NYPD cop who won top department honors became Genovese associate
As a cop, Dominic Caramanica won the NYPD’s highest award for bravery after he was shot and badly wounded during a drug arrest.
But after leaving the department, Caramanica crossed over to the dark side and became a Genovese crime-family associate.
Caramanica is being sentenced today on mob extortion charges, and his lawyer wants a judge to know about his heroic past — winning the Combat Cross medal after a bullet from a Bronx drug dealer’s gun ripped into his torso, damaged his intestines, an artery and his liver.
Even today, bullet fragments are lodged close to Caramanica’s spine, and he still experiences health problems stemming from the shooting, defense attorney James Froccaro wrote to a Brooklyn federal judge.
But Assistant US Attorney Stephen Frank countered that Caramanica has been a longtime driver for Genovese soldier Daniel “Uncle Danny” Cilenti and that the ex-officer allegedly played a role in a mob-extortion scheme to collect a business debt.
Caramanica “correctly notes that he is a decorated former police officer who was injured in the line of duty,” Frank wrote.
But his “past service to the city of New York should not immunize him from the consequences of his decision to become an associate of organized crime, and to take part in the charged extortion,” the prosecutor contended.
Under a plea deal, Caramanica will face eight to 14 months in prison when he is sentenced by Judge John Gleeson.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/cop_mobber_iveu7DUe4nlv6nEcpf0vkO#ixzz1mf2H10Mu
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