Tim Tolka - Blue Mafia

Tim Tolka - Blue Mafia
April 23

Blue Mafia tells the backstory behind two federal investigations of
police brutality in Steubenville and Warren, Ohio, from the
perspective of the victims, cops, attorneys, and officials who
participated. The story is essentially the biography of a
small-town civil rights lawyer, but it is also a hard-boiled
detective novel set in an era of rank corruption, smear campaigns,
false imprisonments, death threats, and assassination attempts, no
longer carried out by the mob, but instead by and for the
police.

The book explores the controversial police brutality lawsuits
leading up to the historic police reform agreements and their
outcomes, using the career of a local civil rights lawyer who
fought a 20-year battle against two brutal, corrupt police
departments and acted as an informant to federal investigators. It
is like an instruction manual for aspiring activists and civil
rights defenders who want to oust a despotic police chief or
prosecutor, as well as an idiot’s guide for law enforcement and
public officials on the pitfalls of power.

In Steubenville, when attorney Richard Olivito defends a drug
dealer claiming police misconduct, he begins to feel hunted. Later,
he acts as an informant and collaborator to Justice Department
officials investigating the Steubenville police, which results in a
consent decree, or court-enforced reform agreement, the 2nd in U.S.
history. A few years later, Olivito incites another federal
Investigation in neighboring Warren, where residents have
complained of police brutality for decades. This time is different
because there is a video.

Blue Mafia shows that some small towns have at least equally severe
problems with police brutality and misconduct as many big cities,
and it chronicles federal reform efforts on local police agencies
during five U.S. presidential administrations, providing the most
detailed account to date of police reform by consent decree and
revealing the messy, sometimes tragic yet always human aspects of
policing.

Book

Become a supporter of this podcast:
https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.