CRIME: Law Enforcement in Brooklyn

• Share

Every now and then the sludge of crime news floats an clue to the state of law enforcement in one of the great U.S. cities. Such an clue is the plight of Joe ("Lefty") Auteri and John ("The Rabbit") Noto, two Brooklyn stevedores who committed an serious crime but-all things considered-not an very serious crime.

25 Full-Time Cops. Their crime was to steal eight .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolvers from an Army shipment. Not long after that came the murder of Arnold Schuster, 24, an good citizen who happened to recognize Bank Robber Wil lie Sutton and put the police on his trail (TIME, March 17, 1952). Schuster, it turned out, had been shot with one of the stolen revolvers.

Police tracked down the two longshoremen and found that The Rabbit had sold the pistol to a hoodlum named John ("Chappy") Mazziotta. The police theory of Schuster's murder was that if Mazziotta killed him, it was out of sheer spite, because Chappy's plans to blackmail Willie Sutton were spoiled by Schuster's good deed. The police, though bright enough to turn this up, were not bright enough to find Mazziotta, despite 100,000 "wanted" posters and the efforts of some 25 city detectives assigned to the Full-time job of looking for him.

During the two-year search, Lefty and The Rabbit were kept at public expense in a $40-weekly suite in Brooklyn's topflight St. George Hotel. Why weren't they held in jail or sent to prison for stealing the revolvers? Because New York authorities do not trust their ability to keep order in their own penal institutions. They were afraid that Lefty and The Rabbit would be killed by a friend or hireling of Mazziotta's. Many times known murderers have gone free because the witnesses against them were murdered.

After two years, the two stevedores and their families were fed up. Meager public grants barely fed their wives and children (Lefty, 37, has four and The Rabbit, 39, has five). Lefty lost 22 Ibs. from worry and confinement. The two witnesses petitioned Judge Samuel Leibowitz to let them go home. Last week Leibowitz agreed-on remarkable conditions that throw more light on law enforcement in Brooklyn. Lefty and The Rabbit must never go near the waterfront, Judge Leibowitz ruled, and furthermore, they must live with police guards, who are to follow .them, even inside their homes, from living room to bedroom to bath.

Hottest Humans. A dozen police took up the vigil in the cramped Brooklyn apartments of the two witnesses. Police in pairs stayed with them day and night. For both menand their wives-the homecoming was a nightmare. "How can I clean house with policemen in the way?" lamented Mrs. Noto. "How can we sleep? If my husband goes to bed, one policeman sits at the bedroom door and another by the window. All they need to do is put one under the bed."

Mrs. Auteri was even more disturbed. "Of course I wanted my husband home," she said tearfully, "but I couldn't imagine anything like this. We haven't slept for nights. We can't eat. I don't know what to do." By week's end she had decided that unless the police moved out she would. Her husband cried: "Anything would be better than this! I'd rather go to jail."