Arrest
On November 5, 2007, Lo Piccolo and his son Sandro, as well as two other top mafiosi, Gaspare Pulizzi and Andrea Adamo, were arrested in a villa in Giardinello, between Cinisi and Terrasini. Police fired several warning shots in the air as they moved in against the mafiosi, who were all armed but apparently did not put up a fight. Sandro Lo Piccolo, in tears, shouted "I love you dad!" several times as he was being handcuffed. The four were put into a police helicopter and flown towards Palermo's main police station. The operation was made possible by information provided by Francesco Franzese, who was arrested on August 2, 2007, who masterminded the Lo Piccolo clan's protection racket. His family has been moved to a secret hideout to prevent reprisals.
Officers remarked that Lo Piccolo’s face was entirely different from the identikit photo of him (see images on this page). Lo Piccolo did not say a word and just smiled when prosecutors noted that he did not resemble the photofit released earlier this year. The elder Lo Piccolo was in fact betrayed by his son of whom police did have a recent photograph.
At the hideout of Lo Piccolo a code of behaviour for Mafia members was found. The so-called "Ten Commandments" include prohibitions such as frequenting bars and looking at friends' wives, while members are urged to treat their own wives with respect. The Mafia Decalogue has been drawn up as a "guide to being a good mafioso". Other activities apparently beyond the pale for Mafiosi are being friends with the police, being late for appointments and "appropriating money if it belongs to other Mafia members or to other families".
When father and son Lo Piccolo – incarcerated under the strict 41-bis prison regime in the Opera prison in Milan – appeared on a videoscreen at the trial in Palermo against some of their henchmen, they rose to their feet as a sign of respect for the arrested bosses.
Lo Piccolo’s other son Calogero Lo Piccolo succeeded his father and his brother, according to several pentiti. However, he was arrested on January 16, 2008, during Operation Addio Pizzo against Lo Piccolo’s operators who were in charge of collecting the pizzo – protection money from local businesses – in Palermo.
Read more about this topic: Salvatore Lo Piccolo
Famous quotes containing the word arrest:
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me,
Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,
Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cain’s race invented be,
And blest Seth vexed us with Astronomie.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)