Chief of Police William G. Palmini’s thirty-four year law enforcement
career was spent mostly with the Albany Police Department (California). Chief William Palmini is currently the chief of police
for the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, Department of Safety and Security. He holds
a masters degree in Public Administration from Golden Gate University in San Francisco. Chief William Palmini
is a past recipient of the J. Standard Baker Award from the International Association of Police Chiefs and the author of Murder
on the Rails and A Rookie Cop vs. The West Coast Mafia: Breaking up the "Best in the West" Gang. Publisher’s Weekly wrote about Murder on the Rails, “Retired California police
detective Palmini's account of the career murderer Robert Silveria Jr., dubbed the Boxcar Serial Killer, is long on splatter
and short on insight. Palmini himself is like a figure from a David Lynch movie—a veteran cop who received a government
grant to "do Elvis impersonations to promote traffic safety among California teens and their families" through a
group called Elvis and the Lawmen. After a Vietnam vet is brutally slaughtered in a transient camp near Albany, Calif., Palmini's
investigation leads him to the vicious underworld community of the Freight Train Riders of America, a little-known national
criminal association. His unofficial network of law enforcement contacts probing similar unsolved killings leads him to Silveria,
a drug-addicted drifter whose body count may have reached triple digits and who eventually confesses to the Albany murder.
Unfortunately, the narrative is less than compelling and helps demonstrate by contrast the skill of writers such as Ann Rule,
who more successfully evoke both the lives that have been taken and the inner demons motivating America's long parade of serial
killers.”
According to the book description of A Rookie Cop vs.
The West Coast Mafia: Breaking Up The "Best in the West" Gang, "In this
gripping, true crime exposé, Bill Palmini, a rookie detective, hopes to take
down the West Coast Mafia by gaining the confidence of notorious mob operative
William Ettleman. Set against a backdrop of social turmoil, the book immerses
readers in free love, drugs, robbery and murder, orchestrated by organized crime
in locations like Sausalito, California. The Trident Restaurant, once a drug
Mecca for Hollywood, the music industry and the New York hip, was co-owned by
the Kingston Trio and their manager, Frank Werber, a self-proclaimed drug
priest. Robin Williams worked as a busboy there and Janis Joplin had her own
table. Sally Stanford, the former San Francisco Madam who later became
Sausalitos mayor, was a confidant of the infamous. Ettleman's safecracking gang
targets the Trident. Mobsters like Frank The Bomp Bompensiero, on whom
Sopranos character Big Pussy is thought to have been based, become involved.
Palmini, utilizing Ettleman, joins the FBI and the Federal Strike Force on
Organized Crime to penetrate the crime scene in Sausalito, loaded dice in Las
Vegas and Reno, corruption in San Diego and stolen credit cards in Texas. Then
he begins to break up one of the most notorious gangs on the West Coast."
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