Amedeo Polignani, an original member of the New York Police Department's Bomb Squad, was a remarkably daring detective of the 1910s and 1920s. As the youngest member of New York's detective force, he went repeatedly under cover to expose anarchists and gangsters.

In 1915, after a number of other officers had died in similar attempts, he managed to infiltrate a gang of anarchist bombers. He foiled an anarchist plot to bomb St. Patrick's Cathedral and kill some of New York's powerful entrepreneurs (Carnegie, Vanderbilt...).

After a later prolonged undercover assignment, he was able to expose a vast Italian numbers racket in Manhattan.

Polignani had reached the rank of detective lieutenant at the time of his death in 1932.

© 2007 T.Hunt
The American "Mafia"