43 Facts About Mario Biaggi

Mario Biaggi was an American politician, attorney, and police officer.

Mario Biaggi served ten terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives from New York from 1969 to 1988.

Mario Biaggi then became an attorney at 49 years of age.

Mario Biaggi was born in a tenement on East 106th Street in East Harlem in Upper Manhattan, New York City, New York to poor Italian immigrants from Piacenza in Northern Italy.

Mario Biaggi served nearly six years with the Post Office and became an activist in Branch 36 of the National Association of Letter Carriers.

In 1942, Mario Biaggi joined the New York City Police Department, at 25 years of age.

Mario Biaggi wanted to join the US Army, but police were exempted from the US military at the time, and the fact that his two brothers were in the armed forces was an additional factor.

Mario Biaggi received dozens of citations for valor, including the police department's Medal of Honor and the National Police Officers Association of America's Medal of Valor, becoming one of the NYPD's most decorated officers.

Mario Biaggi retired from the Department in 1965, with the rank of Detective Lieutenant.

At the age of 45 and near the end of his police career, Mario Biaggi entered law school.

The American Bar Association granted him a special dispensation to study law due to his distinguished police career, even though Mario Biaggi had never gone to college and a college degree was a prerequisite for law school.

Mario Biaggi represented a Queens woman who was denied the right to be an umpire in minor league baseball in 1969, and won her case at the New York Court of Appeals in 1972.

Mario Biaggi ran for the open seat as a Democrat with the endorsement of the Conservative Party.

Mario Biaggi was known as a law-and-order Democrat, socially conservative, economically progressive, and tough on street crime, and led the institution of a federal ban on armor-piercing "cop killer" teflon-coated bullets, a major concern of police.

Mario Biaggi strongly supported the elderly, labor unions, the mentally disabled, hand-gun control, Israel, Soviet Jewry, and peace in Northern Ireland, and opposed brutality in US Army camps and antisemitism.

Mario Biaggi would pick up and make the phone call, and when he did, it was like God himself was making the call.

Mario Biaggi established the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

In 1973, Mario Biaggi declared his candidacy for Mayor of New York City.

Mario Biaggi was a fairly conservative Democrat by New York City standards, and had run on the Conservative line for Congress three times.

In 1987 Mario Biaggi was charged with taking an unlawful gratuity.

Mario Biaggi had accepted a payment of a $3,200 spa bill for him and his companion as he vacationed in Florida in December 1984, from his long-time friend former Brooklyn Democratic leader Meade Esposito.

Mario Biaggi said that in contrast an unlawful gratuity is like a tip given for services performed or expected to be performed, but requires no quid pro quo understanding.

Mario Biaggi was acquitted of both bribery and conspiracy in the three-week trial.

Mario Biaggi was convicted of accepting an illegal gratuity and obstruction of justice, sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison, and fined $500,000.

The House Ethics Committee recommended that Mario Biaggi be expelled, the most severe penalty.

Separately, in 1988 Mario Biaggi was charged by US Attorney Rudy Giuliani in the Wedtech scandal with having accepted bribes for assisting the Wedtech Corporation in obtaining federal procurement contracts.

Mario Biaggi was convicted of 15 counts of obstruction of justice and accepting illegal gratuities.

Mario Biaggi was sentenced to eight years in federal prison.

Mario Biaggi was at the time 70 years old, and the senior Congressman in the New York City delegation.

Since primary election petitions were already filed, Mario Biaggi remained on the ballot for the 1988 Democratic and Republican primaries in the 19th District, though he said that he would not campaign nor run.

Mario Biaggi sought to be removed from the ballot, but a New York court held that there was no legal means to effect his removal.

Mario Biaggi did not campaign, and lost the Democratic primary to then-State Assemblyman Eliot Engel.

In Robert Friedman's biography of Meir Kahane, the leader of the Jewish Defense League, Kahane states that Mario Biaggi marched with both himself and New York City mafia boss Joseph Colombo in 1971.

Friedman states that Mario Biaggi received a "medal of honor" from Kahane at a Kach dinner that took place at the Lincoln Square Synagogue in February 1988.

Mario Biaggi was released in 1991 when he was 73 years old, after 26 months in prison, by the sentencing judge on the grounds of ill health.

Mario Biaggi would have been eligible for parole six months later.

In 1992, at 74 years of age, Mario Biaggi attempted a political comeback.

Mario Biaggi sought his old seat in Congress, challenging his successor, Engel, in the Democratic primary.

Mario Biaggi was endorsed by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and eight other police and firefighter unions.

Mario Biaggi said that many of his former constituents asked him to run, and that Engel had a poor record on constituent service.

Mario Biaggi died at his home in Riverdale in the Bronx on June 24,2015, at the age of 97.

Mario Biaggi is buried in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

In 1961, Mario Biaggi became the first police officer in New York State to be made a member of the National Police Officers Hall of Fame.