Dave Green

Retired Lt. David J. Green (born in Miami, August 17, 1938; died in Tampa, Florida, on August 23, 2012). Dave served in the US Navy for four years in the Pacific. Lt. David Green became a police officer in 1960 with Metro Dade Police in Miami. He was a Special Agent Supervisor with Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), a Lieutenant with the Broward County Sheriffs Office, and finally, a Deputy with the Larimer County Sheriffs Office in Ft. Collins CO. Lt. Dave Green, when a member of the Broward County Sheriff's Office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, engaged in a two-year (1985–1987) undercover investigation that led to the arrest and conviction of members of the Bonanno, Bufalino, Gambino, and Genovese Mafia families. As part of Operation Cherokee Green assumed the identity of Danny Ledford, a stolen liquor salesman. Using this identity he was able to infiltrate organised crime families in South Florida and record over 2,000 conversations linking suspects to narcotics sales, extortion, firearms violations and solicitation for homicide. While undercover he learned inside information about the assassination of Gambino Mafia boss Paul Castellano. This investigation is listed in a U.S Senate Subcommittee Report titled: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate: Organized Crime: 25 Years After Valachi, Exhibit No. 44, pages 1007 to 1069. Green followed this investigation with a one-year undercover investigation in 1989 of Cleveland Mafia boss John "Peanuts" Tronolone, who resided in South Florida. The investigation was tricky because Tronolone knew Green's identity. Green disguised himself as an outlaw motorcycle biker and traded allegedly stolen jewelry for a loan shark debt. This was the only time in America that a Mafia boss was arrested in a hand-to-hand transaction with a member of local law enforcement. Tronolone was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison.