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Thursday, October 17, 2019

The Sopranos Family Cookbook: As Compiled by Artie Bucco #NationalPastaDay

Nuovo Vesuvio. The "family" restaurant, redefined. Home to the finest in Napolitan' cuisine and Essex County's best kept secret. Now Artie Bucco, la cucina's master chef and your personal host, invites you to a special feast...with a little help from his friends, The Sopranos Family Cookbook: As Compiled by Artie Bucco. From arancini to zabaglione, from baccala to Quail Sinatra-style, Artie Bucco and his guests, the Sopranos and their associates, offer food lovers one hundred Avellinese-style recipes and valuable preparation tips. But that's not all!

Artie also brings you a cornucopia of precious Sopranos artifacts that includes photos from the old country; the first Bucco's Vesuvio's menu from 1926; AJ's school essay on "Why I Like Food"; Bobby Bacala's style tips for big eaters, and much, much more.

So share the big table with:

  • Tony Soprano, waste management executive "Most people soak a bagful of discount briquettes with lighter fluid and cook a pork chop until it's shoe leather and think they're Wolfgang Puck." Enjoy his tender Grilled Sausages sizzling with fennel or cheese. Warning: Piercing the skin is a fire hazard. 
  • Corrado "Junior" Soprano, Tony's uncle "Mama always cooked. No one died of too much cholesterol or some such crap." Savor his Pasta Fazool, a toothsome marriage of cannellini beans and ditalini pasta, or Giambott', a grand-operatic vegetable medley. 
  • Carmela Soprano, Tony's wife "If someone were sick, my inclination would be to send over a pastina and ricotta. It's healing food." Try her Baked Ziti, sinfully enriched with three cheeses, and her earthy 'Shcarole with Garlic. 
  • Peter Paul "Paulie Walnuts" Gualtieri, associate of Tony Soprano "I have heard that Eskimos have fifty words for snow. We have five hundred words for food." Sink your teeth into his Eggs in Purgatory-eight eggs, bubbling tomato sauce, and an experience that's pure heaven. 

As Artie says, "Enjoy, with a thousand meals and a thousand laughs. Buon' appetito!"

The Sopranos Family Cookbook: As Compiled by Artie Bucco.

Tonight, @BridgettMDavis to Discuss "The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers" on Crime Beat Radio

Bridgett Davis, author of "The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers" will appear tonight on Crime Beat Radio at 8:00 PM EST.

Crime Beat is a weekly hour-long radio program that airs every Thursday at 8 p.m. EST. Crime Beat presents fascinating topics that bring listeners closer to the dynamic underbelly of the world of crime. Guests have included ex-mobsters, undercover law enforcement agents, sports officials, informants, prisoners, drug dealers and investigative journalists, who have provided insights and fresh information about the world’s most fascinating subject: crime.


Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Check Out "The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers" by @BridgettMDavis #Books

Set against the dramatic backdrop of 1960s and 70s Detroit, novelist Bridgett M. Davis’s stirring memoir tells the story of how her larger-than-life mother used Detroit’s illegal lottery to support her family.

In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee borrowed $100 from her brother to run a Numbers racket out of her tattered apartment on Delaware Street, in one of Detroit’s worst sections. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis’ mother. Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, granddaughter of slaves, Fannie became more than a numbers runner: she was a kind of Ulysses, guiding both her husbands, five children and a grandson through the decimation of a once-proud city using her wit, style, guts, and even gun. She ran her numbers business for 34 years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: “Dying is easy. Living takes guts.”

A daughter’s moving homage to an extraordinary parent, The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers, is also the suspenseful, unforgettable story about the lengths to which a mother will go to “make a way out of no way” to provide a prosperous life for her family — and how those sacrifices resonate over time. This original, timely, and deeply relatable portrait of one American family is essential reading.

A celebration of Detroit in its heyday, an inside look at how The Numbers powered African-American communities, and a daughter’s homage to a beloved parent, The World According to Fannie Davis is a moving, suspenseful story about the lengths to which a mother will go to provide for her family — and the way those sacrifices resonate over time. This original, timely, and deeply relatable portrait of one American family is essential reading.


Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Alleged Mob Hit Attempted on Victim Reputedly Affiliated with the Hells Angels

The Sûreté du Québec has taken over the investigation of a late-night attempted murder in a town southeast of Montreal because they suspect the shooting is related to organized crime.

Around 11 p.m on Saturday, officers with the Régie intermunicipale de police Richelieu-St-Laurent responded to reports of shots fired on Rancourt St. in St-Amable, a town about 40 kilometres southeast of Montreal. When they arrived, they found a man who had been shot at least once, an SQ spokesperson said.

“It is a man in his 30s and he was taken to a hospital. His life is not in danger,” the spokesperson said. “The Sûreté du Québec’s major crimes division is working with the Richelieu-St-Laurent police on the investigation. And the reason why the Sûreté du Québec is involved is because the event is related to organized crime.”

According to La Presse, the victim is a 39-year-old man who has been reported in the past to have been the president of the Devils Ghosts, a support club of the Hells Angels. The SQ spokesperson was unable to confirm the victim’s identity or his age.

According to court and municipal records, a 39-year-old man who was arrested and charged with seven other people, in 2016, currently resides on the same street and close to the intersection where the shooting occurred late Saturday night.

The eight people charged in 2016 were arrested as part of Operation Noria, an investigation by the Regional Mixed Squad based on the South Shore into a cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking network that was believed to be tied to the Hells Angels’ South chapter.

The 39-year-old man identified as the victim in La Presse’s story faced five drug trafficking charges in Operation Noria, but all five of the criminal accusations were placed under a stay of proceedings in March last year.

The same man has a criminal record that includes convictions for breaking and entering and impaired driving.

No arrests have been made in connection with the attempted murder.

Thanks to Paul Cherry.

Wednesday, October 09, 2019

Bloods Gang Members and Associates Indicted For Racketeering And Violent Crimes Including Murder, Murder Conspiracies, Robberies and Narcotics Distribution #ProjectSafeNeighborhoods

A superseding indictment was unsealed in federal court in Central Islip variously charging six members and associates of the Red Stone Gorillas “set” of the Bloods street gang with racketeering, murder, robberies, narcotics trafficking and firearms offenses. The superseding indictment adds five new defendants, Jimmy Dean, Roger Foster, Corey Belcher, Willie Belcher and Eric Ross. Those defendants were arrested in various locations on the East End of Long Island, and were arraigned before United States District Judge Joanna Seybert. Two defendants, the gang’s alleged leader Jimmy Dean and Terrill Latney, were already in custody, and will be arraigned at a later date.

Richard P. Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; William F. Sweeney, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), Timothy Sini, District Attorney, Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office (SCDA), Geraldine Hart, Commissioner, Suffolk County Police Department (SCPD), Keith M. Corlett, Superintendent, New York State Police (NYSP), and David J. Hegermiller, Chief, Riverhead Police Department, announced the charges.

“Through murder, assaults and drug sales, these members and associates of the Bloods’ Red Stone Gorillas posed a grave danger to communities on eastern Long Island,” stated United States Attorney Donoghue. “This Office, together with our federal and local law enforcement partners, will continue working tirelessly to prosecute defendants like these and eradicate violent street gangs throughout Long Island.” Mr. Donoghue expressed his grateful appreciation to the FBI’s Long Island Gang Task Force and the Suffolk County East End Drug Task Force for their work on the case.

“These arrests are the culmination of several years of intensive investigation to take out the worst-of-the-worst gang members terrorizing Eastern Long Island communities,” stated FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Sweeney. “These subjects have allegedly created such a violent environment in parts of the town where they operate that they were dealing out in the open, without fear. We put a huge dent in that practice with the first round of arrests in this case, and today's action shows our FBI Long Island Gang Task Force and our law enforcement partners won’t stop until all of them are rounded up.”

“These are extremely dangerous gang members who are responsible not only for conspiring to commit murder, but for consistently driving crime on the East End through drug dealing and illegal firearm offenses,” stated Suffolk County District Attorney Sini. “Eradicating violent street gangs from our community is a top priority for my office. I thank all of our federal and local law enforcement partners for their continued partnership in the investigation and prosecution of gang members.”

“These Blood gang members and their associates engaged in violence and trafficked large quantities of narcotics for years on the East End of Long Island. Thanks to the diligent work of the FBI’s Long Island Gang Task Force and the Suffolk County East End Drug Task Force— they have been stopped and will be held accountable for their heinous crimes,” stated SCPD Commissioner Hart. “The department will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to rid our communities of violent street gangs.”

“I commend our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners for their commitment to Project Safe Neighborhoods,” stated NYSP Superintendent Corlett. “The arrests of these criminals are proof that, together, we are making our neighborhoods safer. Through our collaborative efforts, we will continue to target and apprehend gang members like the Blood Gang so they can no longer endanger the lives of New Yorkers through their heinous activities.” 

“We truly appreciate the unprecedented cooperation and assistance from our federal, state and county law enforcement partners in helping us to remove these criminals from our local communities here on the east end of Long Island,” stated Riverhead Police Chief Hegermiller.

As detailed in the superseding indictment and other court filings by the government, the defendants’ gang committed acts of violence and distributed large quantities of crack cocaine, powder cocaine and heroin in the Riverhead area on Long Island for nearly a decade. On November 17, 2015, while attempting to carry out Dean’s order to kill an individual, Latney, and others fatally shot Thomas Lacolla as he sat in the intended victim’s car. On August 1, 2015, Foster and others shot and wounded a suspected member of the rival Crips gang and a female bystander. Following Dean’s arrest in 2016, Latney, Foster and others assumed control of the gang’s drug distribution operations. 

The charges in the indictment are allegations, and the defendants are presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty.  If convicted, the defendants face maximum sentences of up to life imprisonment.

This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and make our neighborhoods safer.  The Department of Justice reinvigorated PSN in 2017 as part of the its renewed focus on targeting violent criminals, directing all U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to work in partnership with federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement and the local community to develop effective, locally based strategies to reduce violent crime.

The government’s case is being handled by the Office’s Long Island Criminal Division. Assistant United States Attorneys Nicole Boeckmann and Michael Maffei are in charge of the prosecution. 

The Defendants:

Terrill Latney (also known as “Motis” and “Mo”)
Age: 39
Riverhead, New York

Corey Belcher (also known as “Dot”)
Age: 34
Riverhead, New York

Willie Belcher (also known as “Thug”)
Age: 33
Flanders, New York

JImmy Dean (also known as “Jim Dick”)
Age: 41
Calverton, New York

Roger Foster (also known as “RJ” and “YG”)
Age: 22
Baiting Hollow, New York

Eric Ross (also known as “Smurks”)
Age: 27
Flanders, New York

E.D.N.Y. Docket No. 18-CR-606 (S-2) (JS)

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