Breaking the Mob - Softcover

Frank Friel joined the Philadelphia Police Force in 1960 at the age of 18. From 1982 to 1988 he was chief investigator and co-director of the Philadelphia Police/FBI Organized Crime Task Force in Philadelphia. He was guest lecturer for the FBI on the problems of organized crime, serves as a consultant to Major League Baseball on organized crime, and teaches courses about organized crime at LaSalle College and St. Joseph and Temple Universities. He travels around the country assessing the professional standards of police departments on behalf of the National Commission on Accreditation. Friel retired from the Philadelphia Police Department in 1989 to take a position of Director of Public Safety in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. In 1997, he started Atlantic Security International Investigations, a division of Atlantic Security Inc., where he currently serves as president.John Guinther is a Philadelphia-based author and journalist. Three of his articles have been cited for excellence by the American Bar Association. He is the winner of the Robert F. Kennedy and Gerald Loeb awards. He has written six other books. Guinther's articles on the Ferber case were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1986. The same year, he was awarded the Louis Apotheker citation for the advancement of the cause of justice by a non-lawyer. Another of his books, Brotherhood of Murder, written with Thomas Martinez, has been filmed by Showtime, starring William Baldwin, and is also available through iUniverse.com. His most recent book is Direction of Cities (Viking/Penguin, 1997).

A former Philadelphia police captain who rose through the ranks and headed his city's Organized Crime Task Force, Friel played a major role in the breakup of the Nicky Scarfo Mafia family. The Scarfo mob, originally based in the City of Brotherly Love, expanded its focus to include Atlantic City when legalized gambling was approved for the seaside resort. Scarfo, a violent and unpredictable man, had taken over after his two predecessors were murdered within a year; his ascendance set off a wave of killings. Collaborating with Guinther ( Brotherhood of Murder ), Friel tells how police work brought the don and dozens of his underlings to justice in 1989. The book also details Friel's own successful effort to free a wrongly convicted man from death row. But what makes the book especially noteworthy are the authors' insights into the psychology of mobsters and their recommendations for increased efficiency in fighting the drug war, especially interagency cooperation.
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