JUNIOR GOTTI'S 'POLICE SQUAD'

MURDER RAPS EYED AS PROBE UNCOVERS NEW 'MOB COPS'

November 26, 2007 -- "The feds haven't given up their crusade to put John "Junior" Gotti behind bars - and new charges planned against him will reveal a coven of cops who allegedly helped him and his crew murder rivals, The Post has learned.

Junior will likely be charged with at least five murders - including the 1983 slaying of Danny Silva, a 24-year-old Queens man whom the mobster allegedly disemboweled, a source said.

Gotti, son of "Dapper Don" John Gotti, was directly involved in some of the other slayings as well and will be named as a co-conspirator in the rest, sources said.

In the Silva killing, the source said, Junior Gotti was "very quick to use his weapon," which was either a boxcutter or a linoleum knife.

"We have more than one person that saw him," the source said.

The names of more than a dozen allegedly dirty cops have surfaced over the course of the investigation, which reaches the highest levels of the Gambino crime family, a source said.

The cops were fingered by Gotti's Mafioso pals, who are now rolling over on the mob scion to gain leniency from the feds as they get busted for more recent crimes, another law-enforcement source said.

The officers were said to have taken cash bribes to protect the Gambino family's multimillion-dollar cocaine-and-marijuana-dealing operation that infested bars throughout Ozone Park, Howard Beach and Jamaica from the early '80s through the mid-1990s.

"It was everywhere, in every bar," a source said.

The officers allegedly provided information and protection and, in at least two cases, assisted in or covered up murders on behalf of the Mafia family, according to the source."

I vividly recall the absolute tizzy the Knapp Commission caused back in '71. Every wiseguy and wannabe was crying poverty because the cops were running scared and asking for 2 and 3 times the usual payoff money. Anyone putting a cap in Frank Serpico was guaranteed to become quite wealthy and more than one of his fellow officers tried to collect. No one knew who to trust, and business as usual was far from it but the oldtimers on both sides of the fence weathered the storm by taking their own sage advice.

Most cops can be bought. Every now and again some "commission" rolls into town and catches the dumb ones, so don't be dumb and just stay calm until it blows over because they all blow over eventually. This is the umpteenth time the law is going to take a Gotti to court and Junior will probably beat most if not all of the charges as long as he stays cool because a jury will get far too confused as to whom they should believe. Admittedly dirty cops or admitted mafioso's.