Leo DiCaprio Will Star In Movie About Mob Cop Joe Petrosino

Leonardo DiCaprio and a new accent of his will star in a movie about undercover detective Giuseppe “Joe” Petrosino, famed for attempting to investigate the mob in Manhattan around the turn of the 20th Century, but also for serving as the namesake of a park that was once ground zero for the NIMBY Citi Bike fights.

The Post reports that DiCaprio will aim for another Oscar in The Black Hand, which is based on the Stephan Talty book of the same name. No one else is attached to the film at the moment, but Paramount has agreed to distribute.

Petrosino, who immigrated from Italy to New York as a child, joined the NYPD under then-police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt in 1883, and founded its Italian Squad, which focused on policing the Italian Mafia. He notably worked to bust the Italian Black Hand gang, hence the name of the book.

In 1909, Petrosino was assassinated while on assignment in Palermo, Sicily; his murder remained a mystery until 2014, when investigators in Sicily discovered he was executed as part of a mob hit put out by a prominent member of the Sicilian Mafia.

The city named a very small square in Soho after Petrosino, which, in 2013, was one of the first spots to get a Citi Bike docking station. Some neighbors were not happy the bikes took up so much space in the park and took the matter to court, but the Department of Transportation ultimately got to keep the rack there. This is a full circle story for Leo, who was once famously photographed on a Citi Bike.