Friends of the Family by Tommy Dades Page B

of the Eppolito family had been murdered in mob hits. They knew that he liked playing the role of a wiseguy; he dressed large, spoke loud, and carried a big ego. In Mafia Cop, Eppolito’s coauthor wrote that Eppolito told him he had committed “a litany of felonies while wearing the badge, but they were all in the name of ‘honor’ and ‘respect.’”
    Caracappa, they knew, fit the role of the quiet sidekick. Caracappa played Ed Norton to Eppolito’s Ralph Kramden—if those two TV characters had been cold-blooded killers rather than city workers.
    They knew that Eppolito and Caracappa had attended the police academy at about the same time and first worked together under Larry Ponzi in the Brooklyn Robbery Squad. And that in 1984 Caracappa had become a member of the Major Case Squad, an assignment that gave him easy access to the department’s most sensitive investigative information. And that three years later he assisted in the founding of the Organized Crime Homicide Unit inside the Major Case Squad, giving him routine access to highly confidential intelligence about the FBI and the NYPD’s plans to attack the Mafia—particularly the Lucchese family.
    They knew that although Eppolito and Caracappa had separate assignments most of their careers, they remained close friends and were often seen together.
    And they knew that, once before, Eppolito had been caught apparently working with the mob—and had gotten away with it. In March 1984, police had raided the Cherry Hill, New Jersey, home of Rosario Gambino, a capo in the Gambino crime family. Gambino had been indicted for selling heroin and had been on the run for almost a year. During the raid they recovered thirty-six law enforcement reports—and found Detective Louis Eppolito’s fingerprints on several of them. It didn’t seem like a coincidence. An investigation discovered that one afternoon Eppolito had shown up at the offices of the Intelligence Division supposedly to ask detectives questions about the case. He told them that he had recently seen Gambino at a Brooklyn restaurant and was curious about the status of the investigation.
    The documents found in Gambino’s home were copies—the originals were still on file at Intel. How they got from Intel to the house was the story of the fingerprints. Eppolito was brought up on departmental charges. But to the absolute astonishment of just about every cop who knew how the disciplinary system functioned, Eppolito had managed to beat the case. No matter which way you turned it, it didn’t make sense.
    Mike Vecchione in particular always believed that something very unusual had taken place inside the trial commissioner’s courtroom. The trial commissioner’s office is where the police police themselves. Under New York State law a police officer is a civil servant and enjoys all the protections of the civil service code. So no matter what violation or even crime a cop might be charged with committing, from minor infractions like being absent from a post to extremely serious charges like murder, the city can’t penalize or suspend them, or fire them or take away their pension, without giving them due process. In the police department due process means a full administrative proceeding in front of an independent hearing officer, a judge, with the right to confront witnesses and face your accuser. The hearing takes place in a courtroom setting and it is conducted just like a civil trial. The primary difference is that there is no jury; the judge makes all the decisions.
    Most cops consider it a kangaroo court. They think it’s stacked against them: No cop who goes in comes out innocent. That’s what made the whole Eppolito case so strange.
    In 1980, while Dades was out on the street, Mike Vecchione had left the Brooklyn DA’s office and accepted Police Commissioner Bob McGuire’s offer to become the NYPD’s Chief Prosecutor. “I prosecuted hundreds ofcases against cops as well as supervising a forty-person