Crime Beat Read Online Free PDF

down to Miami two years ago to sit in on a hearing held by the Presidential Commission on Organized Crime. The witness that day had once been a major narcotics supplier to New York City. He sat with a black hood over his head and testified about the inner workings of organized crime.
    When the witness was finished, one of the commissioners leaned toward his microphone and asked the man what he thought law enforcement was doing wrong. How come organized crime still flourished, despite all the task forces, the commissions, the police agencies, the money spent to combat it?
    The witness didn’t hesitate. You people have to start communicating, he told the commission. Police have to cooperate with each other. It’s the only way.
    “Now that sounds kind of strange coming from the mouth of a criminal,” says Raabe. “But he hit it right on the head. Crime doesn’t stop at the county or city line. There are no boundaries. So the only real hope of law enforcement on any level is cooperation.
    “Networking. And that’s what MIU is all about.”
    By quietly documenting the activities of mobsters in Broward County, MIU has become a clearinghouse of intelligence on organized crime activities for federal, state and local authorities. Nicky Scarfo was only one of MIU’s targets. Other tales from the Open Territory read like movie scripts.
    Even so, MIU remains one of Broward’s best-kept secrets. It doesn’t seek headlines. “It’s not a glamour group going out to make arrests,” says Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Ron Cochran, a member of MIU’s board of directors. “It has always been behind-the-scenes work. The arrests go to other agencies.”
    “We’re bricklayers,” explains Detective Raabe. MIU’s operatives help build the cases, put the foundations in place. But they usually aren’t around when the building is finished.
    I T GOES BACK to the days of Capone and Lansky. For half a century, mobsters have come to South Florida to vacation, to retire, or to stay out of reach of the northern police agencies that watched their every move.
    “South Florida,” says Raabe, “has always been seen by these people as a place where they could be at their leisure, and not worry about being watched by that Philly or New York detective who has been on their back for 20 years.”
    And Broward County has always been one of the mob’s favorite hideaways. By the end of 1985, law enforcement agencies had identified over 600 members and associates of traditional organized crime mobs as residents, full- and part-time, in Broward. They ranged from soldiers to dons. Paul Castellano, head of New York’s Gambino organization until his murder in front of a steakhouse in 1985, had a home in Pompano Beach. Gus Alex, an aging, reputed leader of the Chicago mob known as The Outfit, has a Fort Lauderdale address. So did Chicago mob boss Jackie Cerrone until he was imprisoned recently. And so on.
    “Organized crime is a growth industry and there is money to be made in Broward County,” explains MIU Detective Curt Stuart. “It is safe to say we have seen the interest of all 28 of the nation’s organized crime families here.”
    What that means is that the Open Territory is like few other places where traditional organized crime is found.
    “In a city up north, law enforcement has to know the members of maybe one or two crime families,” says Sgt. Ken Staab, an MIU supervisor. “Down here we have to know all the families because we’ve got them all.”
    And that’s why there is an MIU.
    Twice in the early 1980s, grand juries evaluating efforts to stop organized crime in Broward concluded that the law enforcement structure seemed ideally suited for the expansion of organized crime.
    Investigations were undermanned, efforts fragmented along lines of departmental jurisdictions and jealousies. MIU was established in 1983 after two other task forces had been formed and dismantled because of the same problems.
    MIU has a $2 million budget,