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with each member agency paying the salaries of participants and sharing the overhead. Investigators currently come from police departments in Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, Hollywood and Plantation, along with the Sheriff’s Office, the State Attorney’s Office and the state Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco. The head of each agency sits on MIU’s board of directors.
    “A frequent criticism of law enforcement is that it is too parochial,” says Cochran. “While a parochial approach may be adequate in some areas, we feel the best way to go against organized crime is consolidation of expertise. We began with the ambition of creating a first-rate intelligence unit. And I’m satisfied it is one of the best in the country.”
    MIU directors and detectives often point to the Scarfo case as an example of what the unit can accomplish.
    I NVESTIGATORS SAY that Nicodemo Scarfo’s interest in Broward County coincided with his release from prison in 1984 and rise to the top of the Philadelphia/Atlantic City mob. The diminutive, 57-year-old Scarfo has a criminal record that includes manslaughter and illegal possession of a firearm.
    The Philly-South Jersey organization had been run by the “Docile Don,” Angelo Bruno, until he was gunned down outside his home in 1980. Nicky took over after Bruno’s successor, Phil Testa, was killed by a nail bomb. Investigators say at least 17 mob-related murders occurred in the City of Brotherly Love during Scarfo’s rise to the top of the rackets.
    That rise brought Scarfo billing on Fortune magazine’s list of the most powerful and richest mobsters in the country, his money allegedly coming from unions, numbers, loan-sharking, extortion and gambling.
    The indications are that Scarfo was looking to move up the Fortune list. He started routinely making lengthy visits to Fort Lauderdale. In 1985, he set up his southern operations on Northeast 47th Street near the Intracoastal Waterway, in a two-story, Spanish-style house with an iron gate out front. He put up a sign on the front wall that named the place Casablanca South. The yacht docked out back was also called Casablanca, but there was a smaller postscript painted below the name. Usual Suspects, it said, a wry reference to the police inspector’s instruction in the famed Bogart movie: “Round up all the usual suspects.”
    It’s a funny thing about the house and boat, Detective Drago says: Scarfo didn’t own them. Investigators are still trying to learn how he came to control them.
    “Nicky liked the house and the boat,” Drago says. “So he took them. When Little Nicky wants something, he just takes it. You don’t argue.”
    By all estimates of law enforcement authorities, Scarfo wanted to take Broward County, or at least part of it. Florida had an upcoming referendum on casino gambling, and investigators believe that Scarfo was preparing to direct organized crime’s interests if casinos came to pass.
    A decade earlier, Scarfo had done the same thing in Atlantic City. The President’s Commission on Organized Crime named him as the chief figure behind the mob’s influence in the casino construction industry there. Coincidentally, MIU investigators say, contractors who bid against the mob companies had a tendency to get killed.
    Shortly after Scarfo arrived in Fort Lauderdale, the FBI initiated what was called the Southern Summit, a law enforcement conference on organized crime influences in the South. They named Nicodemo Scarfo as their primary target and directed MIU, a relatively unknown agency less than two years old, to work in concert with investigators building cases in New Jersey and Philadelphia against the reputed mob lord.
    MIU would turn out to be a major conduit of raw intelligence on Scarfo, the reason being that Scarfo believed he had a free rein in the Open Territory.
    “He was a priority up here, but I’m sure he thought he wouldn’t be much of a priority down there,” says Sgt. Bill Coblantz of the