Joe Petrosino (2006) stars Giuseppe Fiorello, Cristina Capotondi, and Anna Ammirat, and was written by Jim Carrington and Andrea Purgatori. ""Joe"" (Giuseppe) Petrosino (1860-1909) was an NYPD officer who was an early pioneer in the fight against organized crime. The various crime-fighting techniques he implemented during his career are still practiced today by law enforcement agencies in the fight against crime. Petrosino came to the United States in 1874 from Padula (Salerno, Campania). In 1883 he joined the New York Police Department. In 1895, Theodore Roosevelt (then police commissioner of New York City) promoted him to Detective Sergeant in charge of the department's Homicide Division. The first Italian American to lead such a division, the height of his career came in December of 1908, when he was promoted to Lieutenant and placed in charge of an elite corps of Italian-American detectives (The Italian Squad) specifically assembled to deal with the criminal activities of the Mafia and other illegal organizations, which Petrosino considered a blight on Italians in both his adopted country and back home in Italy. On March 12, 1909, Petrosino was gunned down in Piazza Marina in Palermo, Sicily, while on a secret mission to combat the Mafia.
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