CHASED: THE STORY OF BILLY CHASE

Criminal Minded Media's Don Sikorski, sits down with Chased: Alone, Black and Undercover author, Lennie Grimaldi.

Part Three of Three.

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Criminal Minded Media's Don Sikorski, sits down with Chased: Alone, Black and Undercover author, Lennie Grimaldi.

Part Two of Three.

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Criminal Minded Media's Don Sikorski, sits down with Chased: Alone, Black and Undercover author, Lennie Grimaldi.

Part One of Three.

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Vito Collucci was an undercover drug investigator who like Billy Chase was undercover inside drug organizations and the Mafia in Connecticut, he rubbed elbows with the same corrupt cops, politicians and gangsters that Billy Chase was bringing down.

Vito decided to go after the systemic corruption inside Connecticut Police Departments who had been infiltrated by the Gambino Crime Family.

His investigations uncovered wrongdoing in 8 City departments that included a police sergeant running the largest drug ring in Southern, Ct.

Fifteen City and state officials resigned or were fired.

What happened in CT reverberated far beyond the city and state, and it served as the catalyst for Ronald Reagan’s initiative against the American Mafia and the establishment of the President’s commission on organized crime. 

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With the story we are telling, the elements that resonate as it pertains to Billy Chase, was that the deeper he got undercover, the more he started to unravel mentally.

In a City like Bridgeport, Billy had targets, he had prey that he wanted to get at all costs.

One of those targets was Mariano Sanchez, the leader of the powerful Number 1 Family.

In order to understand the Number 1 Family and in order to understand the streets I went directly to an individual who worked the street corners for the Number 1 Family.

When people watch television shows or movies that take place in the drug world, a lot of times the stories create caricatures, when you talk to someone that lived the life up close and personal the nuances of what happened become more clear and concise.

Joel Gonzalez has lived inside Bridgeport all of his adult life and his point of view was different from anyone you have heard thus far.

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In his newly assigned position in the Special Services Division of the Bridgeport Police Department, Billy Chase interfaced on a number of cases with federal law enforcement officials, Billy was a cop in Bridgeport where advanced training was as common as a crime-less day.

How does an undercover with no formalized training get started?

In Billy’s case it was go where you know best – the streets.

Billy reconnected with the comings and goings of the streets of his youth back to inner city playgrounds where he once shot hoops into the strip bars and taverns that warehouse information about drug dealers, junkies, and prostitutes.

Most of Billy’s contacts thought he had gone overseas to play ball, this wasn’t the age of social media or cell phones, you could disappear or create a story that no one could check online. 

It is rare to have audio from 30 years ago, but the interview with Billy was very telling, the names of the drug crews, and the Feds, it wasn’t like Billy worked one case, he was almost a schizophrenic undercover, bouncing from drug dealers to junkies, soaking up information, in a city becoming consumed with crack, I am astonished that Billy could even keep all these names straight…

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In Episode 1, journalist Lennie Grimaldi  started to lay the foundation as to the story of police officer Billy Chase, and also to explain  the mechanics of a time and place which is Bridgeport, Connecticut, an American industrial city in the 1980s. I think almost everyone in America has heard the terminology “crack cocaine” but I would be curious to know how many people truly understand how it completely shifted the criminal underworld of every major American city.

Each geographic location, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York had these crack cocaine crews that took over pockets of geography. It was inside communities where the police went from being in control to wave of violence and decimation that is still being reconciled to this day.

For this story, I needed to understand the complexities of Billy Chase, a police officer who chose a dangerous path and in the process lost his mind and his soul, but for me, Billy Chase’s story resonates because it truly gets inside the gears of Bridgeport, and a police department that would send minority officers onto the frontlines, yet at the precinct didn’t have any respect…..

Ron Bailey, worked with Billy Chase inside the Bridgeport Police Department, he also worked undercover inside neighborhoods like Father Panik Village, war zones, he also was a close friend of Billy, maybe the closest…….

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PROLOGUE BY LENNIE GRIMALDI

Late one calm autumn afternoon in 1989, Billy Chase had a feeling that something wasn't quite right. 

It was the intuitive feeling he had often in his maddeningly bizarre life, a life of aliases, paranoia, and danger, the life of an unusual undercover cop. 

In his short, dizzying career, Chase made a habit of collecting enemies, plenty of them-and he hadn't even reached his thirty-first birthday. 

When you take away five or ten years from the lives of utterly ruthless people struggling for power, you are not as easily forgotten as, say, a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of a fhoe. Chase, the gumshoe, bothered people, especially criminals . 

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