The unknown inside story of the NYPD’s Italian-born detectives who fought both powerful gangsters and the deeply ingrained prejudice against their own beloved immigrant community
The story begins in Sicily, on Friday, March 12, 1909, at 8:45 p.m. Three gunshots thundered in the night, and then a fourth. Two men fled, and investigators soon discovered who they had killed: Giuseppe Petrosino, the legendary American detective whose exploits in New York were celebrated even in Italy.
The Italian Squad, by veteran New York City journalist and historian Paul Moses, explores the lives of the nationally celebrated detectives who followed in the slain Petrosino’s footsteps as leaders of the New York City investigative squad: Anthony Vachris, Charles Corrao, and Michael Fiaschetti. Drawing on new primary sources such as private diaries and city, state, and federal documents, this dramatic narrative history follows the Italian Squad across the first two decades of the twentieth century as its detectives battled increasingly powerful gangsters, political obstacles and deeply ingrained prejudice against their own beloved Italian immigrant community.
Vachris, Corrao, and Fiaschetti became, like Petrosino, famous for meting out tough justice to criminals who comprised the “Black Hand.” Beyond trying to prevent horrific crimes—nighttime bombings in crowded tenements, kidnappings that targeted children at play, gangland shootings that killed innocent bystanders—the Italian Squad commanders hoped to persuade society of what they knew for themselves: that their fellow immigrant Italians, so often maligned, would make good American citizens.
In this explosive story, Moses carefully strips away the mythology that has always enveloped the Italian Squad and offers instead a nuanced portrait of brave but flawed men who fought the good fight for their people and their city.

"In his new book, reporter-historian Paul Moses writes about the NYPD officers who fought the extortion racket known as the Black Hand during the early part of the 20th century—and did so from a position of ethnic familiarity. Immigrants fighting immigrants, Italians battling Italians, crime fighters operating from within the community that was being preyed upon." - Wall Street Journal

"Moses provides the definitive account of a fascinating chapter in New York City’s law enforcement history. New York history nuts will be in heaven." - Publishers Weekly

"A well-researched examination of a little-known corner of the NYPD’s past." - Kirkus Reviews

"A story of ethnic stereotypes, immigration battles, and police brutality." - New York Daily News

"For Gang Land's money, this book should be required reading for law enforcement, a reminder of how powerful organized crime can grow when it's ignored." - Gang Land

"The Italian Squad is a true-crime story expertly told and, though set in a bygone century, relevant to today’s concerns about immigration, prejudice, and policing." - PopMatters

"Historian Moses carefully strips away the mythology that has always shrouded the Italian squad and instead offers a nuanced portrait of brave, but flawed men who fought the good fight for their people and their city." - Italia Report USA

"In this explosive story, Moses carefully strips away the mythology that has always enveloped the Italian Squad and offers instead a nuanced portrait of brave but flawed men who fought the good fight for their people and their city." - The Brooklyn Daily Eagle

"Most people attracted to stories about organized crime are captured by the betrayal and violence that are part of the underworld milieu. Few realize its connection to everyday life and what it says about our culture. Paul Moses has captured a sliver of this culture through an unconventional lens—The Italian Squad of the New York City Police Department. He has unraveled the ethnic struggles and cultural polarization rooted in our immigration experience over the past 100 years. If you learn nothing more from Moses’s impressive research, fear is the emotional trigger that dispenses with rationality, logic, and civility." - Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books