of them. If you wish to read just one of the sources I would focus on the monograph by Bron McKillop of Sydney University, Anatomy of a French Murder Case, published in 1997. It provides fascinating detail and useful comparative analysis of the progress of a murder case through the French system from an author who has written frequently in the area.

A Books

Kock, G. and Frase, R., The French Code of Criminal Procedure (Fred B. Rothman & Co., 1988)

McKillop, B., Anatomy of a French Murder Case, (Hawkins Press, 1997)

B Articles

Daly, M., ‘Some thoughts on the differences in criminal trials in the civil and common law systems’ (1999) 2 Journal of the Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics 65

Hans, V.P. and Germain, C.M., ‘The French Jury at a Crossroads’ (2011) 86 Chicago-Kent Law Review 737, 757

Leib, E.J., ‘A Comparison of Criminal Jury Decision Rules in Democratic Countries’ (2007-2008) 5 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 629

Marder, N.S., ‘An Introduction to Comparative Jury Systems’ (2011) 86 Chicago-Kent Law Review 453

McKillop, B., ‘Review of Convictions after Jury Trials: The New French Jury Court of Appeal’ (2006) 28 Sydney Law Review 343

McKillop, B., ‘The New French Jury Court of Appeal Revisited’ (2009) 31 Sydney Law Review 143

McKillop, B., ‘The Position of Accused Persons Under the Common Law System in Australia and the Civil Law System in France’ (2003) 26 University of New South Wales Law Journal 515

Spencer, J.R., ‘Anatomy of a French Murder Case by Bron McKillop’ (1999) 21 Sydney Law Review 332

Tigar, M.E., ‘A French White-Collar Trial: Quelle Difference’ (1999) 19(21) The National Law Journal 15

JULY 27 2014

About the Cybercrime Pilot Project

International Cybercrime Pilot will start on 1 September 2014 and conclude at the end of February 2015. The new test unit will consist of cybercrime detectives from Austria, France, US, UK, France, Holland, Germany, France, Italy, Canada as well as from other countries. The Unit will be known as the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce or J-CAT

The Unit will operate from only one central location, the EC3 (European Cybercrime Centre) in The Hague.

The head of the cybercrime unit will be Andy Archibald, he is also the deputy head of the UK’s “National Cyber Crime Unit” Other directors of the unit will be senior members of the FBI, EC3 and the German BKA.

Mandate of the International Cybercrime Unit

The unit will focus on cross-border cybercrime cases and more specifically: Botnets, Commercial Cybercrime as well as TOR and I2P fueled criminal activities. The investigators will be charged with building new criminal cases as well as developing existing cases.

Success of the International Cybercrime Pilot Project

European Cybercrime Task Force (EUCTF), which is made up of the heads of cybercrime units from all the EU member states as well as Europol, Eurojust and the European Commission, will monitor progress of the pilot.

Origins of the International Cybercrime Unit Task Force

The International Cybercrime Unit was mentioned in an EU release (On coe.int) about the April 29th visit of Europol Director Rob Wainwright to Washington DC. According to the release, during that visit the Director met with Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, FBI Director James Comey and US Secret Service (USSS) Director Julia Pierson. The visit also included a meeting with President Obama’s Senior Advisor, Rand Beers, at the White House, and Senior Advisor to the DHS Secretary, John Cohen.

“Director Wainwright exchanged views with his US counterparts on how best to tackle the growing threat of cybercrime. Europol, its European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and US agencies are already cooperating extensively, with more than 50 operations in the last year to take down criminal groups involved in online child sexual exploitation, running botnets or carrying out intrusion in critical financial infrastructures. The aim of the visit was to further strengthen the existing cooperation and discuss the participation of dedicated cyber investigators from the FBI, the USSS and from ICE in the new Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT) which is being established by EC3 and which will focus on cross-border cybercrime investigations against botnets, banking Trojans and underground market places.”
On conclusion of that visit Director Wainwright said: “The scale and nature of transnational security threats continue to grow, especially in cyber space. Europol is committed to helping European law enforcement agencies fight crime and terrorism and understands the growing importance of cooperating closely with US partner agencies in that work. I am delighted that Europol enjoys such productive operational relations with the US.”

About the EC3 and EC3 Mandate

EC3 aims to become the focal point in the EU’s fight against cybercrime, through building operational and analytical capacity for investigations and cooperation with international partners in the pursuit of an EU free from cybercrime. The European Cybercrime Centre is hosted by Europol; the European law enforcement agency in The Hague, The Netherlands, and thus EC3 can draw on Europol’s existing infrastructure and law enforcement network.
EC3 Mandate is to tackle the following areas of cybercrime:

That committed by organised groups to generate large criminal profits such as online fraud
That which causes serious harm to the victim such as online child sexual exploitation
That which affects critical infrastructure and information systems in the European Union

Sources:
coe.int
nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk

- Former NSW detective Tim Priest was one of the front-line cops who lead the war against crime in the drug-ridden streets of Cabramatta. Yet he found himself waging his biggest battle not against the drug gangs but against the very organisation he worked for. Eventually, he could stand it no longer and spoke out about the politics and bureaucratic bungling, chronic lack of resources and crazy policy decisions that seem endemic to the New South Wales Police Service. For this, he was labelled a ‘whistleblower’ and ultimately railroaded out of the force.

Parliamentary enquiries subsequently proved that Tim Priest had spoken the truth and, perhaps more shockingly, that what the newspapers reveal is merely the tip of the iceberg.

The article below was first published in the January 2004 issue of Quadrant magazine. It is re-published here with the permission of Tim Priest.

Tim Priest teamed up with academic Richard Basham to publish a book, To Protect and to Serve. It is available at all bookstores. It is required reading for every person who is concerned about crime in New South Wales and why the police are afraid of the ethnic gangs.

Tim Priest

I believe that the rise of Middle Eastern organised crime in Sydney will have an impact on society unlike anything we have ever seen.

In the early 1980s, as a young detective I was attached to the Drug Squad at the old CIB. I remember executing a search warrant at Croydon, where we found nearly a pound of heroin. I know that now sounds very familiar; however, what set this heroin apart was that it was Beaker Valley Heroin, markedly different from any heroin I had seen. Number Four heroin from the golden triangle of South East Asia is nearly always off white, almost pure diamorphine. This heroin was almost brown.

But more remarkable were the occupants of the house. They were very recent arrivals from Lebanon, and from the moment we entered the premises, we wrestled and fought with the male occupants, were abused and spat at by the women and children, and our search took five times longer because of the impediments placed before us by the occupants, including the women hiding heroin in baby nappies and on themselves and refusing to be searched by policewomen because of religious beliefs. We had never encountered these problems before.

As was the case in those days, we arrested every adult and teenager who had hampered our search. When it came to court, they were represented by Legal Aid, of course, who claimed that these people were innocent of the minor charges of public disorder and hindering police, because they were recent arrivals from a country where people have an historical hatred towards police, and that they also had poor communications skills and that the police had not executed the warrant in a manner that was acceptable to the Muslim occupants.

The magistrate, well known to police as one who convicted fewer than one in ten offenders brought before him during his term at Burwood local court, threw the matter out, siding with the occupants and condemning the police. I remember thinking; thank heavens we don’t run into many Lebanese drug dealers.

Lebanese family terrorises neighbourhood

In 1994 I was stationed at Redfern. A well known Lebanese family who lived not far from the old Redfern Police Academy were terrorising the locals with random assaults, drug dealing, robberies and violent anti-social behaviour. When some young police from Redfern told me about them, curiosity got the better of me and I asked them to show me the street they lived in.

Despite the misgivings of the young police, I eventually saw this family and the presence they had in the immediate area. As we drove away in our marked police car, a half brick bounced on the roof of the vehicle. The driver kept going.

I said, ‘What are you doing, they’ve just hit the car with a house brick!” The young constable said, “Oh, they always do that when we drive past.”

The police were either too scared or too lazy to do anything about it. The damage bill on police cars became costly and these street terrorists grew stronger and the police became purely defensive. You see, the Police Royal Commission was about to start and the police retreated inside themselves knowing that the judicial system considered them easy targets. The police did not want to get hurt or attract Internal Affairs complaints.

Call me stupid, call me a dinosaur, but I made sure that day that at least one person in the group that threw the brick was arrested. I began by approaching the group just as that magistrate had lectured me and the other police involved in the Croydon search warrant. I simply asked who threw the brick. I was greeted with abuse and threats. I then reverted to the old ways of policing. I grabbed the nearest male and convinced him that it was he who had thrown the brick. His brave mates did nothing. By the time we arrived at the police station, this young fool had become compliant, apologetic and so afraid that he kept crying. You may not agree with what I did, but I paraded this goose around the police station for all the young police to see what they had become frightened of.

For some months after that, police routinely rounded up the family whenever it was warranted. However, some years later, with a change of Police Commander and the advent of duty officers under Peter Ryan, the family got back on top and within months had murdered a young Australian man who had wandered into their area drunk. They had set up a caravan where they sold drugs twenty four hours a day. They tied up half the police station with Internal Affairs complaints ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, but under Peter Ryan, these complaints were always treated seriously.

In effect, this family had taken control of Redfern. Senior police did their best to limit police action against them, fearing an avalanche of IA complaints that would count against the Commander at Peter Ryan’s next Op Crime Review.

I hope the examples I have just used don’t give the impression that I am a racist or a bully. The point I want to make from the start is that policing has never been rocket science. It is about human dynamics, street psychology, experience, a little bit of theatre and a substantial quantity of common sense. Sure, forensics and the advances of DNA, rapid fingerprint identification and electronic eavesdropping have taken policing to a new level of sophistication, but ultimately, when an offender is identified by whatever means, scientific or otherwise, it all comes down to the interaction between the investigator and the offender during the arrest and interview process. Violent and abusive offenders do not respect the law or those who enforce it. But they do respect the old style cop who doesn’t take a backward step and can’t be intimidated. When they encounter cops like that, they fold quickly there is rarely much behind the veneer of bravado.

In 1996 with the arrival of Peter Ryan, and the continued public humiliation of the New South Wales Police through the Wood Royal Commission, a chain of events began that have affected the police so deeply and so completely that, as far as ensuring community safety is concerned, I fear it will take at least a generation to regain the lost ground.

The rise of Middle Eastern crime groups in NSW

It was about 1995 to 1996 that the emergence of Middle Eastern crime groups was first observed in New South Wales. Before then they had been largely known for individual acts of anti social behaviour and loose family structures involved in heroin importation and supply as well as motor vehicle theft and conversion. The one crime that did appear organised before this period was insurance fraud, usually motor vehicle accidents and arson. Because these crimes were largely victimless, they were dealt with by insurance companies and police involvement was limited. But from these insurance scams, a generation of young criminals emerged to, become engaged in more sophisticated crimes, such as extortion, armed robbery, organised narcotics importation and supply, gun running, organised factory and warehouse break ins, car theft and conversion on a massive scale including the exporting of stolen luxury vehicles to Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries.

As the police began to gather and act on intelligence on these emerging Middle Eastern gangs the first of the series of events took place. The New South Wales Police was restructured under Peter Ryan. Crime Intelligence, the eyes and ears of all police forces throughout the world, was dismantled overnight and a British style intelligence unit was created. The formation of this unit and its factions has been best described by Dr Richard Basham a library stocking outdated books. The new Crime Intelligence and Information Section became completely reactive. It received crime intelligence from the field and stored it. Almost no relevant intelligence was ever dispensed to operational police from 1997 until I left in 2002. It was a disgrace.

One of the fundamental problems that arose out of the new intelligence structure was that it no longer had a field capacity or a target development capacity. With the old BCI there were field teams that were assigned to look into emerging trends. Vietnamese, Romanian and Hong Kong Chinese groups were all targeted after intelligence grew on their activities. When the alarm bells went off over growing intelligence concerns about a new or current crime group, covert operations were mounted.

Lebanese gangs intimidate police

When the Middle Eastern crime groups emerged in the mid to late 1990s no alarms were set off. The Crime Intelligence unit was asleep. I know personally that operational police in south west Sydney compiled enormous amounts of good intelligence on the formation of Lebanese groups such as the Telopea Street Boys and others in the Campsie, Lakemba, Fairfield and Punchbowl areas. The inactivity could not have been because the intelligence reports weren’t interesting, because I have read many of them and from a policing perspective they were damning. Many of the offenders that you now see in major criminal trials or serving lengthy sentences in prison were identified back then.

But even more frustrating for operational police were the activities of this ethnic crime group, activities that set it apart from almost all others bar the Cabramatta 5T. The Lebanese groups were ruthless, extremely violent, and they intimidated not only innocent witnesses, but even the police that attempted to arrest them.

As these crime groups encountered less resistance in terms of police operations and enforcement, their power grew not only within their own communities, but also all around Sydney except in Cabramatta, where their fear of the South East Asian crime groups limited their forays. But the rest of Sydney became easy pickings.

The second in the series of events began to take shape with Peter Ryan’s executive leadership team. Under Ryan’s nose they began to carve up the New South Wales Police and form little kingdoms where a senior police officer ruled almost untouched by outside influence. They then appointed their own commanders in the police stations. Almost all of them had little or no street experience; but they in turn brought along their friends as duty officers, similarly inexperienced. Some of the experience these police counted on their resumes included stints at Human Resources, the Academy, the Police Band in one case, the various cubby holes in Police Headquarters, almost no operational policing experience yet they were tasked to lead. Never has the expression “the blind leading the blind” been more appropriate.

The impact that this leadership team had on day today operational policing was disastrous. In many of the key areas that were experiencing rapid rises in Middle Eastern crime, these new leaders became more concerned with relations between the police and ethnic minorities than with emerging violent crime. The power and influence of the local religious and minority leaders cannot be overstated. Police began to use selective law enforcement. They selected targets that were unlikely to use their ethnic background and cultural beliefs to hinder police investigations or arrests. It was mostly Anglo Saxons and Asians that were the targets, because they were under represented by religious leaders and the media. They were soft targets.

An example of the confrontations police nearly always experienced in Muslim-dominated areas when confronting even the most minor of crimes is an incident that occurred in 2001 in Auburn. Two uniformed officers stopped a motor vehicle containing three well known male offenders of Middle Eastern origin, on credible information via the police radio that indicated that the occupants of the vehicle had been involved in a series of break-and-enters. What occurred during the next few hours can only he described as frightening.

When searching the vehicle and finding stolen property from the break-and-enter, the police were physically threatened by the three occupants of the car, including references to tracking down where the officers lived, killing them and “fucking your girlfriends”. The two officers were intimidated to the point of retreating to their police car and calling for urgent assistance.

When police back up arrived, the three occupants called their associates via their mobile phones, which incidentally is the Middle Eastern radio network used to communicate amongst gangs. Within minutes as many as twenty associates arrived as well as another forty or so from the street where they had been stopped. As further police cars arrived, the Middle Eastern males became even more aggressive, throwing punches at police, pushing police over onto the ground, threatening them with violence and damaging police vehicles.

When the duty officer arrived, he immediately ordered all police back into their vehicles and they retreated from the scene. The stolen property was not recovered. No offender was arrested for assaulting police or damaging police vehicles.

But the humiliation did not end there. The group of Middle Eastern males then drove to the police station, where they intimidated the station staff, damaged property and virtually held a suburban police station hostage. The police were powerless. The duty officer ordered police not to confront the offenders but to call for back up from nearby stations. Eventually the offenders left of their own volition. No action was taken against them.

In the minds of the local population, the police were cowards and the message was, Lebs rule the streets. For a number of days, nothing was done to rectify this total breakdown of law and order. To the senior police in the area, it was more important to give the impression that local ethnic relations were never better. It was also important to Peter Ryan that no bad news stories appeared that may have given the impression that crime in any area was out of control. Had these hoodlums been arrested they would have filed IA complaints immediately via their Legal Aid lawyers and community leaders. To senior police, this was a cause for concern at the next Op Crime Review.

So the incident was covered up until a few local veteran detectives found out about it and decided to act. They went quietly to the addresses of the three main offenders early one morning and took them away with a minimum of fuss and charged them. Some order was restored, but not nearly enough.

By avoiding confrontations with these thugs, the police gave away the streets in many of these areas in south-western Sydney. By putting in place inexperienced senior police who had never copped the odd punch in the mouth or broken nose in the line of duty, the police force hung the community and the local police out to dry. Most of these duty officers had retreated to non-operational areas early in their careers because they couldn’t stomach the risks of front line policing. Yet they put their hands up to take vital operational roles because the positions are highly paid duty officers receive about $30,000 to $40,000 a year more than a detective sergeant, which is ludicrous.

When I say that this type of policing was condoned and encouraged across wide areas of New South Wales, I am not exaggerating. The problems in south-western Sydney are a direct result of covering up criminality because it went against the script that Peter Ryan and his executive had continually pushed in the media, day after day after day – that crime was on the decrease and Peter Ryan was the world’s best police commissioner.

In hundreds upon hundreds of incidents police have backed down to Middle Eastern thugs and taken no action and allowed incidents to go unpunished. Again I stress the unbelievable influence that local politicians and religious leaders played in covering up the real state of play in the south-west.

Spread of criminal gangs aided by incompetent police leadership

The third event was the reforming of Criminal Investigations into a centrally-controlled body called Crime Agencies. All the specialist crime squads were done away with: Arson, Armed Robbery, Drugs, Organised Crime, Special Breaking, Consorting, Vice, Gaming, Motor Vehicle Theft were wrapped up into one size fits all. Ryan once boasted that by the time he finished retraining the New South Wales Police, constables could investigate a traffic accident in the morning and a homicide in the afternoon, a statement that summed up his Alice-in-Wonderland policing theories. All the expertise and experience evaporated overnight.

It was as if the public hospitals had suddenly lost every surgeon and had GPs perform major surgery. No matter how bright and dedicated these GPs were, they would simply not have the expertise, the training and the experience to take over. It would be a disaster. Well, that is what happened to criminal investigation in this state. Crime Agencies was an unmitigated disaster. Yet those who designed and ran this farce have gone on to highly paid government jobs.

The final straw for the New South Wales Police was the OCR Op Crime Review, which Peter Ryan and his executive team came up with. It was loosely based on the groundbreaking Compstat program of the New York Police Department, the brainchild of Commissioner William Bratton. The difference between Ryan’s OCR and the NYPD Compstat was that the NYPD model covered everything on the criminal waterfront. The Ryan-inspired OCR had just six crimes. And those six included domestic violence, random breath testing, theft, robbery, assaults and motor vehicle theft – no drugs, organised crime, firearms, shootings, attempted murders or homicides. The crimes that instil fear into the average citizen were ignored, and with plenty of innovative answers as to why. The OCR focused police attention on a limited number of crimes and allowed far more serious and deadly crimes to get out of control.

So with a police force on the verge of bankruptcy, the Middle Eastern crime problem was an explosion waiting to go off. I had observed the beginnings of Asian organised crime whilst at the Drug Squad and later at the National Crime Authority where I worked on two task forces, one of which was on Chinese organised crime.

When I look back on the influence of Chinese organised crime in Australia, I see a gradual but sustained trend, not one of high peaks in terms of activity or incidents, but one of a well planned criminal enterprise that attracts little attention. It’s there but you can’t always see it.

It probably took twenty years for the Chinese to become a dominant force in crime in this city. But Middle Eastern crime has taken less than ten years. So pervasive is their influence on organised crime that rival ethnic groups, with the exception of the Asian gangs, have been squeezed out or made extinct. The only other crime group to have survived intact are the bikies, although the bikies these days have legitimised many of their operations and now make as much money from legal means as they do illegally. In many ways they have adopted US Mafia methods of legitimate businesses shrouding their illegal operations.

With no organised crime function, no gang unit except for the South-East Asian Strike Force, the New South Wales Police turned against every convention known to Western policing in dealing with organised crime groups. In effect the Lebanese crime gangs were handed the keys to Sydney.

Extortion and attacks on Australians

The most influential of the Middle Eastern crime groups are the Muslim males of Telopea Street, Bankstown, known as the Telopea Street Boys. They and their associates have been involved in numerous murders over the past five years, many of them unprovoked fatal attacks on young Australian men for no other reason than that they are “Skips”, as they call Australians.

They have been involved in all manner of crime on a scale we have never seen before. Ram-raids on expensive stores in the city are epidemic. The theft of expensive motor vehicles known as car-jacking is increasing at an alarming rate. This crime involves gangs finding a luxury motor vehicle parked outside a restaurant or hotel and watching until the occupants return to drive home. The car is followed, the victims assaulted at gunpoint, and the vehicle stolen. The vehicles are always around or above the $ 100,000 mark and are believed to be taken to warehouses before being shipped interstate or to the Middle East.

Extortion on inner city nightclubs is largely unreported because of the dire consequences of owners reporting these incidents to police. When I worked at City Central Detectives just before I retired, I was involved in the initial investigation of one brave nightclub owner in the inner city who did report this crime. The Lebanese criminals were arrested after a sting operation. However, I believe that after many violent threats the owner sold up and now lives interstate. He once had a thriving business that for a nightclub ran a reputable service, keeping out drugs, maintaining safety for patrons and co-operating with the police.

The tactics used by the gang were simple. A large number of Middle Eastern males would enter the club, upwards of twenty at a time. They would outnumber the security staff and begin assaulting Australian male patrons, sometimes stabbing them. The incident would be over in minutes and the gang members would be long gone before police arrived. A few days later, senior members of the gang, well dressed and business-like, would approach the club owners and offer to provide protection from similar incidents for around $2000 to $3000 a week. Many of the owners paid up and considered it a necessary expense in keeping their business viable. If they didn’t pay up, or contacted the police, the gangs would wait some weeks, even months, before returning to the nightclub and extracting a terrible revenge on the owners, who would pay up or leave.

There is compelling intelligence that in one well-known entertainment precinct in the city, nearly all the bars, nightclubs and hotels pay protection money to Middle Eastern crime gangs.

What sets the Middle Eastern gangs apart from all other gangs is their propensity to use violence at any time and for any reason. I thought I would never see the level and type of violence that I saw with the South-East Asian gangs in Cabramatta, particularly the 5T, the Four Aces and Madonna’s Mob, which were a breakaway from the old 5T. But the violence, although horrific, was almost always local, that is within the Cabramatta area and almost always against fellow Asians. As a result of that locally based violent crime it was relatively easy to identify the culprits and break them up once we were given the resources after the police revolt of 1999-2000.

Racial attacks against young Australians

The Middle Eastern cycle of violence is not local. It can occur on the central coast, around Cronulla, Bondi, Darling Harbour, Five Dock, Redfern, Paddington, anywhere in Sydney. Unlike their Vietnamese counterparts, they roam the city and are not confined to either Cabramatta or Chinatown. And even more alarming is that the violence is directed mainly against young Australian men and women. There is a clear and definite link between violent attacks on our young men and women being racial as well as criminal. Quite often when taking statements from young men attacked by groups of Lebanese males around Darling Harbour, a common theme has been the racially motivated violence against the victims simply because they are Australian.

I wonder whether the inventors of the racial hatred laws introduced during the golden years of multiculturalism ever took into account that we, the silent majority, would be the target of racial violence and hatred. I don’t remember any charges being laid in conjunction with the gang rapes of south-western Sydney in 2001, where race was clearly an issue and race was used to humiliate the victims. But then, unbelievably, a publicly funded document produced by the Anti Discrimination Board called “The Race for Headlines” was circulated, and it sought not only to cover up race as a motive for the rapes, but to criticise any accurate media reporting on this matter as racially biased. It worries many operational police that organisations like the Anti-Discrimination Board, the Privacy Council and the Civil Liberties Council have become unaccountable and push agendas that don’t represent the values that this great country was built on.

The extent to which Middle Eastern crime gangs have moved into the drug market is breathtaking. They are now the main suppliers of cocaine in this city and are now developing markets in south eastern Queensland and Victoria. They are major suppliers of heroin in and around the inner city, south-western Sydney and western Sydney.

Many of you would have heard of the horrific problems in France with the outbreak of unprecedented crimes amongst an estimated five million Muslim immigrants. Middle Eastern males now make up 45,000 of the 90,000 inmates in French prisons. There are no-go areas in Paris for police and citizens alike. The rule of law has broken down so badly that when police went to one of these areas recently to round up three Islamic terrorists, they went in armoured vehicles, with heavy weaponry and over 1000 armed officers, just to arrest a few suspects. Why did it need such numbers? Because the threat of terrorist reprisal was minimal compared to the anticipated revolt by thousands of Middle Eastern and North African residents who have no respect for the rule of law in France and consider intrusions by police and authority a declaration of war.

The problems in Paris in Muslim communities are being replicated here in Sydney at an alarming rate. Paris has seen an explosion of rapes committed by Middle Eastern males on French women in the past fifteen years. The rapes are almost identical to those in Sydney. They are not only committed for sexual gratification but also with deep racial undertones along with threats of violence and retribution. What is more alarming is the identical reaction by some sections of the media and criminologists in France of downplaying the significance of race as an issue and even ganging up on those people who try to draw attention to the widening gulf between Middle Eastern youth and the rest of French society.

That is what we are seeing here. The usual suspects come out of their institutions and libraries to downplay and even cover up the growing problem of Middle Eastern crime. Why? My opinion, for what it’s worth is that these same social engineers have attempted to redefine our society. They have experimented with all manner of institutions, from prisons to mental institutions and recently to policing.

Some of the problems we now see with policing are the result of Peter Ryan’s dream of restructuring and retraining police. The Police Academy was changed from a police training college into a university teaching social sciences and very little else. Constantly I would see young police emerge from the academy with a view that as police officers they were counsellors, psychologists, marriage guidance experts, social workers and advocates for social change. but with almost no skills in street policing. Their training had placed not only them in danger, but also their workmates and the community.

Policing is about enforcing the rule of law. It has never been about analysing every offender for the root causes of crime. That is not our job. The police enforce the law and protect the community regardless of race, colour or religion. What we have seen in south-west Sydney is ethnic communities being policed selectively. The implications for this are frightening when you look at Paris. They had selective policing of a particular community, which as a result is now out of control.

In February 2001 when I appeared before the Cabramatta inquiry, I gave evidence which at the time was controversial and attracted the usual claque of ratbags and lunatics from the ABC and their associates at the Sydney Morning Herald as well as that fruit loop Mike Carton from 2UE. I said that this city is going to be torn apart by gang warfare the likes of which we have never seen before. In 2003 I was finally proven right, but I take no comfort from that. However, the criticism I received was unprecedented. I was a nutter, a liar, a racist, a disgruntled detective – but I was right.

Ethnic gangs aided and protected by multicultural industry

The critics still refuse to concede that we have a problem. They are still clinging to the multicultural theme. To highlight the problems with Middle Eastern communities in this city is to threaten to tear down the multicultural facade.

The amount of money spent on the multicultural industry beggars belief. It is a lucrative and sustainable position for many. Governments pay huge money to anything that bears the word multicultural. Indeed the police department, like other government departments, spends vast amounts on multicultural issues, multicultural jobs, multicultural consultancies, education packages, legal advice, public relations and the rest. Having expended large amounts of money on multiculturalism, they are hardly likely to criticise it. Those that feed off multiculturalism are not likely to question it.

When I gave evidence to the Cabramatta inquiry, I risked my career and my safety in coming forward. I did it because I had sworn an oath to protect the community I served. That community was Cabramatta. Cabramatta is made up almost entirely of residents born outside this country, mostly South East Asians, and their children. But when I went forward and exposed the shame of Cabramatta, the residents were not Asians in my eyes, but Australians no matter where they came from. It was my duty to speak up for them and to protect them. Race was never an issue. I have received many awards in my police career but the ones I hold dearest are those I received from the Cabramatta community.

One old man who had spent seven years in refugee camps in South East Asia before coming to Australia said the day he landed in Australia was like dying and coming to heaven. Cabramatta was a community of ordinary people like that old man, who recognised the problems of drugs and organised crime in their community and spoke up and agitated for change. It was a slightly built Vietnamese man named Thung Ngo who led the charge on behalf of a community that had had enough of crime and forced a parliamentary inquiry into Cabramatta which ultimately saved their community from destruction. Not once during that inquiry did I hear any member of the Cabramatta community – apart from the Anglo Saxon local member – complain that they were being racially discriminated against because of the inquiry or its aftermath. They wanted change; they wanted a safe law-abiding community. It was my duty to do everything I could to honour my pledge to protect and to serve.

But I have not heard anything like that from the Middle Eastern community. Initially the gang rapes were the fault of Australian culture, according to one religious leader in the south west. I note that he has now softened his stance and is calling for change among Middle Eastern youth. But they are just words; there seem to be no Thung Ngos among them.

What is it that draws such defence for this community from certain sections of the media? Why didn’t they join in to defend the Asian community during the fallout from the Cabramatta inquiry? And where are these apologists when it comes to the plight of our first Australians, our indigenous peoples? Their cause is not trendy enough, not global like the refugee or Islamic issues. Yet one of the most depressing sights that has confronted me as a policeman is the shame of Redfern. I first saw Everleigh Street some twenty two years ago, and nothing has changed since. The atmosphere of sheer hopelessness and desperation still hangs around the neck of every young Aborigine who lives in those ghettos, yet they hardly ever rate a mention.

National threat

The Middle Eastern crime groups and their associates number in the thousands, not the hundreds as the government and senior police would have you believe. It is the biggest crime problem we have ever faced, and it is growing.

Hardly a day goes past without some violent crime involving a “male of Middle Eastern appearance”, though I see lately that description is watered down now to include “and/or Mediterranean appearance”. To an operational policeman, there is a noticeable difference between an Italian and a Lebanese male.

That these groups of males can roam a city and assault, rob and intimidate at will can no longer be denied or excused. You need only to look at Paris and other European countries that have had mass immigration from Middle Eastern countries to see the sort of problems we can expect in years to come. My prediction is that within ten years, Middle Eastern crime groups will spread rapidly across Australia as they seek to expand their enterprises. There will be no go areas in south western Sydney, just like Paris.

Only recently I have seen quotes from senior police and retired police who claim that race is not the issue in organised crime. Those statements are stupid and dangerous. Organised crime groups with the exception of the bikies are almost always ethnically based – any experienced detective will tell you that. The days of Anglo Saxon gangs are almost gone, with the exception of one or two local beach gangs.

I also predict that there will be a dramatic rise in gang shootings as rival gangs compete for turf and business. This will be done with almost complete disregard for police attention, as they are well aware that the New South Wales Police has to be rebuilt from the ground up. We have seen in the past three years the phenomenon of drive-by shootings, Los Angeles style. Not only are the increasing incidents a major cause of concern, but also the use of automatic weapons that spray hundreds of rounds at their targets. This is virtually unprecedented in this country.

In many ways, what we are seeing is the copying of Los Angeles gangs: the Crips, the Bloods and others. The motor vehicles, the music, the dress codes, the haircuts, the weaponry and the attitudes towards authority are almost identical. These gangs in Los Angeles have been around for nearly thirty years and a culture has grown around them. The culture surrounding the Middle Eastern gangs is still in its infancy but the transition is not far away.

When William Bratton, the most innovative police commissioner of modern times, took over as Los Angeles Police Chief recently, he declared the gang problems there a national security problem, so serious that it was beyond the resources of the state of California. There is a lesson for us there, but we have to learn quickly, or this problem will overtake us.

The blame for the rise of the gangs in Los Angeles is being spread around – politicians who refused to acknowledge that it was more than just an ethnic brotherhood searching for their roots; police inaction because of political constraints as well as incompetence; the civil liberties movement particularly among the California superior courts that refused for decades to use lengthy sentences as a deterrent to ethnic based crime on the basis that it discriminated against minority groups. Whoever is to blame is now irrelevant, but they have left a terrible legacy for the young generations of citizens of Los Angeles who have to run the gauntlet of drug-crazed gangsters in the suburbs engaging in deadly shoot outs and drive-bys nearly every day.

The similarities between the situation here, with the denial by the government of the extent and the implications of Middle Eastern crime, and the early situation in Los Angeles is frightening. What we saw with Cabramatta was the covering up of a major problem by this government, who only acted when the game was up. It’s all about denial. If they can get away with covering up it saves them the worry of making hard decisions and spending money on fixing problems that have been allowed to fester for years. The rail system that Michael Costa now has to fix is yet another example.

There is no investment in the future. It is about looking good day by day. The Peter Ryan-style policing of day to day media spin is still present. No one seems to have the courage to say that this is a problem that we need to fix before it gets worse. The time when the Middle Eastern problem really takes root in this city, the point from which there is no return, just like Los Angeles, is but a few years away. The leaders of our government probably hope this will be another government’s fault and that they won’t be around to see their legacy. Maybe we should all buy a property in southern New Zealand.

If the biggest threat to our society is not addressed honestly and effectively within the next two or three years it will take drastic action and enormous resources to bring it under control – if that is even possible. The action we can take now and the resources needed are a fraction of what it may cost in the future. The potential cost in human terms is unimaginable.

There is also the serious possibility that some of these Middle Eastern youth that are engaged in organised crime and have no regard for our values and way of life may go a step further and engage in terrorist acts against Australia. The ingredients are there already. It is but a small step from urban terrorism to religious and political terrorism, as we have seen with groups such as the IRA, where organised crime often became interwoven with terrorism.

I do not want to paint a picture of gloom, but as a policeman I have seen the destruction that gangs can wreak on innocent citizens who only want to live their lives in peace. I just hope we can trust the people in government and the police to ensure that we don’t lose the values and the rights we have received from past generations.

It is fitting that one day after Remembrance Day, when we look to what was handed to us by the Second World War generation, probably the most extraordinary generation of Australians in our short history, we should ask ourselves: are we going to be remembered for handing a similar legacy to our children and grandchildren, or are we going to be remembered as the generation that did nothing about the scourge of gang violence and simply passed it on to them?

Police as Filter

The police, as the first agency in the criminal justice process, are also of course the first agency to ‘filter out’ cases which although considered important enough by the public to report, are not considered so by the police. This is the first stage in a process of ‘attrition’ or leakage of offences out of the criminal justice process at various stages. In minor offences the police are themselves able to issue a caution to the suspect which to some extent puts the police in the position of being a mini-criminal justice system all on their own. On the other hand police decisions to ‘no-crime’ (not to record the reported incident) or to take ‘no further action’ on a reported offence have, over recent years, come in for a good deal of criticism particularly from those concerned with issues such as rape and domestic violence or racially motivated attacks. This is often seen as a failure on the part of the police to take these issues seriously. Police would claim that they have done much in recent years to take on board the criticism and to remedy it.

Serious crimes acted upon by the police (such as murder, armed robbery, violence) immediately involve specialist investigators known as detectives. In the UK detectives work for the Criminal Investigation Departments (CID) of police forces.

The nature of detective work

The London Metropolitan Police detective branch was set up in 1842 (the Met itself was founded in 1829), The Criminal Investigation Department in its present form dates from 1877 but was virtually a separate organisation from the rest of the police up to the early 1970s. There is something of a mythology surrounding detective skills and crafts. Brilliant intuitions and deductions are the stuff of crime thrillers. But most of the great detectives of English crime fiction in the early years of the twentieth century were amateur sleuths (Sherlock Holmes) and foreigners (Agatha Christie’s Inspector Poirot). Police detectives didn’t have much of a reputation.

‘self solving’ crimes

Some crimes are more difficult to solve than others. Certain types of serious crimes virtually solve themselves. There is, for example, a very high clearup rate for homicides. In England and Wales there are about 700 murders per year and a clearup rate of around 88% . The reason is that most cases are ‘self-solvers’ (see Innes 2002) in that the killer is known to the victim and detectives can expect to get a ‘lead’ in a relatively short time. This is the case for example where the attacker was seen at or near the scene of the crime or was the last person to see the victim. Detective work such as forensic examination, interviewing the suspect and other people who knew the victim and the killer is essentially the gathering of corroborative evidence to back up a case in which the Prime Suspect is rapidly decided. Where the attacker is not immediately known the investigation process will start with the close associates of the victim and work outwards in the direction of friends and associates and attempt, by process of elimination, to establish a motive.Then, even if the individual confesses when confronted, there is a need for corroborating evidence such as forensic evidence (DNA, fingerprints) or witnesses who say they saw the suspect near the crime scene at the appropriate times etc.

In other cases such as an armed robbery, detectives from the robbery squad may be familiar with the techniques of various offenders well known to them regarding techniques of safe-breaking, entering buildings, use of certain types of firearms etc. They may get a good idea from the details of evidence at the scene of crime as to who was the likely offender. A recent study by Roger Matthews of Middlesex University (2002) of the policing of armed robbery confirmed the importance of witness identifications in leading to clearups. The typical robbery investigation starts with witness identification of known suspects who are then pursued. The police may also get information from various members of the criminal underworld with whom they have regular contact. There is often the possibility of a trade off. ‘We could pull you in for such and such a robbery but if you give us some information about who was involved in the robbery we are now interested in, we might press for leniency when your particular case comes to court.’

The role of the public

In very many cases however, there is no obvious suspect. In such cases the role of the public is absolutely central in solving the crime. In fact the vaste majority of crimes can be said to be solved by evidence from the public: victims or witnesses who report their evidence to the police. Studies, both in the UK and the USA during the 1970s and 80s of the productivity of detectives found that most cases were solved on the basis of eye-witness statements if at all and of additional detective work was of low productivity (Greenwood 1977). Steer (1980) found that it was mainly members of the public who identify culprits. Only in 10% of the cases he studied was the suspect identified as a result of police investigation while 40% of defendants were directly identified by members of public.

You may be familiar with police appeals to the public to come forward with evidence. For crimes which take place in public places large yellow boards (in England) will be placed in the street near the scene of the crime with details of the incident and a telephone number where members of the public an contact the police in confidence. People may be stopped in the street and asked by police officers whether they can remember anything suspicious happening in that area around that time a few days ago. The police may even stage a reconstruction of certain aspects of a crime. For instance in a case of abduction and murder of young people the police may employ actors to replay the last known sighting of the victims in the hope that this might help bystanders remember suspicious events or details which they had since forgotten.Another angle is illustrated by homicide investigations. There is a very high clearup rate for homicides. In England and Wales there are about 700 murders per year and a clearup rate of around 88% . The reason is that most cases are ‘self-solvers’ (see Innes 2002) in that the killer is known to the victim and detectives can expect to get a ‘lead’ in a relatively short time. This is the case for example where the attacker was seen at or near the scene of the crime or was the last person to see the victim. Detective work such as forensic examination, interviewing the suspect and other people who knew the victim and the killer is essentially the gathering of corroborative evidence to back up a case in which the Prime Suspect is rapidly decided. Where the attacker is not immediately known the investigation process will start with the close associates of the victim and work outwards in the direction of friends and associates and attempt, by process of elimination, to establish a motive.

In this respect good relations between police and local communities pay off. If the police are well liked and regarded as doing a useful job then people will be more forthcoming about things they have seen or remembered than if they police are disliked in the area.

Particular Publics

The victim of crime may of course be a member of a particular subculture or profession. In such cases the police may need to work very closely with other members of that group in order to get information leading to the identification of a suspect. Murders of prostitutes are a particular example. The police need to establish trust with working girls in order to get information, in particular to establish the identities of regular clients. This was of particular importance in the murder of five prostitutes in Ipswitch in December 2006.

We have already mentioned another particular subgroup whom the police may rely on for information about particular crimes: members of the organised criminal underworld. Dick Hobbs (1988) in his study of the relation between detectives and villains in the old East End of London describes relatively closed communities in which criminal families were well known, had a certain amount of power and even respect in their communities and in which gaining information meant moving within the criminal underworld and doing deals with one set of villains to secure information leading to the conviction of others.

Here the informant from within the criminal underworld had a special position. The 1970s was the high point of the use of informants by detectives. The informant, known popularly as the ‘supergrass’ was generally a bona fide gangster who turned state evidence in return for immunity from prosecution, or conviction on a lesser charge. The modern system of undercover informants differs in a number of respects.

The problems with the use of supergrass informants were obvious: serious villains were being allowed to get away with major crimes in return for giving evidence. As Hobbs remarks, at the trial of the notorious Kray twins in 1969 the various individuals in the witness box had committed crimes at least as serious as those being sent down! Also the motives of supergrasses were not beyond question. Revenge, the elimination of competition in the criminal underworld could all be motives. The evidence of supergrasses could not be seen as necessarily reliable.

Another occupational hazard of too close a relationship with gangsters is of course police corruption . What may start out as a compromise in order to get information turns into detectives colluding with the commission of offences. In London these matters came to a head in the early 1970s when a number of detectives were dismissed and Sir Robert Mark, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police placed CID firmly under the central control of the uniformed branch of the police.

Other types of crime may post particular problems police investigators. Complex fraud cases in the City of London, in order to be detected, may require the investigators to master all the skills of accountancy and banking. Such skills are certainly beyond the reach of the average detective. In 1986 the UK government established the Serious Fraud Office a special group consisting of a mixture of detectives, accountants and lawyers, to investigate and prosecute the most serious financial frauds in England and Wales.

Meanwhile technologic advances in forensic science (such as the use of DNA samples), or the growth of public surveillance systems such as Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) may be of help in gathering evidence

Obstacles to effective investigation

Various things may get in the way of effective police investigation which may be of the police’s own doing. That is to say characteristics of the police themselves rather than difficulties in finding evidence. An obvious obstacle is racism. This was mentioned in the lecture on police organisation. The most important case in recent times in the UK is the case of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The Macpherson Report into the conduct of the police details how police racist stereotypes obstructed effective investigation, for example by treating a key witness as a suspect simply because of his ethnicity. The other issue raised by the report was the issue of police corruption. The young white men suspected of murdering Lawrence included the sons of some local criminals. Macpherson dealt with allegations that there was collusion between some police officers and these criminals to obstruct the investigation. In this case corruption was used to delay and obstruct the investigation. Corrupt practices can also be used to speed up an investigation. We shall deal with this in a moment.

Getting a result

There is a lot of pressure, particularly in a case with a high public profile, on detectives to quickly identify a suspect. Daily press conferences, answering awkward questions from journalists as to the progress of the investigation may be regarded by detectives as a diversion from the business of solving the crime. But the public has a right to know what is happening and indeed the pressure to get a result as quickly as possible is the normal way that detectives work. Once the evidence, from the public, witnesses, forensic details, starts to be assembled the investigators are anxious to identify a ‘lead': someone they can start to focus on as a possible suspect. In the words of criminologist David Bayley (1994) in his international survey of policing methods:

“Contrary to their fictional portrayal, detectives quickly formulate a theory about who committed the crime and then set about collecting evidence that will support arrest and prosecution… in short, criminal investigators begin with an identification, then collect the evidence; they rarely collect the evidence and then make an identification.” (Bayley 1994 quoted in Matthews 2002: 107)

The danger is of course that once evidence begins to point in the direction of a particular suspect, there may be other evidence that conflicts with this. There may be a tendency to ignore or downplay such evidence, not from bad intent but because the evidence clashes with a promising hypothesis that looks like leading to a ‘result’. A key question. paticularly from the standpoint of prosecution, (taking the case to court) is what checks and balances there are on any tendency by the investigators to rush to conclusions and ignore evidence which conflicts with, or fails to corroborate their line of inquiry.

Under the French and similar jurisdictions in other parts of the European Union the investigators work, once the crime has been reported to the police, under the supervision of a judge. Known as the juge d’instruction (loosely translated as ‘investigating judge’) this legal official has overall charge of the investigation. In his book Presumed Guilty the well known English Barrister Mike Mansfield (1992) took a French investigating magistrate through an English case from police investigation to court trial. At each stage she explained how differently the procedures were in France. Thus while detectives might get enthusiastic about leads and ‘hunches’ the judge had to avoid all this. As she explained to Mansfield:

“The principles on which I operate are essentially to be free from all external pressures, to have no ideas and no hunches, to be totally practical and know nothing about anyone. My whole intention is not to be prejudiced, not to come to a case with preconceptions and above all to protect the rights of the people.” (Mansfield 1992: 54)

In this system all the evidence, however trivial it may or may not seem, will end up in a single large document, the dossier, which is produced by the investigating judge and is equally available to defence and prosecution.

We don’t have time for any systematic comparison of the French and English systems but it has to be said that the absence of anyone resembling an examining judge at the state of criminal investigation does remove an important check on investigations going off the rails. Supervision of criminal investigation is only by other, more senior, police officers. The present system in the Uk is to rely on a Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) to review the way the inquiry is proceeding and perhaps to stand back and ask questions about why it has gone in a particular direction. There is also the possibility of external review of the progress of the investigation by officers from another force (UK police forces are regional, there is no single national police organisation). Finally, as in other jurisdictions the involvement of the public prosecutor in the conduct of the investigation may act as a brake on police coming too readily to conclusions.

But in England and Wales these are relatively recent developments. They may be seen as responses to the crisis of the ‘old regime’ of police investigations which came to a dramatic end in the 1980s. and was seen by critics as a system out of control in which detectives worked implicitly on the maxim “a little bit of evidence makes you a little bit guilty” and some evidence against you (such as being near the scene of the crime and perhaps having been under suspicion for similar offences before) could find you in the police station being persuaded to admit to the offence under investigation. At that stage all the stops were pulled out to secure a confession.

Under such a system an early arrest was particularly important precisely because it is a coercive measure that gets the suspect on police territory, which is a somewhat intimidating experience, and thus the suspect is more likely to confess to the crime. There was indeed much evidence of coercion For example a study conducted in the early 1980’s (Walkley 1987) based on interviews with 100 detectives found 43 agreeing with the statement ‘ it is sometimes helpful to slap a suspect across the face.’ But the most important evidence that something was wrong with police investigations were a number of high profile convictions later overturned as ‘unsafe.’

By the 1970s and 1980s it was clear that the legitimacy of the criminal justice system was at stake in two key areas of police corruption and unsafe convictions. It was the latter which became the focus of policy making. Following the Confait case the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure was set up (in 1978) and reported in 1981. Some of its main recommendations were carried out in two pieces of legislation

Prosecution of Offenders Act 1985 which established a separate Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) We shall deal with this in the next lecture

Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 which came into force in 1986.

1980s: defending suspects rights

Both these pieces of legislation were influenced to a considerable extent by the need to prevent miscarriages of justice such as had transpired in the Confait case. The establishment of the Crown Prosecution Service, while in no sense a form of independent judicial supervision of police investigations on the French model noted above, and not having even the powers of the Scottish Procurator Fiscal or the District Attorney in the US was nevertheless conceived of as some sort of check on police construction of cases by filtering out those which would not stand up in court or for which evidence was substantially lacking.

The 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act, while strengthening police powers in a number of respects introduced the principle of recording of police actions. In the Codes of Practice for police issued as the Act went into effect.

Street stops and searches by uniformed officers were to be recorded and a copy of the record, specifying the reasons for the stop, given to the person stopped.

Police interviews with suspects to be tape recorded. Courts can reject evidence based on confession if it is seen to be taken under duress or if would jeopardise a fair trial. (In Scotland, it should be noted, evidence based on confession alone is not admissible but self-corroboration. This is also the case in France. It was not seen appropriate to bring this principle firmly into English law) The hope was, nevertheless that this would bring to an end the type of case illustrated by Confait. Ideally, detectives would abandon the pressured interview: “you did it didn’t you- go on admit it!” in favour of a more free recall approach. “Tell us what happened then?”

However, how effective they have been is another matter. In the case of stop and search, a full 16 years after the PACE regulations came into force Home Office researchers found that only a third of such stops were being actually recorded (see Bland et al 2000).

As regards police interviews a few years after PACE, Mike McConville and his colleagues (McConville, et al. 1991) suggested that little had changed in terms of police interviews especially as regards police ‘interrogative suggestibility’. In other words the recording of interviews had not altered the power relations of the whole interview process and the fact that “Interrogation takes place in an environment which increases the vulnerability of the suspect and maximises the authority and control of the police” (page 78) Although the impact may well be uneven, the fact that the Courts can reject confession evidence if not properly produced, may have had an effect on police culture.

1990s: Efficiency and Effectiveness

1989 and 1991 saw the overturning of the Guildford and Birmingham IRA convictions. This led to a further Royal Commission on Criminal Justice which reported in 1993. The remit of the Commission was wide and covered all aspects of the criminal justice process. As far as police investigations were concerned the Commission’s recommendations were not particularly far reaching. Again, the recommendation was that confessions (unlike in Scotland) did not require supporting evidence but that police investigations should not be closed down once a confession is made. Interviewing training should be given to police officers. Videotaping of police custody suites and tape recording of witness statements were recommended.

But the political atmosphere was changing. If key legislation of the 1980s such as PACE and the setting up of the CPS had been to a considerable extent informed by a desire to prevent miscarriages of justice, by the 1990s the theme of efficiency and effectiveness in the control of crime and the conviction of offenders was in full swing. Two pieces of legislation in 1994 illustrate this shift. (though the 1990s have seen a large volume of reports, White Papers on police reform and other legislation)

The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 severely modified the right to silence by allowing court to draw inferences from a defendant’s failure to answer police questions. The Royal Commission had in fact defended the right to silence. The modification of this rule marks a decisive shift away from a due process in the direction of effective control of crime. The aim is to speed up the conviction of offenders rather than guarantee the rights of the defendant.

General police performance indicators

During the period of the Conservative governments from 1979 to 1997 the notion that public services were bloated bureaucracies in need of a dose of the competitive efficiency of the private sector gained ground. Hitherto such arguments had not been applied to the criminal justice system but this was no longer the case. The concern with rising crime and falling clearup rates made this a popular theme. The Labour governments since 1997 have continued this trend.. No-one has quite suggested that the police would have to compete with, say, private security firms to secure contracts! Rather the idea was to introduce notions of ‘value for money’ or ‘best value’ into police work.

In 1993 the government published a White Paper on Police Reform and followed this with the Police and Magistrates Courts Act 1994. This is the second piece of legislation of that year which illustrates the shift from due process to efficiency and effective crime control. This Act, besides introducing a number of changes in the local governance of police via Police Authorities which traditionally include elected members of local government, enables the Home Secretary to set performance targets for police forces within which local policing plans have to work.
The Act was rapidly followed by a consolidation of efficiency and performance oriented measures such as the 1995 Review of Police Core and Ancillary Tasks by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. The HMIC, rather like school inspectors would visit and inspect the efficiency of police forces. The 1995 review urged a refocus of police on key aspects of crime control. At the same time other bodies associated with an orientation to efficiency such as the government’s Audit Commission started taking an interest in the police and reporting on efficiency. We shall see the specific role of the Audit Commission in relation to the work of detectives presently. Finally, the White Paper of 2001 Policing a New Century: A Blueprint for Reform was followed by the Police Reform Act 2002 which, again from the standpoint of efficiency and concentration on core tasks, inaugurated an Annual Policing Plan and also created the post of auxiliary Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) to take over some of routine patrolling and also. (in July 2004 the government proposed a further increase in the number of PCSOs as part of the drive against anti-social behaviour (see lecture on crime prevention)

We have moved rather from the specific issue of criminal investigation to give a flavour of the wider changes governing policing since the beginning of the 1990s. Before moving back to focus on the work of detectives it is useful to briefly look at some more general issues raised by the new managerialism and orientation to efficiency. There are two basic issues:

How is the efficiency of a police force to be measured?

It is notoriously difficult to measure the efficiency of something like a police force. This is a common problem across the public services. Thus if something like arrest rates are used as an indicator of efficiency, any police force can appear to be more efficient just by going out and arresting more people, many for trivial crimes. If the ‘clearup’ rate is used (percentage of reported crimes for which someone is arrested) then this may be artificially inflated by getting criminals to ‘take into consideration’ more offences of a similar nature to the one for which they are arrested, or by reclassifying certain reported crimes (e.g. from burglary to criminal damage). There are similar problems across the public sector. For example, if the supposed efficiency of a University were to be measured by the amount of first class honours degrees awarded then it would be a very simple matter for academic staff to ensure that more such degrees were awarded. There would be a strong pressure in the direction of ‘grade inflation.’ Likewise if the efficiency of hospitals is to be measured by the length of waiting lists then there are various ways of shortening them such as concentrating on quick turnaround operations and ignoring the serious ones which require a long bed stopover. The general point is that it is difficult to use as an indicator of efficiency an activity which can be easily changed and manipulated by the organisation whose efficiency is being measured. A better measure might be annual local surveys of residents of how well they think the police are performing. But this brings us to the second issue: there may be a conflict between measures of efficiency and public priorities.

In 1996 the government Audit Commission produced a report entitled: Streetwise: Effective Police Patrol. This report criticised the effectiveness of some aspects of ‘community policing’ pointing out that putting more officers on foot patrol did not necessarily lead to increased clear ups for crime. The report suggested that police forces should make better use of intelligence information and focused surveillance of known offenders (we are moving back towards the work of detectives here) rather than patrolling the streets. Yet foot patrols are the most important demand that the public makes of the police and which are voiced in Community Safety Forums. Foot patrols make people feel safer even if they are not cost-effective. Reconciling these two is to some extent the aim of the new PCSOs. They have less than proper police training but are around to be seen and thus free up the police for more serious crime work. That is the idea.
By 2004 there were some indications (as this article in The Guardian suggests) that the government had begun to re-evaluate the dependence on targets and performance indicators in favour of community-led policing. However, as we shall see below, there is still (2008) some distance to travel before any change in orientation becomes noticeable.

Detectives: proactive policing and the use of informants

So how has all this affected the work of detectives? One consequence has been, as with other branches of the police, a drift to national centralisation. As far as serious crime was concerned since 1964 there have been Regional Crime Squads which pool detectives from several police force areas to deal with serious organised crime. As the latter, in particular drugs trading, has become more serious the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) was set up in 1992 and the Police Act 1997 established a National Crime Squad. At the time of writing the government has announced this is to be amalgamated with NCIS to form a Serious and Organised Crime Agency. (SOCA) But details have yet to be spelled out.

Probably the most important efficiency document oriented to criminal investigation was an Audit Commission report of 1993: Helping With Enquiries: Tackling Crime Effectively. In the context of urging a re-emphasis on core tasks of prevention and detection of crime, it argued that police should spend less time on a reactive strategy of responding to reported incidents and more time in proactive targeting of known offenders. Policing should be Intelligence-led. The Audit Commission was worried that rising crime (in fact crime rates have fallen somewhat in recent years) would overwhelm reactive policing. Police would spend all their time reacting to reported incidents and serious offenders would not be caught. There would eventually be a fall in public confidence. The Commission therefore advocated a shift in focus from targeting the crime (reactive) to targeting the offender (proactive) and as part of this a greater use of informants. The legality of using informants is now regulated under the Police Act 1997 and the The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

The Commission argued this was cost-effective. But recent research (Norris and Dunnighan 1999) challenged this on the basis that the Commission only calculated cost of paying informants vs. crimes cleared up and ignored overhead costs of police handlers, cost of initial approaches to lower level criminals that police need to ‘turn around’ as informants etc. The researchers also argued that these cost calculations ignored wider political and social costs: crimes committed by informers not acted on so as not to break the relationship with or blow the cover of the informant, or the fact that informants may act in the manner of agent provacateur; setting up crimes to catch people. The whole pressure in this direction is that informants are only of use if they are actively engaged in the criminal subculture; and to retain their credibility in the criminal subculture they have to commit crimes. Also the civil liberties implications of informants engaging in unsupervised surveillance of innocent people are not considered. The whole strategy of ‘targeting serious and prolific criminals’ has civil liberties implications. The new informant differs from the old supergrass of the 1970s in that he or she is more likely to be a permanent undercover worker for a considerable period of time rather than an arrested person who decides to ‘co-operate’ in return for a lenient sentence. In my lecture on organised crime here there are some links to material on undercover informants.

Roger Matthews, in his study of armed robbery, challenges the distinction between proactive and reactive policing. Targetting of known offenders may, for example, give rise to information about new crimes which then have to be reacted to. Conversely, in reacting to crimes, detectives come across new suspects who then have to be place under surveillance. It is not an either-or situation. Matthews also point to a potential conflict between intelligence led policing and other performance indicators. He points out, in effect that organisations like the Audit Commission are making contradictory demands: on the one hand calling for intelligence-led proactive policing and, on the other, emphasising measures of performance such as clearup rates:

“It is paradoxically precisely because the police are placed under pressure from organisations like the Audit Commission and the Home Office to reach performance ‘targets’ and improve clearups that they gravitate towards those recorded crimes that are most easily detectable and maintain the emphasis on ‘reactive’ strategies. Targeting serious and prolific criminals, placing them under surveillance and gathering information can be an extremely time-consuming activity whose outcome is uncertain. It is often easier to achieve results by ’rounding up the usual suspects’ once a robbery has been committed. (Matthews 2002: 111)

Also interesting is his argument that the nature of the particular crime of armed robbery is changing, that there is probably a decline in the number of professional robbers known to the police in favour of amateurs and novices dealing with soft targets such as off-licences, shops, petrol stations rather than banks and cash delivery vans. As firearms become easier to acquire, and as the old professional villain gives way to individuals moving opportunistically in and out of crime, the techniques of surveillance of known offenders becomes harder to sustain as something which yields useful intelligence. From this standpoint the new innovations which ,over the last few years have been heralded as new weapons of efficiency and effective policing, appear in a rather different light
Meanwhile the government still maintains the centrality of performance indicators and targets and this orientation is enforced by the Home Office, Chief Constables and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) which is the key inspection and quality assurance body for the police in England and Wales. Debate on the issue has been prominent during the current year (2008) The Police Federation (which represents police officers up to the rank of Chief Inspector in England and Wales) commissioned a number of focus groups in which serving police officers made their views known about such issues as working conditions, shortage of resources but also the effect of performance targets on the actual conduct of police work. These Reports are available on the Federation’s website. Entitled respectively View From the Front Line (oriented to uniformed officers) and Losing the Detectives (concerned with the views of CID officers) both reports contain complaints in strong terms about the alleged effect of the current regime of performance indicators on the actual focus of criminal investigations by both uniformed and CID officers.
One of the key issues mentioned is the way in which officers under pressure to meet arrest targets. As mentioned above, where the efficiency of a police force is to be measured by the number of crimes recorded or by the number of arrests made, then there is an obvious pressure to concentrate on those offences and offenders who are easiest to identify. Thus uniformed officers complain of the pressure to criminalise anti-social behaviour which would, in times past, be dealt with by a verbal warning and no further action. Such minor disturbances can, however, be subject to an official police caution which then enters the crime statistics and counts towards police targets. The pressure to use all such situations to produce a recorded crime led, many officers felt, to an undermining of police discretion in dealing with low level incidents.
As we have seen, the pressure to criminalise low level disorder, incivility or anti-social behaviour, is one of the consequences of the adoption of the orientation advocated in the ‘Broken Windows’ view. This has become reinforced by the effect of performance targets in pressuring officers to concentrate on crimes which can be most easily solved.
As regards detective work there is a similar pressure to concentrate on those crimes which can be solved (the English police jargon here is ‘sanction detections’ – crime detections which result in an actual arrest and charge) with a minimum amount of forensic investigation, detailed interviewing of witnesses and sifting of evidence etc., and go for easily solvable crime. To put it bluntly, why spend hours of detective’s time on a complicated fraud investigation when the targets could be met by arresting a few people on the streets using or possessing cannabis
In 2008 there was also published a report commissioned by the Home Office and conducted by Sir Ronnie Flanagan, currently head of HMIC, the Report, entitled Review of Policing echoes many of the points already made and adds that the focus on nationally decided police targets is an obstacle to local commanders engaging with local community priorities as regards crime and policing methods. But all this has been known for years! He makes the interesting point that the English prosecution service the CPS (see next lecture) has its own performance targets which call for a reduction in prosecutions which do not result in a conviction. The CPS accordingly will request the police to present cases with strong, well-researched evidence. This clashes with the focus on crimes which are solvable with a minimum of police time but which might be less likely to result in conviction in the courts.
What a mess. And it is a mess that has been known about for some considerable time.

references

Bayley, D. (1994) Police For The Future. New York: Oxford University Press
Baldwin, J. McConville, M. 1980. Confessions in Crown Court Trials London: The Stationary Office
Bland, N. et al. (2000) Upping the PACE? An evaluation of the recommendations of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry on stops and searches. Home Office Police Research Paper 128. London: The Stationary Office
Greenwood, P. et al. (1977) The Criminal Investigation Process. Washington DC: Rand Corporation
Hobbs, D. (1988) Doing the Business. the Working Class and Detectives in the East End of London. Oxford University Press
Innes, M. (2002) The ‘Process Structures’ of Police Homicide Investigations. British Journal of Criminology 42: 669-688
Matthews, R. (2002) Armed Robbery. Cullompton: Willan Publishing
McConville, M. et al. (1991), The Case For The Prosecution: police suspects and the construction of criminality. London: Routledge
Dunningham, C and Norris, C. (1999) ‘The Detective, the Snout and the Audit Commission: The Real Costs in Using Informants’ Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 38:1 pp 67-86
Steer, D. (1980) Uncovering Crime. London: The Stationary Office
Walkley, J. (1987) Police Interrogation. London: Police Review Publishing Co.

July 25 2014

- The arrest of a Logan security guard helped expose a global child porn ring involving hundreds of sex predators in more than 15 countries.

The two-year investigation sparked by Brisbane detectives has resulted in 174 alleged pedophiles being charged in countries including Australia, the UK, Canada, France, Russia, Denmark, Brazil, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.

Several children under the age of 10 identified during the course of investigations have “so far been rescued’ by authorities.

Most of the members of the pedophile network are thought to be in the US, where the FBI has made one arrest and is investigating another 110 suspects.

The worldwide crackdown follows a breakthrough by Queensland Taskforce Argos detectives when they raided the Logan home of “a key figure in the network’’ in January 2012.

The 29-year-old Crestmead security guard was charged with seven counts of rape and 16 counts of indecent treatment of children.

Police also allegedly uncovered a sickening stockpile of child pornography on his email account.

“We will allege he was sharing this material with hundreds of offenders around the world, including 111 in the US,’’ Taskforce Argos boss, Detective Inspector Jon Rouse, said.

“We examined all of his online activity and tracked all of his accounts. We identified who he’d sent images to and compiled briefs of evidence that were sent to law enforcement agencies around the world.’’

Acting on that evidence, FBI agents this week moved on one of the alleged US pedophiles, who police claim “communicated’ with the Logan security guard.

Guy Martinez, a 22-year-old from New Mexico, has been charged with possessing, receiving and distributing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

An investigation of Martinez’s Google email account allegedly revealed 1000 child pornography images had been “received, distributed and/or discussed”.

Martinez is also accused of using the account to solicit a 15-year-old boy for sex. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years’ in jail.

Detective Inspector Rouse said: “It’s an outstanding result and we are thankful for the support we received from our partners not only in the US, but around the world.’’

He said it was likely more arrests would be made as the investigation “showed no signs of being closed’’.

“You don’t know how deep a rabbit hole is until you start digging,’’ Detective Inspector Rouse said.

“If the countries involved have the resources to thoroughly complete this kind of investigation, you just don’t know where it is going to lead, or when it is going to finish.’’

- Neil Doorley

May 30, 2011

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s tepid response to allegations that the NYPD has leaked damaging information about the sexual assault case of International Monetary Fund ex-leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn is so out of character it makes one wonder.

“I certainly hope that’s not the case,” Kelly said of the alleged police leaks, after Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers complained that the disclosures were damaging his right to a fair trial.

Such a meek response from the police department’s micromanaging commissioner raises this question: Could Kelly be deliberately seeking to discredit Strauss-Kahn?

While this column disdains conspiracy theories, we might point out that Kelly has been known to do a favor or two for powerful and influential people who he feels can be useful to him.

And one of those people — who has been especially useful to Kelly in the past — has a tremendous interest in Strauss-Kahn’s fate.

That person is Strauss-Kahn’s political rival, French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Kelly and Sarkozy? Hold on, readers. Don’t laugh.

Here is some background. Both Kelly and his wife Veronica are Francophiles. Veronica Kelly travels regularly to France on business. Ray Kelly has traveled to France more than most people are aware.

Interpol, the international police force, is based in Lyons, France. Kelly does anti-terrorism business there.

In 2006 Kelly was awarded France’s Legion of Honor, an order established in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte. This is considered France’s highest decoration.

Who awarded Kelly the honor? Nicolas Sarkozy, then France’s Interior Minister.

It’s rare for Americans to receive this honor. Those who have are very distinguished. They include Julia Child, Walt Disney and Dwight D. Eisenhower. That’s pretty impressive company.

Kelly was inducted at the French consulate here in New York. Sarkozy, who did the honors, said France was honoring Kelly for his contributions to fighting terrorism.

Over the years, their relationship has apparently thrived.

Last summer, Sarkozy invited Kelly to Paris to celebrate Alain Bauer’s induction into the Legion of Honor. Bauer is a French criminologist and national security expert.

According to the N.Y. Post, Bauer paved the way for NYPD detectives to be permanently assigned to Paris police headquarters to guard against terror threats.

Until Strauss-Kahn was accused of trying to rape a hotel maid, a 32-year-old single mother from the African country of Guinea, he was considered the only man in France capable of defeating Sarkozy for the French presidency.

Those alleged NYPD leaks about Strauss-Kahn to the media were devastating. They involved reports that he supposedly attempted to flee to France after the alleged rape, and other reports that his DNA matched semen found on the maid’s clothing.

While this column would never suggest that Kelly might do anything unethical or improper [other than accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in freebies from the non-profit Police Foundation or having detectives from his detail chauffeur his wife around town], it is interesting to contrast his response to the Strauss-Kahn leaks with his draconian reaction to leaks in another high-profile sexual assault case, which occurred a few months before he received his Legion of Honor award.

That was the murder of Imette St. Guillen, a graduate student found raped and bound off the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn after she left a SoHo bar.

Then, Kelly was so disturbed over leaks that he launched a sweeping probe of the NYPD’s entire Detective Bureau.

Unprecedented in scope, the investigation became a witch hunt and reached the highest levels of the department.

Kelly approved the “dumping” of detectives’ cell phone records so that he could learn of their contacts with reporters.

Internal Affairs questioned at least two dozen detectives under oath, including the number two man in the Detective Bureau as well as Detective Borough Brooklyn’s entire top command, including a deputy chief, an inspector and two captains.

At the time, many saw the investigation as evidence that Kelly sought personal control over all information released by the department.

More than ever, that’s the case today. That’s why his mild response to the Strauss-Kahn leaks seems so curious.

Has Ray Kelly, the boy from Hell’s Kitchen on the West Side of Manhattan, become so overwhelmed by his associations with the rich and famous that he has lost all sense of responsibility and public service?

How else to explain his dumping of Deputy Chief James Shea from the Joint [FBI and NYPD] Terrorist Task Force.

Two months ago, Shea, the NYPD’s Number One gun on the JTTF, refused a possibly unlawful order from his NYPD superior, Deputy Commissioner for Counter Terrorism Richard D’Addario, to remove classified FBI documents.

Kelly ordered Shea transferred, but later changed his mind and kept him there.

Until this week.

Last Thursday, Kelly included Shea in a department shake up. Instead of heading the hard-charging JTTF, he will now head the Police Academy, which is something of a department backwater.

His transfer follows that of the JTTF’s Number Two, John Nicholson, who earlier this month also refused a possibly unlawful order from Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence David Cohen. Cohen ordered him to remove classified FBI documents concerning the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Kelly can, no doubt, claim that Shea’s transfer puts him on a promotion track to Assistant Chief as the head of the Police Academy has become a two-star position. [In the NYPD, Assistant Chief is a rank above Deputy Chief, which is a one-star spot.]

In addition, Kelly solves an internal problem as the past head of the academy, George Anderson, had some absentee problems with subordinates, most notably at the pistol range. Furthermore, Shea is long known to be a favorite of Anderson’s boss, Deputy Commissioner for Training Wilbur Chapman, with whom Anderson had been feuding.

Still, what about the “It’s OK-to-break-the-law” message that Kelly’s transfer of both Shea and Nicholson sends to the FBI, its so-called partner in fighting terrorism — Kelly’s stated top priority?

Put another way, how do these two transfers help the fight against terrorism when they further damage the relationship between the NYPD and the FBI?

Deputy Chief Matthew Pontillo, the Intelligence Division’s executive officer, will succeed Shea at the JTTF.

This will ensure that Cohen has someone he knows and trusts in this key spot. The question is whether Pontillo is pliable enough to get Cohen the information he wants, even if it involves breaking the law.

- Leonard Levitt

INVESTIGATION OVERVIEW

The Sheriff’s Office Investigation Bureau is where most felony crimes and other intricate matters are investigated. When a patrol deputy takes a major incident report in the field, it is routed to the Investigation Bureau for follow-up. Depending on the type of incident, the report will be routed to one of the following units: Property Crimes Unit, Violent Crimes Unit, Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault Unit, Narcotics Task Force, Crime Scene Investigations Unit, Coroner’s Unit, or the Criminal Intelligence Unit.

Detective sergeants, who report to the Investigation Bureau lieutenant, supervise the individual units. The Investigation Bureau has thirty-four detectives assigned to the various units, plus a number of clerical staff and other assistants. The combined budget for the Investigation Bureau is roughly 12 million dollars.

Detectives are selected from the deputy ranks of the Sheriff’s Office through a competitive process. Successful candidates must have a record of high performance in the patrol division and show an aptitude for detailed investigations, plus be skilled in interviewing/interrogations, report writing, and working as a member of a team. An assignment to the detective bureau reflects a high regard for a deputy’s skills and abilities. Detective assignments may go well beyond the usual three-year-mark if the detective continues to prove that he or she is the most skilled and effective individual for that position.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE/ SEXUAL ASSAULT UNIT

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office created the Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault Unit on October 1, 1996. Prior to that date domestic violence, the Violent Crimes Investigation Unit investigated sexual assault and child abuse cases. As the community was growing and VCI was experiencing an overwhelming statistical case load the new unit was formed.

The DVSA Unit was moved off site in keeping with a community-oriented philosophy. The Sheriff’s Office went into partnership with the YWCA and the District Attorney’s Office in order to create an innovative service in which three organizations are in partnership to provide service to the community in one location. The goals of the unit are being met by a three-pronged approach, which include prevention through education, suppression through enforcement and diversion through advocacy and counseling.

The DVSA Unit consists of a Detective Sergeant, six Deputy Detectives, two Support Staff, a YWCA Counselor and two YWCA Advocates. In addition, a Deputy District Attorney and Investigator handle statutory rape cases.

From the beginning, the unit has grown and is now considered a model program in the state of California, as well as across the United States.

CORONER UNIT

It is the mission of the Coroner Unit to provide competent and timely law enforcement and scientific investigations of all deaths occurring within the County of Sonoma that meet criteria as defined in 27491 of the California Government Code and to provide timely and accurate answers to survivors with regard to the deaths of their loved ones.

The Coroner Unit is a component of Sheriff’s Investigations. The Coroner facility is located at 3336 Chanate Road in Santa Rosa, California and consists of one Detective Sergeant, four Deputy Detectives, one Community Services Officer, one Secretary and two Forensic Assistants staff. Additionally, five student interns and one member of the Sheriff’s Volunteers in Policing unit serve the unit.
Sonoma County Coroner
Forensic Assistant: Esmeralda Mercado Shields
Forensic Assistant: Cecilia Garcia
Dr. Kelly Arthur

The Detective Sergeant oversees day-to-day supervision of the unit and responds in a supervisory capacity to homicide and other high profile death scenes or any scene that is considered unusual or suspicious. Other duties of the sergeant include liaison with Forensic Pathologists, attendance and participation in the Sonoma County Child Death Review Team, the Sonoma County Domestic Violence Death Review Team and the California State Coroner’s Association. The sergeant reviews and approves death investigations generated by the staff within the unit and is responsible for signing final death certificates generated from coroner investigations.

The Detectives assigned to the unit receive and investigate new reports of deaths. The screen the new reports to determine if the death falls within the criteria of 27491 of the California Government Code for deaths reportable to the coroner. Detectives respond to the scenes of death scenes in which the manner of death is being investigated as either homicide, suicide, accident, and in a significant number of natural causes deaths. It is the duty of the coroner pursuant to 27491 of the California Government Code to investigate these types of deaths.

The Community Services Officer assigned to the unit assists Detectives in performing routine follow up, locating and retrieving medical records, medical samples and x-ray images as needed. Additionally the person assigned to this position receives new reports of death from hospitals and mortuaries in Sonoma County and screens these deaths for acceptance for further investigation by the Coroner Unit.

Pathology Services:

Pathology services are furnished by Forensic Medical Group Incorporated. Their corporate office is located in Fairfield California. Forensic Medical Group has five Forensic Pathologists available to the Coroner Unit. Forensic Medical Group provides services to several nearby counties some of whom include Marin, Lake, Solano, Contra Costa, Yolo and Sacramento.

As Sonoma County averages nearly 500 autopsies annually there is one Forensic Pathologist assigned full time to serve the needs of Sonoma County.

Forensic Odontology is best described as post-mortem dental examination and comparison. The Coroner Unit’s Forensic Odontology services are provided on an as needed basis by Dr. James Wood DDS. His services typically would be called in for use in identifying burn victims or unidentified human remains. Dr. Wood also specializes in bite mark comparisons from all sources. Dr. Wood was also called into service to travel to New York following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Other Vendor Services:

In addition to contracting for pathology services with Forensic Medical Group, the County of Sonoma contracts with several other vendors to provide needed services to serve the Coroner Unit. Some of these vendors provide services for in house x-rays for homicide victims, laboratory services for toxicology, laboratory services for micro-biology, bio-hazard waste disposal, pharmaceutical waste disposal, and body removals.

Other Services provided by the Coroner Unit:

The Coroner Unit of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office provides various services to allied agencies. Homicide and suspicious death autopsies for Lake, Mendocino and Humboldt Counties are conducted on a fee basis at the Sonoma County Coroner’s facility. They are scheduled so as not to interrupt the level of service to the citizens of Sonoma County. Staff at the Coroner Unit performs death notifications throughout the county when requested by outside agencies. On occasion in the past these notifications have taken on an international theme as some requests have been received from various embassies or the State Department for deaths of United States citizens or persons who have relatives in the United States that have occurred outside the United States boundaries.

NARCOTICS UNIT

The Sheriff’s Office Narcotics Unit is one unit within the Investigations Bureau. The primary mission of the Sonoma County Narcotics Unit is to provide quality narcotic/drug enforcement within Sonoma County. The Narcotics Unit is dedicated to complementing local law enforcement agencies in effectively identifying, arresting, and prosecuting narcotic/drug traffickers in order to make the community safe. Detectives conduct investigations involving violations of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana laws.

The Sheriff’s Office Narcotics Unit is comprised of (5) Detectives, (1) Detective Sergeant. The unit is also complimented with (2) narcotic detection canines. Two of the detectives work full time under a Marijuana Suppression Program grant, which is also supported by the Domestic Cannabis Suppression/Eradication Program grant.

Two detectives currently work under the Anti-Drug Abuse grant, which the unit has been involved in for over (15) years. This grant purchased the unit’s first narcotic detection canine back in 1995.

Detectives are certified experts in the area of narcotic investigations, clandestine methamphetamine laboratories, court recognized experts, canine handler expertise, and medical marijuana laws. Detectives work with the Drug Enforcement Administration involving investigations where federal laws would be used to prosecute violators.

Illegal narcotic/drug activity can be reported to the unit. Please telephone (707) 565-2185.

PROPERTY CRIMES INVESTIGATIONS UNIT

The Property Crime Investigations Unit is responsible for the investigation of property related crimes that generally fall under Title 13 of the California Penal Code, Crimes Against Property. The Unit investigates felony crimes including, but not limited to: Burglary, Fraud, Forgery, Grand Theft, Credit Card Theft, Embezzlement, Extortion, Identity Theft, Elder Abuse, Arson, Financial Crimes, Agriculture Crimes, and Vandalism.

VIOLENT CRIMES INVESTIGATION UNIT

The Violent Crimes Investigations (VCI) unit consists of five detectives who investigate felony crimes against persons. The most common cases are homicide, robbery, kidnapping, and assault with deadly weapons. The unit also investigates officer-involved shootings involving other local law enforcement agencies via a Countywide protocol. All of the detectives in this unit receive specialized training in homicide investigation, interview and interrogation and officer involved critical incidents. There is also a civilian intern who works on missing persons cases. A detective sergeant supervises the unit.

The VCI unit is based at the Sheriff’s Office in Santa Rosa and investigates crimes in the unincorporated area of the County and the Town of Windsor. In 2003, the VCI unit investigated approximately 815 cases.

CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATIONS

Since the early 1960’s, the Sheriff’s Office realized a need for specialized investigators who had the training and aptitude for the detailed forensic aspects of investigation. The duties of the investigators at that time were primarily centered on locating, developing, comparison and the identification of fingerprints found at scenes and the identification of deceased individuals by fingerprints. The investigators were also responsible for photography at major crime scenes. Due to the detail-oriented skills they possessed, they also became the technical experts for the collection of trace evidence and scene documentation as well.

Over time technological advances have been made and as a result the role of these investigators has grown. The Crime Scene Investigation Unit Detectives are now trained on advanced techniques for latent fingerprint development and other forensic aspects of scene investigation. The Unit also performs additional skills such as bloodstain analysis, serial number restoration, indented writing development, electrostatic dust print lifting, digital image enhancement and examinations for trace evidence utilizing state-of- the-art forensic laser techniques.
In 1996, the Unit was assigned the collateral duty of Environmental Crimes Investigation. This decision was based on the Unit’s pre-existing knowledge and experience of working with and around hazardous chemicals within the Unit’s laboratory.

PATROL BUREAU

The Patrol Bureau is responsible for providing law enforcement and crime prevention services to the residents of the unincorporated area of Sonoma County. There are approximately 140 deputies assigned to our Patrol Bureau and patrol the larger portion of 1,604 square miles of land and the 63 miles of the Pacific shoreline that make up the County of Sonoma. Approximately 500,000 people live in Sonoma County with nearly a third residing in the unincorporated cities.

Deputy Sheriffs work an assigned shift, patrolling an assigned area performing law enforcement and crime prevention work. This includes serving criminal and civil warrants, making arrests, issuing citations and conducting preliminary criminal investigations. Other duties include the serving of civil process, performing transportation for the Detention Division, assisting the Investigation and the Court Security Bureaus.

Most deputies assigned to the Patrol Bureau operate out of the main office located in Santa Rosa. The remaining deputies are assigned to one of the four sub-stations that are located in Guerneville, Sonoma, Larkfield and Roseland. In addition three “resident deputies” are assigned along the Pacific Coastline. Two deputies are assigned to the Helicopter Unit and five deputies in the Marine Unit.

We are proud of our Patrol Bureau and the high standard of professional service it provides to the residents of Sonoma County. The Sheriff’s Office has divided the County into eight law enforcement zones:
Zone 1: River Zone 446.08 square miles. This zone is staffed from the Guerneville substation and covers the Sonoma Coast and unincorporated areas surrounding Guerneville. In addition to the deputies from the Guerneville substation, there are three resident deputies who patrol the coastal areas.
Zone 2: North Zone 534.63 square miles. This zone is staffed from the main office and includes the unincorporated areas surrounding Healdsburg, Cloverdale, and Windsor.
Zone 3: Local Zone 104 square miles. This zone is staffed from the main office and includes the unincorporated areas surrounding the city of Santa Rosa.
Zone 4: West Zone 65.05 square miles. This zone includes the unincorporated areas surrounding Sebastopol. This area is staffed from the main office.
Zone 5: South Zone 187.63 square miles. This zone is staffed from the main office and includes the unincorporated areas surrounding Petaluma, Rohnert Park, and Cotati.
Zone 6: Valley Zone 163.13 square miles. This zone is staffed from the Sonoma Valley substation.
Zone 7: R-COP 13 square miles. This zone is staffed out of the R-COP substation and covers portions of the unincorporated districts of Roseland, Bellevue, and Wright.

HELICOPTER UNIT

The helicopter is based at the Charles Schultz (Sonoma County Airport) in Santa Rosa and is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is typically staffed and on-duty 10 hours a day but crew members carry a pager the remaining 14 hours and will respond for emergency call-outs.

The helicopter unit responds to an average of 900 missions annually and performs more rescues than any other program in the country. Because of its nationally recognized rescue skills, Henry-1 is occasionally requested for rescues and other emergencies outside of the county where no helicopter program with matching capabilities exists.

The History

Sgt. Ed Wilkinson, who in the 1960’s, occasionally used to fly his own helicopter on patrol, pioneered the sheriff’s helicopter program. His helicopter was destroyed in a 1964 accident near Jenner. He later flew a county-owned Bell 47 helicopter beginning in 1972 dubbed, “Angel-1” and performed many life-saving missions. Angel-1 crashed in 1977 while returning to the airport after searching for a lost child, killing Sgt. Wilkinson.

Following the death of Sgt. Wilkinson, thousands of county residents signed petitions demanding that the sheriff’s helicopter program continue. In October of 1977 the Board of Supervisors showed their continued support for the program by authorizing the purchase of a Hughes 500C helicopter which was to be piloted by sheriff’s deputies. The duties of this new helicopter, “Angel-2”, were expanded to include medical transports. Unfortunately, a crash in October of 1980, killed both deputy sheriff’s aboard, Brent Jameson and Bliss Magley, as they were returning to the airport following a late night call-out for an officer involved shooting.

In 1981 the county purchased a factory new McDonald Douglas 500D helicopter which was put into service as, “Henry-1”, the name still used today. “Henry” stands for the letter, “H” in the police phonetic alphabet. This helicopter was troubled with numerous mechanical problems including five emergency landings due to engine failure. The final emergency landing in the summer of 1982 left the helicopter severely damaged on tidal rocks North of Jenner.

A radical change in operation occurred in 1983 when the county elected to lease a helicopter and a commercial pilot from a private vendor. The vendor supplied a Bell 206 (Jet Ranger) and a civilian pilot while the Sheriff provided a deputy to act as the flight crew, law enforcement officer and emergency medical technician on board. A local civilian paramedic was eventually added to make a flight crew of three, which became the standard of present day. The program was now able to accomplish law enforcement, medical, search and rescue missions.

This model of using vendors continued until 2008. During the contract years the department used Jet Rangers, Long Rangers, and eventually a Bell 407. Although the flight crews were able to perform amazing work, the program was plagued with issues that came up between the vendors and the County. In recent years, the helicopter spent many days out of service due to these issues.

After “renting” for 25 years, the county purchased a 1996 Bell 407 in 2008. This helicopter had been previously owned by the Los Angeles Police Department. The positions of Sheriff Pilot and Sheriff Paramedic were also created in 2008 to provide a method of retaining qualified people who in years past would leave for jobs with security and benefits. The department also secured a contract with a Bell Helicopter Customer Service Facility to perform all maintenance.

The Crew

The helicopter flight crew consists of a sworn deputy sheriff, called the “Tactical Flight Officer” or “TFO”, a non-sworn paramedic and a non-sworn pilot who must hold at least a commercial pilot’s certificate prior to applying. A sheriff’s sergeant supervises the unit and also acts as a TFO during flight.

A full-time deputy, supplemented by a small pool of part-time deputies act as the TFO on all flights. The TFO is responsible for overseeing and accomplishing the assigned requirements of each particular flight and is the authority in all matters concerning law enforcement and mission related decisions. The TFO is trained as an emergency medical technician (EMT) and a rescue technician.

A full time paramedic or one of a small pool of part-time local paramedics who are well known for their skills as experienced paramedics in local fire departments and ambulance companies is on each flight. They are highly trained in advanced life saving skills and are responsible for accomplishing the emergency medical service requirements of the mission. The paramedic is the authority in matters concerning patient treatment, stabilization and evacuation. He/She is also a skilled rescue technician.

The pilot is responsible for the operation of the helicopter and is the final authority in matters concerning flight safety and control of the aircraft. Two highly skilled pilots share the work load through the week. They have logged thousands of hours and are seasoned at performing the unique style of “long-line” rescue utilized by our department. To meet the program’s minimum qualifications, a pilot must have previously logged 3000 total hours; including, mountain, night flight experience and precision vertical reference “long-line” experience. They must also posses the ability to fly under stressful law enforcement and rescue missions.

The Bell 407 is a highly maneuverable, four bladed, single turbine engine powered helicopter manufactured by Bell Helicopter, Fort Worth, Texas. The Bell 407 can be flown with a single pilot and configured for up to five passengers or – in the EMS role – three crew members and a patient.

Henry 1 is equipped with:
Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR)
Wire Strikes
External Oxygen tank for medical missions
PA speakers
Dual hook system for long line rescue operations
Night Vision system (NVG)
Moving Map
Rescue Equipment
Medical Equipment

The Missions

Law Enforcement
The helicopter is utilized as an aerial law enforcement platform for assisting ground patrol units with on-view or in-progress crimes including pursuits, searches and surveillance. It is also used as an aerial platform for crime scene photography, and as an airborne observation and command center for major incidents. It can be deployed to expeditiously transport deputies to remote and/or inaccessible locations. On occasion it may be the first or only responding unit to a call in a rural area and the law enforcement crew member on board may be off-loaded to take action as needed.

Medical
The on-board paramedic assisted by the EMT-trained TFO enables the helicopter to rapidly transport patients to local hospitals as well as trauma or burn centers. Medical studies show that rapid transport to a hospital greatly increases the chance of survival for the critically ill or injured. The flight crew understands this philosophy and decisions are made rapidly to make sure the patient gets the appropriate treatment. Because of the configuration of the helicopter and the pilot/crew training and local knowledge, Henry-1 is able to locate emergency scenes and land in difficult terrain and conditions.

Rescue
The helicopter has proven itself time and time again as a very efficient tool for extricating people who may be stranded in locations where they cannot safely escape and conventional rescue may be difficult, delayed or involve a greater risk. Henry-1 regularly rescues people from cliff faces, ravines, swift water and ocean surf regions using a long-line method.

We have learned over the years that victims make poor candidates for “self-rescue”, meaning simply lowering a line to a victim or allowing them to “hold on” to the helicopter or rescue device is not sufficient. All victims rescued by Henry-1 are rescued by a crew member who is deployed into the environment with the victim by various means. This is why crew members continually train in the ocean, rivers, and lakes, on the cliffs and in the back country. They must be comfortable in these arenas.

The most common rescue involves the use of a rescue strop, or “horse collar”. A crew member is flown on the end of a 100-foot line to the victim. The crew member secures the victim in the strop and holds onto him as the victim and rescuer are flown to safety. This method has worked effectively both in the water and on land. Other options exist for evacuation including the use of spinal immobilization devices.

Search
The helicopter is a useful tool for rapidly surveying large areas for lost individuals or fleeing suspects. A forward-looking infrared camera (FLIR) may also be utilized to locate individuals who may not be readily visible due to darkness or terrain.

Fire
The helicopter is capable of carrying a 150-gallon “Bambi Bucket” suspended below the aircraft. This bucket is dipped into a lake, pond, river, or other water source and the water is carried and released over the fire. Henry-1 has been the first aircraft on-scene to fires and has assumed a role of protecting structures until more resources arrive.

CANINE UNIT (K-9)

Canine Mission
The canine(s), after having been properly trained and certified, are used for the following purposes: master protection; searching for fleeing suspects; apprehension of fleeing suspect; crowd control; and public relations demonstrations for local schools and community organizations.

Canine Training
Each patrol dog and handler K-9 team participates in extensive training with trainer Frank Romano. During their training period, the handler and dog are required to attend a 5 week training course at Golden Gate K9 in Santa Rosa, California. The teams begin with obedience, and over the 5 week course they advance to open area searches, building searches, man tracking, and evidence searching. The K9 teams are then certified by “POST” and approved for patrol work.

Upon successful completion of the Basic K9 Handler Course, the teams receive a minimum of (16) hours of rigorous training per month. The training is to ensure the efficiency of each dog and handler in all phases of their assignments.

Canine History
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Canine Unit was started in February 1970. The department began using Doberman Pinschers trained by Art O’Keefe of the San Francisco Police Department. In 1974, the department hired Dennis Jamarck. During this transition the department retired the Doberman Pinschers and began using German Shepherds. In the late 1980’s, Rottweilers were also used for patrol.

In 2013, Frank Romano, owner of Golden Gate K9, became the full time trainer for the department. The department currently uses Belgium Malinois, and German Shepherds.

Canine Assignments
Main Office, Santa Rosa: The dogs live at home with the deputies and are subject to K9 call-outs after hours. There are currently (9) patrol K9 units. Patrol K9 units work the night shift out of the Main Office in Santa Rosa. A patrol K9 is assigned to the Windsor Police Department and Sonoma Police Department.

Sonoma Coast: There are (3) patrol K9 units assigned to resident deputies working along the rugged Sonoma Coast. These resident deputies cover sixty miles of remote coastline along the Sonoma Coast and are required to live on the coast. These deputies are subject to call-out 24 hours a day and at times rely on their K9 as their only back-up.

Narcotic Detection Canines
Prior to being put into service, the canines and their handlers used for narcotic detection are trained for (5) weeks by Golden Gate K9. The dogs are trained to locate marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin. Upon their successful completion of the (200) hour Basic Narcotics Detection K9 Handler Course, canines receive a minimum of (16) hours of monthly training/certification. The narcotic teams are certified by the California Narcotic Canine Association.

Vehicle Assignments
Each K9 team is assigned his own modified patrol car is modified to accommodate the dogs. The vehicle’s have cage units to contain the dog, and transport prisoners. The vehicle’s have electric door openers so that the deputy can open the door via a remote control. The vehicle’s are equipped with a climate control system which automatically activates to keep the air conditioning unit running while the handler is away from the vehicle.

Canine Equipment
The handlers are equipped with leashes, collars, harness’, muzzles, a bite sleeve, and other related equipment needed to care for the dogs. The department provides full bite suits, and additional bite sleeves for training. The department also provides additional safety equipment for volunteers who come out to assist the K9 unit.

Questions or Comments for the Canine Unit
Sheriff-K9@sonoma-county.org.

SPECIAL OPERATIONS UNIT

SWAT Team

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office is committed to maintaining a cadre of highly trained, disciplined, and motivated deputies, who are specifically equipped and available to respond to critical and/or high-risk incidents, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.

The Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team, a component of the Special Operations Unit (SOU), consists of 20 members; including a Lieutenant, 2 Sergeants, 3 Team Leaders, and 14 Operators. Team members are given primary assignments based upon their skill level, experience, and ability. Within the team, operators can be assigned to entry, containment, chemical agent delivery, and sniper positions.

The SWAT team is equipped and trained in the use of a variety of methods for diffusing the most dangerous situations facing law enforcement. Using disciplined teamwork, specialized weapons, and tactical skills, the SWAT team works with other components of the Special Operations Unit to bring a peaceful resolution to critical incidents, such as:
Arrest of armed and dangerous subjects
Barricaded subjects
High-risk building or open field searches
Hostage situations
Dignitary protection
High-risk warrant service
Any other situation that challenges or exceeds the weaponry or training level of patrol deputies

In order to maintain the proficiency and skill level required, the SWAT team trains twice a month; one day on tactical movement and one day on firearms proficiency. Operators assigned to the Sniper Team train one additional day per month.

The SWAT team utilizes a variety of tools and weapons to accomplish the mission, including specialized weapons, ballistic shields, breaching tools, chemical agents, night vision equipment, and less lethal projectiles. Recently, we acquired a Light Armored Vehicle to further enhance our ability to operate in a high-risk environment.

In order to be eligible for the team, operators must have 3 years of law enforcement experience, exhibit firearms proficiency, and pass a rigorous physical test and oral interview. Operators are expected to be leaders and role models throughout the department and are tested continually to ensure they are maintaining the proper physical fitness and firearms proficiency required.

Hostage Negotiation Team
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Dept Hostage Negotiating Team is comprised of 9 sworn Sheriff’s Dept Personnel, 1 D.A. Investigator, and 1 Mental Health Expert. The team is deployed as part of the Sheriff’s Dept Special Operations Unit during major crisis situations involving suicidal subjects, barricaded subjects, and hostage takers. Their roll is to attempt to build a rapport with the involved person(s) and bring the situation to a peaceful resolution to an incident.

Technical Team
The Technical Team is part of the Special Operations Unit. The Technical Team is responsible for setting up the Command Center, maintaining computer systems, communications, surveillance, and also telephone insertion. The Team also coordinates with the local utilities company if required.

Breaching Unit
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Breaching Team is an integral part of the Bomb Squad and works very closely with the SWAT Team. If required they are responsible for the use of explosives for entry into buildings barricaded by armed suspects.

Tactical Team
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office recognizes that all people have the right of free speech and assembly as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and also the California State Constitution. The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office upholds the right of free speech and assembly and will actively protect those people that choose to exercise that right.

The purpose of the Tactical Team is to ensure the protection of lawful demonstrators and to take enforcement action for any unlawful civil disobedience.

The duties of the Tactical Team are to respond to all civil disobedience or disorders, riots and unlawful assemblies. The Tactical Team manages crowds, enforces dispersal orders, and protects property and if necessary arrests offenders.

Tactical Dispatch Unit
Tactical Dispatchers help facilitate any critical incident operation by organizing all incoming information and getting it to the right source. They make contacts as requested by the Tactical or Incident Commander and any other information gathering that is needed. The Tactile Dispatchers assist in many ways to insure a safe and efficient operation in any critical incident or emergency.

Tactical Paramedic Team
Developed in 1999, the Tactical Paramedic Program is a component of the Special Operations Unit. Although not a requirement, all the Tactical Medics are full-time firefighters with local jurisdictions. Tactical Medics play a vital role in our ability to contain, control, and de-escalate a critical incident, while minimizing the risk to innocent bystanders, victims, law enforcement personnel, as well as the suspect. The role of the Tactical Medic is very complex, but includes:

Ability to provide advanced, on scene medical support during high-risk operations
Ability to work within the “hot zone” during critical incidents
Assesses, plans, and provides preventative medical care during sustained operations
Coordinates both ground and air medical support units
Coordinates with local trauma centers in the event of a mass causality incident
Develops a “Medical Threat Assessment” based upon available medical intelligence
Makes recommendations designed to enhance team member’s health and performance

Since our Tactical Medics are firefighters as well, they also provide the Special Operations Unit with expertise in the areas of:

Toxic hazards-identification, risks, and management
Rope rescue skills
Building construction knowledge
Fire suppression capabilities
Forced entry knowledge and associated tools

TRANSPORTATION BUREAU

Duties and Responsibilities
Formed in 1985, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Transportation Bureau manages the safe and secure transportation of inmates. This is accomplished by utilizing trained and experienced deputies to prevent against escapes and to ensure the safety of the inmates, staff and the public.

The unit transports an average of 75 to 125 inmates each day.
Destinations of these inmates may include, San Quentin, Napa State Hospital, Norton Treatment Center, Los Guilucos, the North County Detention Facility, the Main Adult Detention Facility, courts, work crews, as well as local hospitals and medical offices.
In one fiscal year, 22,832 inmates were transported between these and other locations, with an average of 50,000 miles driven (June 2001 – July 2002).
The Transportation Unit also coordinates and executes the pickup of inmates extradited as suspects or witnesses throughout the United States and internationally.

Staff
The Transportation Bureau consists of one Sergeant, six uniformed Sheriff Deputies and two extra-help Deputies. Deputies assigned to the Transportation Unit are required to possess a Class B driver’s license, as well as a passenger transport and air brake certificate. These Deputies must also pass a biannual medical exam and are subject to random chemical testing per Department of Transportation guidelines.

Vehicles
The Sheriff’s Office Transportation Bureau has a fleet of four vehicles, including a bus capable of transporting 39 inmates and two Deputies, a smaller bus that can hold 22 inmates and two Deputies, a van that is able to hold 11 inmates and two Deputies and a vehicle that can transport three inmates and two Deputies.

MULTIPLE AGENCY GANG ENFORCEMENT TEAM “MAGNET”

Over ten years ago the law enforcement agencies of Sonoma County joined forces to combat gang violence in our communities. In 1994 the first “task force” dubbed “MAGNET” took to the streets to specifically target enforcement activities toward known gang members who were committing crimes. This multi agency team worked throughout the county, regardless of agency jurisdictions. These initial task force operations were for a specific time period. After each operational period a dramatic decrease in gang activity was seen after a few months the activity would rise again.

In 1997, the Sonoma County Chief’s Association agreed to make this effort a full time task force. Although not all agencies still participate, the majority does by either committing a member of their agency to the task force or by funding the task forces activities. Currently the task force consists of:

One Deputy Sheriff Sergeant from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office.
One officer from the California Highway Patrol
Two Deputies from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office.
MAGNET can be reached at (707) 565-7394
Agencies that assist with funding:
Cloverdale Police Department
Healdsburg Police Department
Windsor Police Department
Sebastopol Police Dept
Cotati Police Department
Sonoma Police Department
Sonoma State University Police Department
Santa Rosa Junior College Police Department
Petaluma Police Department
Links to Gang Resources:
WWW.CGIAONLINE.ORG (California Gang Investigations Association)
WWW.NAGIA.ORG (National Alliance of Gang Investigators Association)
WWW.OJJDP.NCJRS.ORG (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention)
WWW.SAFESTATE.ORG (Attorney Generals Crime and Violence Prevention center

COURT SECURITY BUREAU

“If we cannot ensure the safety of all participants in the judicial process, we cannot maintain integrity of the system, we cannot – in sum – ‘establish justice,’ as mandated in the preamble of the Constitution of the United States.”
Joint Statement, 1982
Warren Burger, U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice
William French Smith, U.S. Attorney General

In order for a society with our democratic principals to survive, there must be a neutral environment where conflicts can be resolved and the rules of the society can be tested and enforced. This forum must be free from violence and must maintain an impartial atmosphere to promote justice and equality.

Duties and Responsibilities
The Court Security Bureau is responsible for providing a safe courthouse environment for judges, attorneys, court personnel and the general public. The purpose of Court Security is to assure that order and control is maintained in the court system.

Specific duties include:
Maintaining order and decorum in courtrooms and court premises.
Patrolling courthouse facilities.
Effecting arrests, remands and confiscating contraband when necessary.
Prisoner movement within the courthouse.
Guarding and isolating sequestered juries.
Assuming responsibilities for all emergency medical, fire and bomb threats.

In the 2002 calendar year:
There were 44,856 civil matters (including probate, small claims, unlimited civil and family law) heard on a variety of calendars.
There were 10,102 traffic matters requiring court appearances.
There were over 134,000 criminal court cases calendared.
There were 44,856 civil matters (including probate, small claims, unlimited civil and family law) heard on a variety of calendars.

Goals
To deter security problems from occurring.
To detect security problems when they do occur.
To take appropriate action whenever security problems are encountered.

The Sonoma County Hall of Justice
More than 442,000 people visit the Sonoma County Hall of Justice annually. All visitors to the Sonoma County Hall of Justice must pass through fully equipped screening checkpoints at both entrances of the courthouse. Two uniform contract security officers operate each security screening station. Security officers staff the metal detector and X-ray screening device to prevent weapons and contraband from entering the courtrooms.

Any item that may be potentially used as a weapon is restricted from entry. Items such as knives and fingernail files, although not illegal to possess outside of the courtroom, will not be allowed inside of the courthouse. Weapons of any sort are confiscated and violations of security policies could result in criminal prosecution.

In 2001, security officers prevented 15,110 items from entering the Sonoma County Hall of Justice. These items included: 5,753 knives, 1,054 scissors, 437 screwdrivers, 267 razor blades, 265 canisters of pepper spray, 238 butane lighters, 46 pairs of handcuffs, 25 pruning shears, 72 credit card knives, 76 marijuana pipes, and 13 ring knives.

Staffing
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Court Security Bureau is comprised of one Lieutenant, two Sergeants and 26 Sheriff Deputies and 20 extra-help Deputies. There are also six contractual entrance-screening employees.

The Courts
Sonoma County Hall of Justice
Courtrooms 1 – 17
600 Administration Drive
Santa Rosa, California 95403 Civil Court Annex (Coddingtown)
Courtrooms 18 & 19
1450 Guerneville Road
Santa Rosa, California 95403
Superior Court
Juvenile Delinquency Division
133 Pythian Road North
Santa Rosa, California 95409 Empire College Court Annex
Courtrooms 20 & 21
3035 Cleveland Avenue, Suite 200
Santa Rosa, California 95403

MARINE UNIT

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Marine Unit is responsible for patrolling all of the extensive waterways in Sonoma County. Their mission is boating safety, education, search and rescue, and enforcement of Maritime Law, Federal Law, State Law, and County Ordinances.

The personnel assigned to this unit are cross-trained and deputized as United States Customs Agents and Emergency Medical Technicians.

The Marine Unit is staffed with one Sergeant and four Deputies, working out of a substation located at Lake Sonoma.
Sonoma County has numerous waterways. Including:
63 miles of Pacific Ocean coastline (where our jurisdiction extends out three miles);
Bodega Bay;
62 miles of the Russian River;
Lake Sonoma (with 75 miles of shoreline);
the Petaluma River;
Sonoma Creek and its connected sloughs;
and a portion of the San Pablo Bay (part of the San Francisco Bay system).

The Marine Unit accomplishes this mission through the use of four patrol boats, two of which are stationed on Lake Sonoma, one at Bodega Bay, and one on the Petaluma River. In addition, four Yamaha Wave Runners (personal watercraft) are used for a variety of assignments where the patrol boats are not practical.

RESERVE DEPUTY SHERIFF

The Position
Reserve Deputy Sheriffs are part-time, volunteer peace officers. They enjoy the challenge and excitement offered by law enforcement as well as the satisfaction of providing worthwhile community service. They serve at the pleasure of the Sheriff and are not covered by the civil service system.

Some people serve as Reserve Deputies as an avocation. Others are interested in law enforcement as a career and want to “test the waters.” We encourage either motivation.

Reserve Deputies augment the regular operations of the Sheriff’s Department by working in uniform in the Patrol Bureau. Reserve Deputies have peace officer powers when on-duty but have no peace officer powers and may not carry a concealed weapon (without a license) when off duty. New Reserve Deputies are assigned to the Field Training Program and after completion, Level 1 Reserves may work alone, with a full-time Regular Deputy or with another Reserve Deputy. Level 2 Reserves are assigned to work as a partner with a full-time Deputy Sheriff.

Reserve Deputies are issued most necessary uniforms and equipment.

Program History
Formed in 1966, the Reserve Deputy program started with 11 people, some of whom were former full-time peace officers. The number of Reserves increased over a period of several years to a high of 75. Increased hiring for full-time positions, increased educational requirements and federal legislation prohibiting many county employees from volunteering as Reserve Deputies greatly diminished the numbers.

Still, after more than 200 Reserves going full-time with our agency and other city, state and federal agencies, a core group serves the county donating thousands of hours per year.

Two former Sheriffs, Mark Ihde and Jim Piccinini, started their careers with the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office as Reserve Deputies.

General Requirements
No felony or serious misdemeanor convictions
U.S. citizenship
21 years of age or older
Good moral character
High school graduate or GED equivalent
Physically and psychologically suitable
Modules 3 and 2 of the Extended Basic Academy must be completed prior to appointment.

Application Process
Call the Sheriff’s Personnel office at 707-565-2779 and ask for an application for Reserve Deputy Sheriff. Or, download the application. Complete and return the application.

You will be notified by mail of the time and place for the next orientation and oral interview. Those applicants who successfully complete the oral interview will be invited to commence the background investigation process for further consideration.

Questions
Email Reserve Captain Mike Voorhees or call him at 707-565-8817.

DEFENSIVE TACTICS UNIT

In 1985 the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office implemented an in-house, defensive tactics training programs. The program was designed to insure annual defensive tactics instruction for all deputies and to provide annual re-certification for the instructors. The program is still active today and utilizing the most modern theories, materials, and techniques, which is exceeds all standards required by the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.

Instructors are selected on their ability to perform specific physical techniques, their knowledge of current case laws governing the use of force techniques and for their abilities to instruct others. Areas covered in training are: the legal aspects of when force can be used, including the legal aspects of escalation of force, instruction of physical tactics including unarmed defensive tactics, impact weapons, low-lethal firearms, weapon retention, mace and pepper sprays usage and the application of the carotid restraint.

Use of force classes are taught at new employee orientation, annual Advanced Deputy Training, Citizen’s Academies, to our Explorers, to our Reserve Deputy Sheriff’s and when requested, to other law enforcement agencies.

DIVE TEAM

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Dive Team is made up of full-time deputies that are trained in: Free-Diving, S.C.U.B.A. Swift Water Rescue and Surf Rescue. The function of the Sonoma County dive team is recovery of evidence, raising sunken vessels and the recovery of victims from any fatal water activity.

Members of the Dive Team train with the Sheriff’s Helicopter Unit, “Henry One”, and the Marine Unit. All divers are Advanced Open Water Divers and certified for night dives. All of the Dive Team members are NITOX certified.

Monthly training is conducted in the Russian River, Lake Sonoma and the Sonoma County coast. Many of the Dive Team members are NAUI or PADI instructors.

Their equipment is top of the line and the dive team has their own 4×4 pick-up and a 20′ “Dive Trailer” that holds all the gear and has ample room for changing and warm-up. Members of the Dive Team are subject to call-outs 24/7.

BOMB SQUAD

The Bomb Squad consists of highly trained deputies that respond to and render explosive devices safe and to provide guidelines, training and assistance to department personnel responding to explosive ordnance calls.

The Bomb Squad supplies services to other cities in Sonoma County, with the Santa Rosa Junior College and to Sonoma State University, via contacts.

The Sonoma County Bomb Squad has received assignments to assist other law enforcement agencies at such major events as the U.S. Olympics. The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department’s Bomb Squad is available to law enforcement communities outside of our county through California Mutual Aid protocol.

EMERGENCY VEHICLE OPERATIONS COURSE

Vehicle Operations Course Image
Emergency Vehicle Operations Training
This course provides training for Deputies to becoming proficient at applying the skills and knowledge to operate an emergency vehicle. Deputies begin vehicle operations at slow speeds and gradually begin applying skills at a higher rates of speed. This training help the Deputies develop good defensive driving habits as well as providing the skills needed to drive at high speeds. New Deputies are required to attend 20 hours of training. Refresher courses are required throughout a Deputy’s career. Specific areas of training covered are:

Course Outline
Slow Speed Maneuvers
Accident Avoidance
High Speed Steering Exercise
Controlled Speed
High Speed Backing
Pursuit
PIT(Pursuit Intervention Technique)

FIREARMS INSTRUCTORS

In 1992 the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office updated our Firearms Training Program to coincide with their successful Defensive Tactics Training Program. Our Firearms exceeds all standards and requirements as set forth by the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.

Our firearms instructors are certified through advanced instructor courses obtained from such recognized organizations as; National Tactical Officers Association, California Association of Tactical Officers, Gunsite Training Center, Yavapai Firearms, Morrigan Firearms Consulting, and the National Rifle Association’s Law Enforcement Training Program. The realms of expertise of our instructors include the use of semi-automatic and revolver type handguns, semi-automatic and automatic rifles, shotguns, and bolt action rifles.

Annual instruction include basic firearms training, range safety, legal update on use of force issues, low-lethal firearms, officer survival techniques, advanced firearms training, building searches, positional shooting, and SWAT tactics as well as conducting new deputy orientation, and conducting awareness lectures at the Citizen’s Academy.

FIELD TRAINING OFFICER

The management of the Field Training Program is assigned to a Patrol Lieutenant. There are Sergeants that are assigned as supervisors and it is their responsibility to prepare a six-month performance evaluation for each trainee. This program is mandate by the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training for all Deputy Sheriff’s, including Reserve Deputies.

Upon completion of the Basic Police Academy, or initial hiring, the new trainee is assigned to a two-week orientation program. The standard length of the Field Training Program is eighteen weeks. During the eighteen-week program, the trainee is assigned to at least three different Field Training Officers. The Field Training Officer completes a Daily Observation Report of their trainee and after discussing it with the trainee, turns it in to the Sergeant. A Weekly Evaluation Report then follows.

At the conclusion of the FTO program the trainee is assigned to the Patrol Bureau.

MOTORCYCLE UNITS

Motorcycle Unit
The Sheriff’s Department has two motorcycle units working within Sonoma County. The first motor unit operates in the unincorporated areas and the second motorcycle unit is stationed in our law enforcement contract city of Windsor.

The Motorcycle Unit working in the unincorporated area is staffed with one sergeant and six deputies. This unit is responsible for patrol of roadways, parks, and beaches throughout the county. The motor unit is assigned to crowd and riot control, search and rescue, crime prevention.

The second motor unit has three officers assigned and is stationed at the Windsor Police Department. This is an assignment based on the “High Visibility” enforcement of local and state traffic laws. Some of the officer’s duties include the issuing of citations for speeding and other traffic violations. The officers investigate traffic collisions, perform abandoned/unregistered vehicle abatement and enforce parking regulations. They also are responsible for DUI reduction and enforcement.

Other duties for both motorcycle units may include the general patrol of an assigned area, investigations of felony and misdemeanor crimes. The motor units also participate in crime prevention activities at local schools. The motorcycle units are featured in parades and other formal gatherings and serve as a valuable tool for public relations.

COPPS UNIT

The Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving Unit was created through a policing philosophy that promotes and supports organizational strategies to address the causes of crime and social disorder through problem solving tactics and community partnerships. Community policing enables law enforcement to create close community relationships and use a proactive approach to problem solving.

The COPPS Unit consists of one Sergeant, three Deputies, three Community Services Officers (CSO) and two Volunteers. The Deputies primary responsibilities are targeting specific community problems such as street level drug dealing, problem houses, prostitution, homeless camps and school safety programs. They also assist other units within the department and work along side other agencies to solve problems. One CSO is primarily responsible for coordinating community related events such as Neighborhood Watch meetings, Hall of Justice and Jail Tours, Safety Fairs, and safety presentations for schools and other segments of the community. In addition, this CSO provides crime statistics to members of the public and performs general office duties. The second CSO runs the Graffiti Removal component of the Unit. The primary responsibility of this position is removal of graffiti within the unincorporated areas of Sonoma County and work with land owners to prevent future incidences. The third CSO is a part-time position, and assists fellow CSOs with many of their activities and performs typical office duties. The Volunteers assists with the Abandoned Vehicle Abatement Program by tagging and removing junk vehicles from county and private property.

- Sonomasheriff.org

September 9 2014

- Claims that a woman framed her former de facto husband with child porn to win custody of their daughter have been refuted by a detective investigating the case, who found the evidence “consistent” with her version of events.

Detective Craig Brooks told Kiama Local Court on Tuesday he was “satisfied the accused was responsible” for the crimes after police discovered inappropriate photos on the SD card of the man’s camera.

The man, who can only be referred to as RW, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of producing, disseminating or possessing child abuse material.

According to Detective Brooks, the woman had no knowledge the SD card would be seized by police.

“I started to form some doubt … which was cemented when we found the images on the SD card, which she did not disclose to the police,” he said.

The SD card stored 10 inappropriate images of the couple’s daughter.

A snapshot analysis of RW’s laptop carried out at the police’s State Electronic Evidence Branch revealed 53 child abuse images, some of which depicted sexual acts involving children.

Several of those images were stored within a folder on the man’s desktop titled “New Downloads”.

Further analysis revealed more than 80 web searches for child abuse material including phrases such as “dad sex child”, “incest father daughter sex videos” and “sex pre-teen lolitas”.

It also showed a Skype account, believed to belong to the man, was being used to chat with other users while some of the searches were performed.

The court heard RW also had a program called “Little Snitch” installed on the laptop, which periodically deletes information from the computer’s hard drive.

Such programs are often used by computer administrators to improve the system’s efficiency.

Expert analysis also determined there was a significant amount of adult porn videos being viewed by the user of the computer.

The hearing was adjourned for the prosecution to examine fresh evidence. It will resume at a later date.

- Bree Fuller

- The City of Greenfield has long been acutely aware of a need to be proactive in the area of illegal narcotics enforcement. Narcotics-related violations not only degrade the quality of life of a community in general, they also contribute significantly to peripheral criminal activities such as thefts, robberies, assaults and other serious personal crimes which all create fear and further harm. Whenever possible, the Detective Division has maintained a cadre of officers whose focus lies in the complex legal arena of investigating and enforcing controlled substance violations. Each investigator receives specialized training in the areas of drug recognition, surveillance operations, legal and case law as well as related updates, search warrant preparation and execution, handling of confidential informants, presumptive evidence testing, recent trend updates and numerous other specific areas. Our investigators become true specialists and several have been recognized and allowed by both state and federal courts to testify as experts in the field. At present Detective Kevin Rowell is assigned as the Divisions’ lead narcotics investigator. He is highly proactive and very involved in investigations both within Greenfield and throughout the Hampshire and Franklin county areas through the Departments involvement in the regional drug task force. Capably supervised by Detective Lieutenant Joseph Burge and assisted by Detective Todd Clark, the unit has proven to be highly energetic and effective.

The Greenfield Police Department has acted as the administrative entity for Hampshire-Franklin Narcotics Task Force operations and fiscal management since its resurrection in the fall of 1999. Since that time Captain John Newton has acted as Executive Officer for Task Force operations and has been responsible for grant submission and reporting as well as for day-to-day operations. Comprised of a cooperative effort involving 32 Hampshire and Franklin county law enforcement agencies, the Massachusetts State Police Narcotics Unit and the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office, the Task Force continues to stand ready to assist any community within the two county area. Greenfield, being authorized by mutual agreement of participating agencies to assume the lead role in coordinating and overseeing Task Force operations, has helped to ensure that many communities have reaped the benefits of a group of dedicated and knowlegeable investigators working closely together over the years. The Hampshire-Franklin Narcotics Task Force has been the recipient of federal Edward J. Byrne grant funds awarded and administered by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security each year since 1999. This grant has been applied for annually by the Greenfield Police Department on behalf of the participating agencies based on input from its investigators on the ground advising what focal areas the funding needs to be allocated to. Funding provides the ability to pay for much that would otherwise be unaffordable such as overtime for extensive investigative efforts and shift replacement to allow investigators to do what they do best while maintaining shift coverage in their respective agencies. Funding has also purchased investigative equipment over time to include night vision units, surveillance cameras and recorders, secure radios dedicated to Task Force communications, protective equipment for officers, advanced training as well as community education and outreach programs. Even during difficult fiscal times and the potential for absence of grant funding, the Task Force lives through the dedication of commanding officers of agencies involved and even moreso due to that of the individual officers.

- GreenfieldPD

27 January 2014

- The UK government is debating whether it should opt out of more than 100 EU police and criminal justice measures which predate the 2009 Lisbon Treaty. These include Joint Investigation Teams, European Arrest Warrants and even the UK’s membership of Europol.

While the current proposal is simply to retain only those measures that best suit the UK, there is a real risk that other member states will be resistant to this cherry picking exercise – and that many hard-won, pan-European crime prevention strategies will be lost.

This is despite a number of high-profile cases that have demonstrated the benefits of well-equipped and co-ordinated international policing efforts – and others that have shown the pitfalls of insufficient cross-border co-operation.

There has been an increase in the numbers of UK police who have “taken to the air” to investigate serious crimes committed against British nationals overseas. Globalisation has encouraged British nationals to travel, work and live abroad, and accordingly, they are involved in more overseas crimes: Foreign & Commonwealth Office statistics for 2012/13 show that 310 Britons were sexually assaulted, 710 went missing, 5,435 were arrested and 6,193 died. In many of these circumstances, and particularly in relation to homicide, there will be an investigative role for UK police.

Currently there are many other overseas criminal investigations that require UK police assistance, including terrorism, piracy, war crimes and kidnappings. Most of these use the legal premise of “universal jurisdiction”, implying that the crime could be prosecuted in the UK – though prosecutions tend to take place in the country where the crime has been committed, or in the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

In most murder cases, a state’s sovereignty and territorial integrity will lead to prosecution in that country in relation to homicide committed against a British national. But the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act stipulates that “where any murder or manslaughter shall be committed on land out of the United Kingdom … by any subject of Her Majesty [it] may be dealt with, inquired of, tried, determined, and punished … in England or Ireland”. Overseas, a lack of forensic testing around the cause of death in many parts of the developing world and even the European Union may preclude an adequate police investigation. As a result, leverage from the bereaved family and UK coroners may bring about a UK police investigation conducted abroad.

This is often true of more complex cases, such as the 2008 murders of Ben and Catherine Mullany on their honeymoon in Antigua. Following a lengthy inquiry extensively supported by the Metropolitan and South Wales Police, two Antiguan nationals, Avie Howell and Kaniel Martin, were convicted of their murder. This investigation came about as a result of request for assistance by the Antiguan government for the expertise of British Police and at a significant financial cost to the British taxpayer. It was also complicated by Antigua’s continued use of the death penalty for murder. This meant that before British police officers could set foot on Antiguan soil, the British government needed assurances from the Antiguan government that the death penalty would not be enacted in this case.

The UK police faces many other potential challenges and pitfalls in carrying out overseas investigations. Aside from cultural differences and language barriers, UK police officers deal with an array of judicial processes and varying standards of policing practice. In much of the developing world, for instance, there will be little or no access to computers, DNA or fingerprinting assets; across the globe, penalties for and definitions of offences will vary.

There are also challenges in managing relationships not only with local police and international institutions (for example, Interpol and Europol) but also those UK government bodies that will have an involvement, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Victim Support Homicide Service, coroners, and various peer support groups.

In the event of the death of a British national overseas by murder or manslaughter, the Foreign Office consular section provides assistance to the bereaved family, which might include the arrangements for the body to be repatriated and updates on the progress of the local police investigation. In 2012, the FCO released a memorandum of understanding, an agreement between the FCO, the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Coroners Society that establishes minimum standards for what the bereaved can expect from these authorities.

Practical and emotional support to the family can be provided by the National Homicide Service, which is managed by the national charity Victim Support and funded by the Ministry of Justice. They can appoint a dedicated caseworker to assist with issues like funeral arrangements, counselling, translation and interpreting, legal advice, travel and repatriation. This becomes invaluable when families are dealing with complex cultural and political issues overseas.

In addition to these measures, recent cases have clearly demonstrated the advantages afforded by European policies. In January this year, it was announced that the brother of Surrey British national, Saad al-Hilli, shot dead together with his wife, mother-in-law and a French cyclist in the Alps in September 2012, had been released from police bail and would face no further action.

Shortly after the French police began their investigation, they forged a strong working relationship with Surrey Police through a formalised Joint Investigation Team (JIT). This effectively gave joint police executive and coercive powers to the French and British police when operating in each other’s jurisdiction. As a result, it brought about more effective intelligence sharing and generated quicker responses to formal requests for evidence and information.

The Madeline McCann case is often cited as an example of international collaboration, yet it was plagued for years by suspicion and a lack of support from the Portuguese police. There is now a team of UK officers working with the Portuguese authorities to bring about possible arrests after a review of the case by the UK police over the last two years at the cost of several million pounds. Investigating a homicide or missing person overseas is thus an extremely complex and costly exercise.

The JIT approach has proven to be a formidable tool for tackling overseas crime, and in particular, human trafficking and drug smuggling. Without the advantages of tools and procedures like this, UK police will continue to find it extremely challenging to serve the interests of British crime victims overseas – or to police British criminals abroad.

There is a strong argument for the establishment of a dedicated pool of British investigators with the specialist skills and professional expertise necessary to deploy anywhere in the world. These investigators could manage international criminal cases across all international legal frameworks, liaise with the relevant UK agencies and deliver consistent support and advice to the families of victims.

But without the advantages of the pan-European policies still in force, their tasks will still be unnecessarily fraught. The UK government must decide by May 2014 whether to retain the pre-Lisbon measures. As they go about their decision, we can only hope that they remember lessons of the cases described here.

- Georgina Sinclair and in collaboration with former Detective Chief Superintendent Neville Blackwood