Sammy “the Bull” Gravano started his life of crime as a member of the New York street gang “The Rampers,” later becoming an associate of the Colombo crime family, and ultimately becoming the underboss of the Gambino crime family under the infamous John Gotti. Now, with his criminal life behind him (allegedly), Gravano has reinvented himself as a podcaster, telling his life story on his YouTube channel which has blown up to over 347,000 subscribers as of this writing.
Gravano’s newfound celebrity and viral potential has other YouTube creators scrambling to interview him. Last week, financial commentator and Washington Times columnist Rick Amato scored a sit-down with Gravano, which was aired on his YouTube channel Politics and Profits in two parts.
While the two discussed an array of topics, at one point Amato asked Gravano — who has confessed to 19 murders — his thoughts on the “defunding of America’s police forces,” to which Gravano replied that it’s a “ridiculous thing.”
“Cops are important. If you don’t have authority, if you don’t have rules, you don’t have punishment, you get anarchy. You get people committing crimes without fear,” Gravano said, adding that crime as “doubled and tripled” in cities as a result.
“I’m obviously a gangster, so you can’t consider me a cop lover, but the real side is that we need them,” he continued. “They’re hard-working people, they run into fires along with firemen — I remember the Twin Towers went down and I don’t remember how many police died — they ran into these buildings to save people. What would have happened if we didn’t have police?”
Gravano went on to say that in any organization, there will be “bad apples.”
“Now the minute I saw that cop with his knee on [George Floyd’s] neck, I turned around to the person who was sitting next to me and said, ‘This guy is dead.’ What [Derek Chauvin] did is not the proper thing. He had the guy down, that’s it — put him in the police car, cuff him up — I got arrested a bunch of times in my life, that’s what you do. If I was one of the three cops who were there and watched it, they should’ve pulled out a gun and pointed it at [Chauvin] and said, ‘Get your knee off of his neck or I will shoot you.’ That’s being a cop, a good cop, an honest cop.”
“They would’ve became a hero to say that or do that,” he added.
Watch the video below:
