Victoria Gotti Spills Mob Secrets in Tell-All Book

Depending on your race and appearance, the police do kick the &%#* out of you whether you pay your taxes or not. In that regard, the police are worse than the mob. (At least the mob offers you a 'service' for your payola, and when you are paying, you don't get harrassed.) Gotti's point in the comparison seems to rely on our assumption that police are 'good', and thus by accepting her comparison, her family's protection racket tradition is validated as thus similarly good. However, after decades of seemingly gleeful and self-righteous enforcement of invasive and frankly, highly suspect laws against victimless crimes, e.g., marijuana smoking, sexual deviations, prostitution, et al) and profit-motivated enforcements of minutiae (relentless fines for safe drivers on technicalities, increasing diligence against trivial parking violations, etc.), there is a sense that some police organizations have evolved into the government's corrupt source of gratuitous (unrepresented) bonus taxes and puritanical culture control. These practices have been a disaster for police PR. Gotti is wrong to think that the comparison morally validates her family's perpetration of protection rackets. She inadvertently reveals the depravity of her family's organization in making the comparison to what police culture appears to have become.

I agree with Bambi - the Police have become enforcers no better than the Mob. And they are a profit generating enterprise through property seizures BEFORE convictions, outrageous fines and unlimited ticketing. I have never seen so much "policing" as I have the past year in TX. You cannot drive twenty minutes without seeing multiple cops and "stops". No one can question the authority of police without fear and threat of arrest. Now they are drawing blood and taking DNA samples without charges and convictions. Where does all the unaccounted for traffic fine revenues go - to more tazers and surveillance cameras - or to the judges, city council and police chiefs? Resist People.

Well said, Observer!

I must respectfully disagree with Observer. The police are far *worse* than the mob; at least the mod doesn't try to claim that what they are doing is for your benefit.