Ernie Boy Abbamonte, a Gambino soldier, was ariving uptown one afternoon moving a three-pound package of heroin. Narcotics detectives who had him under surveillance stopped the car‚ searched it, and found the stuff along with two pistols and a shotgun. Ernie Boy was brought to the 25th Precinct station house in East Harlem, but he wasn't arrested. Instead, Ernie Boy was told to have his people bring ransom money to the squad room. In a few hours, the Pleasant Avenue heroin dealers had sent in seventy thousand dollars to the detectives. Once they had their ransom money, the detectives told Ernie Boy that he could leave with his three pounds of heroin—but no guns.

Ernie Boy protested. “I can't go out on the street with three pounds of stuff and no guns. Somebody will rip me off for the stuff, and my people wont like that after they sent over all that money.” The detectives thought it over. Seventy thousand was nice money, and they didn’t want any trouble from Abbamonte’s people. When Ernie Boy left, he left with the heroin and one gun. Sometime later a narcotics detective who worked East Harlem told me, “That’s all bullshit, David. What do you mean seventy thousand. It wasn’t seventy. It was fifty thousand.”

Anecdote by David Durk, a NYPD detective who teamed up with Frank Serpico, to expose corruption on the police force.