At least eight police agencies in three countries spent $8m to bust nine guys with Italian names a couple of years ago. The cops made some extremely generous claims at the time, such as these dudes were kingpins in an organized crime network pulling in some $80b (that's billions, with a "b") per year. As of today, the entire case has gone down the toilet.
The latest iteration of shady groups threatening our way of life, for the moment, are the domestic terrorists. But before that, we had radical Islamists, before that biker gangs, and way back when, the original threat to law and order and democracy were the Italian immigrants who brought their "secret societies" with them.
Anti-Italian racism used to be brazen, vicious, and 100% socially acceptable. Unless of course you found yourself living in an Italian 'hood, in which case you inevitably found yourself making friends with your neighbours. It also tended to make you skeptical of the hyperbole you find in news media on the topic of "organized crime."
This kind of headline case pops up fairly predictably, and most of the time they turn out to be a lot of sturm und drang about not very much. These investigations keep lots of cops busy infiltrating and surveilling, often for years on end. That's gotta be a fun gig... maybe even better than the OPP Marine Unit, those guys who have the really tough job of lounging around on powerboats all summer. I was out at Cedar Hill beach one time and I swear I saw an OPP patrol boat cruise by with downriggers in the water.
No shit!
But I digress...
My point is, these cases collapse because there wasn't much to them in the first place. But it keeps a lot of cops busy doing fun and exciting undercover work. Don't expect this headline grabbing strategy to go away anytime soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment