Bonus - Donnie Brasco Fighting the Bureaucracy

Organized Crime and Punishment

Title: Donnie Brasco Fighting the Bureaucracy

Original Publication Date: 11/15/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/Hy2Rf4ymHZB

Description: Today we have a brief episode on an interesting perspective on Donnie Brasco from the perspective of a 20 police veteran and former police leader, Frank Scalise. Did Donnie’s leadership in the FBI manage his uncover work correctly? What could have Donnie’s leadership done better in the aftermath of his groundbreaking investigation?

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Thank you for joining Mustache Chris and I on Organized Crime and Punishment, a history and crime podcast. Here is a teaser for upcoming episodes of Organized Crime and Punishment. If you like what you hear, look in the description for links to full podcast episodes. Become a friend of ours by subscribing to the show and following us on social media.

Tell a friend about Organized Crime and Punishment so your friends can become friends of ours. Forget about it. Hey friends of ours. Let's talk a little Donnie Brasco. Now as a retired cop with 20 with a 20 year career who spent another four years after that teaching leadership all over the U S and Canada, I've come into contact with a lot of law enforcement agencies.

Now honestly, these organizations are just chock full of good people who work hard and do their best, but any bureaucracy is like any other bureaucracy and mission drift is a real thing. [00:01:00] Now, so what does this have to do with Donnie Brasco? You might ask. Sadly, one of the most realistic scenes for me from a law enforcement perspective in the entire movie was the one in which a distracted leader gives Joe Pistone an award for his service in a very hurried fashion.

thIs guy gave up years of his life facing constant danger the entire time. And the FBI ceremony that honored him took less time than you're taking to watch this video. I don't know how accurate a portrayal that was to Pistone's actual experience. If you do, by the way, please share it in the comments.

But unfortunately this kind of bungling is all too common. In bureaucracies and in, in the law enforcement profession on the bureaucratic side as well, a thoughtful leader will make sure something like this doesn't happen to, to a valued employee. But anyway, it's probably the most realistic scene in a movie full of realistic scenes.

Now the best [00:02:00] scene. That's when Johnny Depp explains, forget about it. Do you know if that's accurate with the Joe Pistone award ceremony being super rushed in? I know for, I know he was, he became really jaded with the FBI. He left. At one point just cause he didn't feel appreciated. And he started having troubles with the officers above him, like telling him how to do his job.

And I was undercover for how many years, like I, the most successful undercover job, probably in American history. And you're telling me how to do things. And he just got fed up with it. If you actually listen to Joe Pistone talk, he has a very. I totally believe that he was that successful at playing a mob guy, cause he has a very kind of street, talk, working class type vibe to him.

He really does. You hear him talk and he, I know he's what, how old is he now? He's 70. You hear him talk though. And he sounds like [00:03:00] a guy you don't want to mess with. We we showed that video in the leadership course that I taught and as just as a a warning, as a don't do this sort of thing because it's such a simple thing to recognize people who do good work in a way that's meaningful and just the slapdashery way in that scene with With the official who, could barely be bothered to be there.

And, and then they gave him 500 bucks, which just don't even give you any money, I think in that scenario, because 500 bucks is like kind of an insult after six years or whatever you spend undercover. That's 80 bucks a year. It's just, I don't know. It always struck me as wow, I've seen that exact scene play out.

In real life on a smaller scale. And it's just sad because it's like self inflicted as a leader. You don't, you've got total control over that. It's not a disaster that's happening from outside or a crisis that's being thrust upon you. This is just taking an extra three minutes and a little bit of [00:04:00] emotional energy to make it meaningful for somebody who deserves it.

Maybe it's just me, but that was always the movie scene, part of the movie that seemed realistic and ticked me off at the same time. It's weird that you treat a professional like that, that somebody who's done their job and even more so of their job, their duty. And then you give them a publisher's clearing house check, give them a subscription to the Columbia records and tapes club, jelly, jelly of the month.

For sure. Yeah. When, yeah, he a, he left totally, and then he ended up rejoining and he ended up having to redo all the stuff again. Like he had to take the written test again. He had to do the physicals and everything, when he decided that he was gonna rejoin, so he was 100% out. Did he write an au did he write an autobiography about this?

Yeah, he has one yeah, that he wrote himself. Donny called Donny Brasco. He actually wrote. Didn't you say this Steve? I never write it, but didn't he write a book about it was like a [00:05:00] sequel to Donnie Brasco? I think he wrote some crime fiction as Donnie Brasco. So yeah, and he's he has a, he does a podcast with, I think it was like he's like an actor slash movie producer.

He's been in a couple films. I listened to a bit of it when we were researching For episodes and it's worth listening. It's good to listen to, you get a, I don't know. Joe Pistone seems like a pretty fun guy. He seems like the type of guy I'd enjoy having a beer with.

And even though he doesn't drink, which is, he's like very adamant about that and he doesn't he'll have a beer or something like that, but he doesn't doesn't drink alcohol like at all, and he talks about that actually in his, when he was undercover, Oh, how did this.

How did this work? Like you're hanging out with these mob guys and they all drink and nobody thought it was weird. He's Oh, they thought it was weird. But then you're just honest, he's Oh, I don't drink, and people just Oh, whatever, Donnie doesn't drink. And then they just go with it.

Yeah. Especially for the time that it took place [00:06:00] too. It would be no big deal today, but this was the eighties, right? Early nineties. Yeah, that's one of the good things that they showed in, they did in the movie too, is they, if you watch it again, you notice that Donnie never drinks, doesn't smoke cigarettes either.

Obviously that's like a big thing with him being sick of the cigarettes in the car and stuff like that. But yeah, Joe Pistone was yeah, he was straight edge, right? He was, that's the modern saying now, didn't drink, didn't smoke. Didn't do any drugs, nothing. He's always in pretty good shape.

He was always in good shape, always fantastic shape, actually. Maybe that's one way, one reason he got some respect from a lot of these mob guys, because, truthfully, he could probably beat the crap out of them. When I wanted to fight, which a lot of these mob guys probably aren't, probably weren't used to, they're tough guys, right?

They're from the streets, they grew up, fighting for a living, right? Not a living, but, getting into fistfights and the whole nine yards and, Joe could probably beat them up, I think they probably also respected his convictions. [00:07:00] People... Respect someone who has, strong conviction and sticks to it.

And even if they don't agree with it, so yeah, he doesn't drink. He doesn't smoke. That's crazy. Cause I love a beer and I smoke like a chimney, but damn, if he doesn't stick to it, and so they respect that kind of thing. So throw that in there with the fact that I don't want to say anything. Cause he could probably knock me on my keister.

Then you get that situation where, he's gets a little room. I get that from work too. Cause I work like a pretty blue collar job. And I don't. I don't drink at all. I don't do anything. And then certainly, I think people think it's a little weird. But then over enough time, they just come to I think they've come to just respect that about me is the fact that I don't do any of those things.

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