Chicago Police Star Flashed by Accused Mobster

Friends of ours: Frank Calabrese Sr.,
Friends of mine: Anthony "Twan" Doyle, Michael Ricci

He's accused of working for the mob, yet he still carries a Chicago Police star.

When retired cop Anthony Doyle arrived at federal court Wednesday for opening statements in his trial, he flashed security officers a badge and police photo ID.

There's nothing improper in Doyle using the retirement badge he received for 20 years of service as a decorated officer, said his lawyer, Ralph Meczyk. Doyle didn't get special treatment, Meczyk said. It's the same as a citizen using a driver's license as proof of ID, he said.

Doyle, 62, joined the Chicago Police Department in September 1980 and retired in June 2001 on a pension, police spokeswoman Monique Bond said. He worked in the police Evidence and Recovered Property Section in the 1990s, records show. And he was arrested at his Arizona home in 2005 and charged with agreeing to pass messages from reputed mob boss Frank Calabrese Sr. to other Outfit members while Calabrese was in prison. In addition, Doyle allegedly kept Calabrese abreast of an investigation into a gangland murder.

Doyle's nickname is "Twan," short for Anthony, according to federal authorities. But he also is mysteriously referred to as "Captain Crunch" in one court document. At the time of his arrest, he was a member of the Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff's Posse, an auxiliary police unit.

Another former Chicago cop, Michael Ricci, also was a co-defendant in the mob case. He died last year.

Thanks to Frank Main and Steve Warmbir

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Using Intel to Stop the Mob (Part 1)

Friends of ours: Al Capone, Lucky Luciano

Seventy-five years ago this December, one Special Agent B.E. Sackett penned a short article for Bureau employees on what he called "organized crime conditions in Chicago."

By 1932, organized crime in the U.S.—though a shadow of what it is today—had started to get its legs. Al Capone, who with the help of the Bureau had just landed in federal prison, had built an empire of crime in the Windy City that would continue to morph and grow. An extensive underground of hoodlums, racketeers, and gangsters had emerged in response to Prohibition and was thriving. Hundreds of rackets that used threats of violence to force businesses to ante up a percentage of their profits for "protection" existed throughout Chicago and other cities. In New York, "Lucky" Luciano had risen to power in the Mafia and was beginning to shape it into the structured, secret society of criminals that we know today.

A "valuable weapon" against these criminal rings, Agent Sackett thoughtfully stated in his article, was "accurate information"—details on the key players, their interlocking connections, their tactics and capabilities. He talked about how Chicago agents had begun building this base of knowledge, through informants and other contacts and through an extensive index of pictures and background on more than "three hundred of the notorious criminals and members of their gangs."

He didn't call it "intelligence," a concept that was still in its infancy, but that's essentially what it was. The approach was strategic, thinking about a criminal network in larger terms, gathering information and insights to take out entire criminal organizations and their support and not just select individuals, and thus preventing a litany of future crimes.

This picture of the underworld would grow in the coming years and yield significant results for the young Bureau and its partners. We would begin puncturing these networks—exposing their activities for all of law enforcement, undercutting their support structures, and tracking their most dangerous actors and elements much in the same way that we now do with terrorist cells plotting attacks on U.S. soil.

A few examples:

• In August 1933, we prepared a detailed analysis of organized criminals and the various ways law enforcement had succeeded in stopping them. We outlined more than a hundred "rackets" in Chicago that extorted money from electric sign companies, "candy jobbers," dental labs, and others. This analysis helped paint a picture of the threat for all of law enforcement.
• When John Dillinger was on the run for a violent string of bank robberies, we put pressure on the many connections he and his gang had to all levels of the underworld—precisely because we had mapped out these connections. With the extensive cooperation of many police forces, this allowed us to track his movements and ultimately generated the leads that led to his death in a shootout outside a Chicago theater in July 1934.
• We learned everything we could about the enablers of organized crime: money launderers and fences, both organized and freelance, who helped criminals hide their loot from the law; shady doctors who performed backroom plastic surgeries to help disguise mobsters and shyster lawyers who helped shield them from justice; and the corruption-backed "spas" and criminal safe havens in places like Hot Springs, Arkansas, and St. Paul, Minnesota, that mobsters used to rest, recruit comrades, and plan their next moves in relative safety.
• Working with our law enforcement partners, we started building the criminal justice support system that has enabled a coordinated, layered attack against both criminal and terrorist networks, which includes national criminal records and crime stats…cutting edge forensic science services…and extensive training for law enforcement professionals.

In Chicago and elsewhere, the fight against organized crime had just begun. And so has our story. In the next few months, we'll run a series of articles tracing how we've used intelligence to take on mobsters and even decimate entire crime families in different times and different places over the past seven decades. Stay tuned!

Thanks to the F.B.I.

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Defending Frank Calabrese Sr.

Friends of ours: Frank Calabrese Sr.

A reader wanted to paint another side of Frank Calabrese Sr.

I know an entirely different person than the one portrayed in the papers and on the news. After my husband deserted me and my two children, I was looking for an apartment and no one wanted to rent to a single mother with small children. Everywhere, I went people had different excuses for not renting to me. I noticed a small house in Elmwood Park that was vacant and left a note in the mailbox with my number. Mr. Calabrese called me back and said he would be happy to rent the house to me and my family. I lived in that home for 18 years and in that time span he would put an envelope in the mail so Santa could buy my children gifts. If he saw them playing in the yard he would tell them to pick-up the old newspapers and he would give them $10.00. I saw his sons grow up to be fine young men and fathers and I had a great relationship with his family.

This man is not heartless, he has a soft spot for kids. Over the years I remember seeing him with his boys and they were happy. I think things changed when he remarried and started a new family. There is always a certain amount of jealousy when it happens. I've learned that know matter how much you do for your family it is never enough. I pray for this family daily and I just felt I had to send this to let someone know that there are two sides to every story.

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