“He ain’t Italian, but Brennan's a real paisano,” Mr. Barsetti said to his fellow cop buddies at the annual block party, pulling me in for a pinch and a slap on the face. Paisano, an Italian word for countryman, can also refer to a close, trustworthy friend. The term was not thrown around lightly in my town of [...], Brooklyn, a working class neighborhood where values like loyalty to friends and family were more important than education. Our parents were predominantly police officers, firefighters and small business owners. As one of seven children, I started working at the age of thirteen, coaching juniors at St. Peter's Basketball Camp. From early on, I learned the importance of community and teamwork through pickup basketball and wiffle ball in the street. My fondest memories were of ordering prosciutto and six-foot heroes for block parties from the local Italian store owned by my friend Beth’s father. We spent our weekends watching "Goodfellas" and competing for the best Joe Pesci accent. It was these years spent on the court, at backyard barbeques and in living rooms that earned me respect and trust as a paisano.

But being a paisano was not merely figurative. Growing up in an Italian and Irish neighborhood full of cops, I was both drawn to and afraid of the influence of gangsters. On one hand, I knew Sonny’s lines from “A Bronx Tale” by heart. On the other hand, I was gripped by Rick Cowan’s book, “Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire,” a heroic tale of an Irish American, outer-borough NYPD officer whose undercover mission exposed the mob’s stronghold on the private garbage industry and helped take it down. It was this dual interest that led me to apply for a summer internship at the New York City Business Integrity Commission (B.I.C.), a law enforcement and regulatory agency formerly known as the Organized Crime Control Commission. From the 1960 onwards, the mob had stifled honest competition through intimidation tactics like truck bombings. The B.I.C.’s mission was to rid the private waste industry of undue influence from organized crime and corruption.

The B.I.C. registered all carting companies, and set rate caps for trash removal – effectively busting the mob related cartels that had once dominated. As a legal intern, I issued violations to companies that failed to register with the B.I.C. Weeks into the job, I realized that the B.I.C.’s anti-corruption policies were also having an effect on small, honest businesses. On one occasion, I wrote up a violation for transporting plants without a self-hauler registration to a small local nursery on Flatbush Avenue. At the administrative hearing, I met the owner of the nursery, Mr. Costa, and I told him that his nursery was just blocks away from my home. He told me that this violation amounted to almost a month’s rent. While he agreed to pay the fine, I felt uneasy and uncomfortable about being the one that issued it. I had started at the B.I.C. so that I could help small businesses, and now I felt as if I had betrayed one of them.

While riding the R train back to Brooklyn that night, I thought about my duties at the B.I.C. I understood the effect that universal registration had on regulating the once “mobbed up” industry, but I also realized that the law had collateral damage. I thought about the ways in which laws can provide for the greater good, but oftentimes incur unintended effects. What seemed to be small, esoteric laws had real impact on local individuals and businesses. It is this complexity of the law coupled with its power to affect the lives of individuals that inspired me to pursue further study. Since my work at the B.I.C., I have taken classes in public finance and business law, and have interned at a NYC based theatre nonprofit, helping to write an economic impact report for the organization. Recently, I returned home to catch up with my buddies, and we discussed our plans for the future. Most of them are still in community college and do not know what direction their lives will take, but they are proud that I have found my interest. They know that I will stay true to my paisano roots, and work to make the law function for people from neighborhoods like ours.