By Zach Patberg
When St. John's University professor Howard Abadinsky was a young state parole officer in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, he got a crash course in such wise-guy etiquette.After completing his first year of graduate school in 1964, the rookie was thrown onto the streets that served as the battleground during the Mafia power struggle between Brooklyn's Profaci crime family (later the Colombo family) and the Gallo brothers, who worked for Carlo Gambino, head of the Gambino crime family.Mob boss Joseph Profaci died in his sleep in 1962. “Crazy” Joe Gallo was gunned down in 1972 while dining at Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy after the Colombo family earmarked the trigger-happy mobster following a hit he made on a high-ranking official in their ranks. Now regarded as a leading authority on the topic, Abadinsky said in a telephone interview last Thursday that his three years in Red Hook were a catalyst for his interest in organized crime.He returned to Fordham University to complete his master's in social work after the Red Hook experience and went on to earn a doctorate in sociology at New York University. He was a political science major at Queens College. A regular on A&E and The History Channel, the criminal justice professor who has written nine books on the field most recently appeared on The Biography channel's portrait of eccentric mob boss Vincent “Chin” Gigante, which aired Friday at 9 p.m.Called “The Pajama King,” Gigante – the reputed head of the Genovese crime family -feigned psychosis for 30 years by wearing a bathrobe and mumbling incoherently to himself in an attempt to escape a litany of murder and racketeering charges, including conspiracy to off Gambino crime family boss John Gotti. In 1997, Gigante was finally sent to prison for 12 years on labor racketeering charges. With three years later tacked on to his sentence after he admitted to the crazy play-acting, the notorious gangster should be released in 2010 when he is 82.Abadinsky views Chin as the last of the old school breed — a character whose success was shown in the money he made and the common demise he avoided.”What's the fun of being boss if you're in a bathrobe peeing in the street?” Abadinsky said. “But he succeeded because he was willing to portray himself in a charade that is unheard of today.”Overtime, he said, the rock-steady loyal immigrant gangsters were replaced by middle-class men who lacked the business savvy or the grit to resist turning on “friends of ours” at the mere mention of jail-time.He called the Gotti family of Howard Beach, for instance, “upstarts who got going through luck, bravado and a lot of violence.””They're all in jail now, what does that say?” he said. The result has been a decline in American Mafia, said Abadinsky, who expressed no disappointment. The mob no longer exists in places including Cleveland and Dallas and has weakened in Chicago, New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia. “But as long as there's a kernel of it left and enough young people around watching “The Sopranos,” he said, organized crime will continue indefinitely.Abadinsky, who through the 1980s and 1990s was also an internal security inspector for Chicago's Cook County Sheriff's Office, has since shifted from law enforcement to academia. Despite no longer being directly involved pursuing Mafia figures, he still remembers the days.He was sitting in a restaurant having a salad and coke one day back in Red Hook when a man he recognized as a captain of one of the families, came up and introduced himself as the uncle of someone Abadinsky was supervising. After chatting briefly, Abadinsky stood up and took out his wallet to pay. The captain said the bill was taken care of.”I said, 'No, thank you, I want to pay,'” Abadinsky recalled. “That's when he put his hand on my hand and said, 'You don't understand, you can't pay.'”The still-green parole officer left without paying.A different time, when another made man offered to deliver a jukebox to his house, Abadinsky declined the favor.”A salad was one thing,” he said.Reach reporter Zach Patberg by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 155.
