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William Palmini

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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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