Spanish Eddie
One of the Youth Services Agency's Bronx gang crisis squad, Eduardo Vincenti, 27, "Spanish Eddie" (a veteran of the 1950s Bronx street gangs), began working on the grandiose notion of getting every major gang in the Bronx to sign an intergang treaty and alliance. This giant alliance would be called "The Family", and every gang would become a division in the larger gang. The idea had just enough vision in it for gang leaders to be interested in its possibilities. Vincenti felt that once unified under a single name, the gangs could do virtually anything, if someone provided them with the right kind of social vision. The police admitted to as many as 10,000 gang members in the Bronx alone.
Vincenti signed on 68 gangs to the coalition/treaty before he and 10 other crisis squad members were suddenly transferred from the Bronx and re-assigned to Brooklyn where he was shot in the face trying to prevent a gun battle in the West farms area. Vincenti survived to continue work on the Brotherhood Family in his spare time. Bronx Squad Crisis members believed the shooting was orchestrated in response to Spanish Eddie's attempts to broker a treaty.
Read more about this topic: Hoe Avenue Peace Meeting
Famous quotes containing the words spanish and/or eddie:
“It’s like a jumble of huts in a jungle somewhere. I don’t understand how you can live there. It’s really, completely dead. Walk along the street, there’s nothing moving. I’ve lived in small Spanish fishing villages which were literally sunny all day long everyday of the week, but they weren’t as boring as Los Angeles.”
—Truman Capote (1924–1984)
“Yeah, percentage players die broke too, don’t they, Bert?”
—Sydney Carroll, U.S. screenwriter, and Robert Rossen. Eddie Felson (Paul Newman)