Heroic Police Officer, Lt. Joseph Petrosino To Be Honored With Commemorative Markers At Park Bearing His Name
NYPD officials and NYC Parks to dedicate bronze markers honoring heroic police officer Lt. Joseph Petrosino.
The project has been sponsored by the Columbia Association of the NYPD and the Lt. Joseph Petrosino Association of America, Inc., in collaboration with the Italian American Museum and the New York City Parks’ division of Art & Antiquities.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
11:30 A.M. to 12:00 P.M.
Lt. Joseph Petrosino Square
Kenmare Street, Lafayette Street, Cleveland Place
New York, NY 10012
About Lt. Joseph Petrosino:
Giuseppe (Joseph) Petrosino was born in Salerno, Italy, and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1873. As a boy, he shined shoes outside Police Headquarters on Mulberry Street. At the age of eighteen, he began his career in the public service with the Department of Sanitation (then under the jurisdiction of the Police Department). Fluent in many Italian dialects, Petrosino aided the police by working undercover as an informer in Little Italy.
Petrosino joined the Police Department in 1883 and in 1895 Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt personally promoted him to Sergeant of Detectives. While investigating anarchists in the United States, Petrosino warned President McKinley of threats against his life; however, the warning was not heeded and the President was assassinated in 1901.
Within ten years, Petrosino was named lieutenant and given command of the new Italian Squad, a unit created to combat the crime organization known as the Black Hand. Under his leadership, several thousand arrests were made, and more than 500 offenders were sent to prison. Crimes against Italian-Americans dropped by fifty percent. Petrosino was killed while on assignment to Palermo, Sicily in 1909.
When his body was returned to New York, thousands of mourners formed a funeral procession which marched from Little Italy to Calvary Cemetery in Queens. Lt. Petrosino was the only New York police officer who had died in the line of duty outside the United States. The park named in his honor is located just north of the Renaissance Revival edifice at 240 Centre Street, which served as Police Headquarters from 1910 to 1971.
