A Donegal cop has told for the first time how he sold drugs and went to jail for his crime.
Peter Daly
Peter Daly emigrated to New York where he became an NYPD officer in the 1970s.
Now an RTE radio documentary reveals how he stole and resold drugs from the biggest seizure in US history, earning him a ten year sentence in prison with mobsters and thieves.
Born in 1933, Peter grew up in Ballyshannon, where his father was a GP.
He moved to New York at the age of 19 and volunteered to fight in the Korean War.
When he returned to New York, he got an American citizenship and joined the Police Academy in 1961.
Peter started off as a beat cop on streets of New York. He recalls in the documentary how he and his colleagues would bunk off and sleep in coffins in a mortuary rather that being on patrol.
He moved up the ranks to the NYPD’s Special Investigations Unit, an elite group that probed into the gangsters of New York’s criminal underworld.
In 1970, Peter’s unit uncovered 100kg of heroin and cocaine in a drug seizure bigger than the famous French Connection. Retired authority personnel in the documentary say it was more likely that 105kg, or even 110kg of drugs was found. The extra kilograms were sold on by Peter and his crew of crooked cops.
Peter returned to Ballyshannon as his crimes were revealed to the US courts. He was safe from extradition in Ireland, but a visit to a relative in England turned sour as police swarmed his hotel in Liverpool.
From a prison cell in the UK’s Pentonville Prison, Peter’s efforts to avoid extradition failed.
He stood before a grand jury in the US in 1975, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison because his ‘Irish stubbornness’ meant that he would not tell on his accomplices and reveal information.
It was Peter’s silence and refusal to cooperate with detectives that earned him respect among the tough gangsters of US prison. He befriended thieves and mafia bosses who protected him during his five year incarceration.
Nowadays, Peter Daly is known as an 80-year-old gentleman in the town of Ballyshannon. The documentary chronicles how such a Donegal man could have become immersed in the corrupt world of New York at the time.
As his past is revealed in this documentary, Peter justifies his actions, “You had to be a thief to catch a thief.
The documentary was made by fellow Ballyshannon man Marc McMenamin.
Peter Daly – Good Cop/Bad Cop? airs on RTE Radio 1 on September 14th 2013.
