Racketeering Trial to Show Mob's Grip on Ports

Authorities say the case against suspected New Jersey hit man Michael Coppola, as laid out in documents filed this month in federal court in Brooklyn, is a look into how organized crime controls the ports of New Jersey and New York, according to a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Two months ago, a federal grand jury in Brooklyn indicted Coppola, 62, on racketeering charges built around the corruption of the Newark arm of the International Longshoremen's Association, and a decades-old murder of a mobster in a Bridgewater motel parking lot.

Attorneys will argue in January whether that murder case should go forward.