A year ago, just about nobody messed with Michael "Butch" Quarcini.
But when things go south, they generally do so in a hurry. Today, the once-untouchable union czar gets it from all sides -- the feds, his union's leadership at the international level, local law enforcement and even, according to Niagara Falls police, his own family.
Last week, Niagara Falls police slapped the former leader of Laborers Local 91, already facing federal racketeering and extortion counts each carrying a potential sentence of up to 20 years in prison, with a felony second-degree escape charge. His alleged crime -- bailing out the wrong nephew, who then escaped from him during an Oct. 2 incident.
You have to wonder what the nephew, Michael A. Quarcini Jr., was thinking when he told police he was his brother, Marc Quarcini. He later told police he was trying to avoid jail on an outstanding warrant stemming from $55.37 in unpaid restitution, but the cops are usually pretty good at straightening out those sorts of things.
That became a moot point when it turned out Marc Quarcini also had a warrant against him for parking tickets, which led brother Michael to have a cellmate call Butch and say Marc was asking him to come down and bail him out.
I'm getting confused just writing this, so it's easy to understand how the deposed 71-year-old union chief got mixed up. At least until he and his nephew got outside the building.
That's where police say the elder Quarcini went wrong -- not hauling his nephew back into the police station and pointing out the discrepancy in identity. Instead, he told police he intended to take Quarcini Jr. home to get identification, then return.
Michael Quarcini Jr. paid his namesake back for coming out in the middle of the night to bail him out by getting out of his car and taking off.
The irony here staggers you. The man who ran Local 91 with a titanium fist for 35 years, impervious to arrest or prosecution for scores of violent incidents involving his underlings on and off the job, or just about anything else (a drunk-driving arrest was dismissed in City Court and the record sealed), now gets nailed with a felony rap after a case of mistaken identity.
Things aren't much better these days for members of the union Butch Quarcini used to rule. Last month, Wheatfield Town Justice Robert Cliffe found three Laborers, including former Vice President Salvatore Bertino, guilty of second-degree harassment after a brawl with a Department of Transportation worker in November, 2001. That case, while centered on a relatively minor charge, also showed how much things had changed.
Until Wheatfield Town Prosecutor Erin DeLabio refused to plea out the case, such matters had generally been quickly settled and sealed, when arrests were even made. In the most notorious incident, more than a dozen Laborers attacked four union bricklayers after a dispute over cleaning buckets, injuring one so badly he hasn't been able to return to work.
"I've about had it with the bricklayers over the sweeping," the indictment quoted former Local 91 President Mark Congi as saying before the attack. "Maybe somebody should stick a broom up their ass."
Despite the broad-daylight assault, the case resulted in a single charge of inciting a riot against a Local 91 steward. Ultimately, though, the incident became one of the centerpieces of the federal case.
Several Laborers have told the Niagara Falls Reporter that, since the indictments, members of other unions regularly encroach on their jurisdiction at job sites, including the Seneca Niagara Casino project at the former Niagara Falls Convention and Civic Center.
"They've got apprentices doing our work, and if we say anything, they tell us, 'Butch and those guys ain't around anymore. Go (expletive) yourself,'" one said.
Which isn't right, and stinks for the majority of Laborers, who are just trying to make a living like everyone else. But Local 91 members can thank Butch and the other indictees for the animosity.
According to the federal indictments and the stories of hundreds of contractors, business owners and workers both union and non-union, things went the other way for more than three decades. Once the indictments and trusteeship came down, everyone who had felt the heat of the "goon squad" understandably wanted to give a little of what they got for so many years.
It's called payback, and as the bumper sticker says, it's a bitch.
Things should improve on the job front for Local 91's rank-and-file as new leadership emerges. Not necessarily so for Quarcini's son-in-law, Joel Cicero. Officials in Albany are trying to remove Cicero from his position on the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission after a Colorado developer accused him and Congi of driving up labor costs on a recent project at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge with extortionate demands.
That alleged shakedown took place as the feds were wrapping up their investigation of Local 91, which stretched over four years. You'd think Quarcini, who stayed in power as long as he did by being not only tough, but smart, would have reined his boys in as the heat increased.
Maybe, after all those years of doing as they pleased, they really believed they were above the law. Or maybe they just didn't care. Whatever the case, the same guys whose loyalty and brutality helped make Quarcini one of the most powerful people in Niagara County, if not the most powerful, for more than three decades, ultimately contributed to his downfall with their stupidity.
After Quarcini and the other 13 were awakened by federal agents in the predawn hours of May 17, he defiantly shoved a television camera on his way out of the United States Courthouse in Buffalo. Whether due to age, illness or the stress of the last six months, the Butch Quarcini pictured on the front page of the Niagara Gazette last week looked like a very different man -- smiling, but gaunt, even frail.
Looking at that picture and reading the account of the events that led to the escape charge against him, you almost felt sorry for Butch.
Almost.
Then you look back at that photo from May, one that's run in the Niagara Falls Reporter a few times. In that image, Butch was still news. But now, whatever the outcome of either legal case, he and his reign at Local 91 are fading into history.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 10 2002 |