Lieutenant Petrosino Exhibit September 28, 2009

Giuseppe Petrosino, an immigrant from Salerno who became the New York City Police Department's first Italian-American detective, waged a valiant battle against the Black Hand, a loosely-knit criminal organization that extorted money from Italian immigrants. He founded the Bomb Squad, the first unit of its kind in the United States, to counter the Black Hand's use of explosives in carrying out its extortion threats. From 1905, Petrosino and the "Italian Branch," an elite corps of Italian-American undercover cops, arrested thousand of members of the Black Hand, deported 500 and reduced crime against Italian-Americans by half. Petrosino was murdered in 1909 in Palermo, Italy, where he had gone to gather intelligence about Black Hand members. His funeral was attended by 200,000 people and the vast funeral procession lasted five and a half hours. He is the only NYPD officer killed in line of duty outside the U.S.