Double Deal: The Inside Story of Murder, Unbridled Corruption, and the Cop Who Was a Mobster Sam Giancana  More Info

About the Willow Springs Police Department 

According to the Willow Springs Police Department, “The Village of Willow Springs Police Department was originally founded in 1952 and has grown to a current Department of seventeen full-time and twelve part-time police officers.  We are constantly striving to make improvements to the Department that will allow us to provide the Community with a full service, professional Police Department. Current requirements are that all prospective police officers have a minimum of two years of college credit, or prior military service. 

We have also recently increased the level of experience and professionalism within the Department by hiring several lateral entry officers and experienced part-time officers.  These are all officers that were previously employed by other law enforcement agencies, are already State certified, and bring varying degrees of experience and knowledge with them to Willow Springs.  Some of the services that we currently provide to the community include regular patrol activities, overweight truck and traffic enforcement, investigations and juvenile officers, motorcycle patrol officers, bicycle patrol officers, evidence technicians, and some varied counseling services

We have translators available that are fluent in Polish, Russian, German and Spanish, and we are providing the D.A.R.E. program to sixth grade students at Willow Springs School.  We also participate in several multi-jurisdictional organizations to provide needed manpower to the Village in times of a local emergency, any incident that might require an emergency response team, or high profile crimes that require specialized investigations.  We are also working to solidify our staffing and structure in order to provide you with a Department that has an appropriate number of supervisors and subordinate personnel required to carry out our assigned duties.

Publisher’s Weekly said of Double Deal: The Inside Story of Murder, Unbridled Corruption, and the Cop Who Was a Mobster, “This is a fast-paced inside look at the workings of the Chicago-based organized crime syndicate and its national and international dealings, by a highly decorated former Illinois police officer who spent his entire law enforcement career working for the Mob. Co-author Giancana covered much of the same territory in Double Cross, his bestselling look at the U.S. Mafia, but here his obvious model is Nicholas Pileggi's Wiseguy, the classic insider look at the New York crime world through the words of ex-mobster Henry Hill. Surprisingly, Corbitt's story compares favorably to that earlier classic true crime tale as he narrates his rise from the ranks of an average Chicago gang to being a player with the likes of Sam "Momo" Giancana (his co-author's uncle) and Tony Accardo-perhaps the two most important figures in the history of post-WWII Chicago crime. Giancana captures Corbitt's eye for the sleazy details of Mob life, such as the time he sees "half a million in loose diamonds" wrapped in a brown paper bag on the front seat of Momo's car, "looking like a ham sandwich." But the heart of the book is Corbitt's description of the mysterious figure of Hy Larner, who, along with Meyer Lansky, controlled organized crime in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s. Corbitt's first-hand accounts of Larner's dealings with shady figures like Lansky, the Shah of Iran and Manuel Noriega, as well as with agents of the Israeli government, the Mossad and the CIA, provide some new evidence of the extent of organized crime's involvement with the government.”