Utica NY took a real beating back in the late 1990’s. Griffiss AFB closed and GE left. There weren’t any jobs to speak of, and the job I took was doing commercial sales at a small manufacturer.
The Corn Hill section was literally on fire. Every evening, there would be a house fire. The fire department would engage and start putting it out. Then four more would start up once they got their equipment setup.
The deal was... you’re paying a mortgage on a house you can’t sell for enough to close out the loan let alone any money and you don’t live anywhere nearby. What do you do?
Enter our friends with the broken noses. House 1 is the sacrifice. They set it on fire and the FD puts it out. You file the claim and rebuild the house on the cheap and sell for what you can get. The other three or four fires are the real target. They are TOTAL losses by the time FD can set up to contain the fire(s) the only thing left is the cellar. For them, they take the insurance $$$, fill in the cellar and leave the house to the city for back taxes and they are in the clear. The deniability is that they were living in North Carolina or Texas and weren’t anywhere nearby when it went down.
For a few thousand dollars you could get yourself out of a tough spot if you knew the “right people”. Utica was always known as a “mob” town.
Certainly did not know Utica was a mob town! I thought it was filled with the descendants of the brave Union fighting men who helped to end slavery!
But then, like I said, there’s this whole widespread fish dinner on Friday thing around there, so I thought: there must be a bunch of Catholics up here.
Again, no offense intended to those who live there!