NYPD's Famed Mob-Buster Joe Coffey Dies
NYPD Detective Sgt. Joseph Coffey died this past Sunday. He was 77 and had suffered from cancer. The high-profile mob buster was known for his frequent media appearances, as well as an organized crime taskforce he led that solved more than 80 gangland hits. Coffey also personally arrested John Gotti three times, earning the deep animosity of the feared former Gambino boss, who in the early 1990s ordered the beating of the then-retired detective. Joe Coffey, the mob buster who John Gotti wanted sent to the hospital. “He was one of the greatest detectives in the NYPD ever,” Jerry Schmetterer, a former Daily News police bureau chief who coauthored The Coffey Files: One Cop's War Against the Mob , told The Daily News. “He was a larger-than-life guy who always wanted to be involved in the biggest cases."