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Corruption Charges Expose Mob Control Of ILA Locals In New York, Newark

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Posted on Mon, Dec. 22, 2008

In court case, a view of N.J. mob

Documents suggest a hit man and boss who ran the waterfront while hiding in plain sight.

By George Anastasia

Inquirer Staff Writer

He's the quintessential New Jersey gangster, part Sonny Corleone, part Tony Soprano.

A suspect in two gangland murders, one dating to the 1970s, he spent more than 10 years on the run before being arrested on Manhattan's Upper West Side last year.

And all the while, federal authorities now say, he oversaw a mob crew that controlled the port of Newark, N.J., generating hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Genovese crime family.

The case against suspected hit man Michael Coppola, laid out in documents filed this month in federal court in Brooklyn, is a snapshot of how organized crime controls the 45,000-member International Longshoremen's Association and, by extension, the ports of New Jersey and New York, authorities say.

Fleshed out with transcripts from wiretapped conversations and the testimony of mob informants, it's On the Waterfront revisited.

By Kurt Richwerger

On April 19, the election of officers in the 450-member Longshoremen's Local 1588 in New Jersey --- the first since it came under federal court trusteeship --- brought into office an executive board and top leaders without mob ties. A group of eight reformers, running unopposed on a "Unity, Power, Respect" slate, take over a local union that, just six years ago, was called "corrupt from top to bottom" by Assistant U.S. Attorney V. Grady O'Malley.

After a round of indictments in 2002, a federal trustee was appointed by a U.S. District Court judge. Speaking of the days under mob control, Jorge Aguilar, a 19-year ILA veteran and newly elected Local
1588 Warehouse Vice President, told the Newark Star Ledger, "Every once in a while you'd find out somebody got assassinated ...the only copy of the contract was kept in the union office and you didn't want to ask for a copy." He said that since the trusteeship had been imposed in 2003, "You see more democracy and folks are more willing to speak."

Bennett Baumer writes in The Indypendent that "Local 1588 members greeted the government trusteeship with suspicion at first, though most agree it kept the mob away and allowed reformers to emerge." What is remarkable --- and encouraging --- about the outcome of this election is that it demonstrates that, with effective monitorship, a mobbed-up local union can be returned to the membership.