By George Anastasia
Mob dirt and biker violence were the focus of the 51st annual report of the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation made public on June 9.
The report offers capsulized versions of SCI hearings conducted this year. “Dirty Dirt II: Bogus Recycling of Tainted Dirt and Debris” recounted the commission’s investigation into how mob members and associates used front companies and straw ownership to control businesses that engaged in the illegal dumping and disposal of dangerous waste products.
The SCI has been tracking organized crime’s involvement in waste management for years. In 2016 it focused on abuses at a site in Palymra, NJ, where a reputed associate of Philadelphia mob boss Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino had set up a company and dumped tons of potentially toxic material into a landfill designed to accept mulch and other biodegradable material.
The follow-up in this year’s report focused on alleged abuse at a Monmouth County landfill.
New Jersey has long been plagued by organized crime’s involvement in the solid waste management business. Not for nothing was Tony Soprano a “solid waste management consultant” in the popular HBO mob series that was based on a fictitious Garden State mob family.
This year’s report also repeated a warning about the “resurgence” of the Pagans, a notorious outlaw motorcycle gang that has operated in New Jersey. The organization has chapters up and down the East Coast and, according to an SCI hearing held in October, appears to be expanding its network of chapters and moving north into Bergen County and New York City.
The Pagans are considered one of the big four in the biker underworld, along with the Hells Angels, Outlaws and Bandidos.
The club has about 300 members in New Jersey and the SCI report expressed concern about a “rebirth” marked by an “upswing in violence with the majority of recent incidents involving attacks on rival biker gangs.”
The hearing in October included the video of three alleged Pagans launching a baseball bat attack on an associate of the Hells Angels at a gas station in Newark. Investigators warned of an escalation of tensions between the Pagans and the Angels who were violently rebuffed about 10 years ago when they tried to set up chapters in South Jersey and Philadelphia.
That violence may be spilling over into New York City where authorities are investigating the gangland shooting of a leader of the Pagans in the Bronx last month. The hit, in broad daylight, was captured on a surveillance camera and shows two masked men emerging from a late model Jeep and opening fire with handguns equipped with silencers.
The murder of Pagan Francisco Rosado, 51, who headed the Bronx chapter of the biker gang, remains under investigation. It came just months after a Hells Angels headquarters that had relocated from Lower Manhattan to the Bronx was sprayed with bullets in a drive-by shooting by several unidentified bikers.
