# Narcotics hearings, Part 3, printed page 774: the Bureau of Narcotics entry for Joseph Bruno of Chicago

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/valachi-hearings-part-3-bruno-p774/

In its list of traffickers arrested since 1951, the Bureau of Narcotics says Joseph Bruno of Chicago, sentenced in June 1958 to eight years on a federal narcotics charge, had for many years distributed bootleg alcohol and narcotics to large-scale sellers on Chicago's South Side.

Printed page 774 of Part 3 (NCJRS PDF page 870), in an attachment introduced as "a list of high echelon narcotic traffickers who have been apprehended since 1951 as a direct result of investigations conducted by agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics." The list belongs to the Bureau's testimony of July 1964; the page carries no session date of its own.

The entry for Joseph Bruno of Chicago says that "In June 1958 he was convicted in Federal court in Chicago on a charge of violation of the Federal narcotic laws and sentenced to 8 years," and that "For many years he had been involved in the distribution of bootleg alcohol and narcotics to large scale Negro peddlers in the South Side of Chicago." It also lists four earlier convictions under the internal-revenue (alcohol) laws, and calls him "An important figure in the organized Italo-American fraternity of Chicago."

The list is the Bureau of Narcotics's description of people it had arrested, submitted to a Senate subcommittee. Its characterizations are the agency's allegations, not court findings. The word "Negro" is the Bureau's. The page is filed with the Harlem section because it is one of the few places in these hearings that describe the supply of narcotics to Black dealers in Chicago; the [Belk testimony](/items/valachi-hearings-part-4-belk-p931-932/) gives the Bureau's 1964 picture of the same city.

## Sources

- National Criminal Justice Reference Service, scan of the printed hearings (NCJ 119303): https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/119303NCJRS.pdf