How the scuttled Waterfront Commission fought the mob over 70 years of policing NY/NJ docks

The Waterfront Commission, after seven decades of mob-busting on the docks of New York and New Jersey, sleeps with the fishes.

A five-year federal court battle over the existence of the watchdog agency that fought to root out corruption on both sides of New York Harbor ended last week with a Supreme Court decision allowing the Garden State to exit the commission — the final word on the venerable bi-state agency’s long run.

The commission was birthed in 1953, one year before Marlon Brando’s Oscar-winning performance as dock worker Terry Malloy in his lonesome battle against the crooked and iron-clad control of port jobs in the classic film “On The Waterfront.”

The battle to clean up crime across the ensuing decades illustrated the daunting difficulties of industry reform, with two Mafia families eventually entrenched at ports in both states under a mob deal brokered in the late 1960s.

No two men illustrated the yin and yang of life on the waterfront of yore than stone-cold mob killer George Barone and Irish-American priest John Corridan.

The activist Catholic cleric, based near the Manhattan piers, took on the mobsters who doled out jobs in return for kickbacks and looted merchandise arriving on the docks. Actor Karl Malden’s role as a priest in the movie was loosely based on the crusading Corridan, the son of a West Side cop.

The film’s screenwriter Budd Schulberg once recounted consulting with Corridan as he penned the script for the movie honored by the American Film Institute as one of the 20 best of all time.

“A tall, gangling, ruddy-face Irishman whose speech was a fascinating blend of Hell’s Kitchen jargon, baseball slang, the facts and figures of a master in economics, and the undeniable humanity of Christ,” said Schulberg.

The gutsy Corridan provided an eight-page reform plan to the New York State Crime Commission during its 1953 hearings on the waterfront and testified on Capitol Hill in detail about the industry’s longstanding criminal business as usual.

His efforts were widely credited for the creation of the Waterfront Commission.

And then there was Barone, responsible for at least 20 murders in his long and lethal time on the docks. The exact number remains unclear: “I didn’t keep a scorecard!” the Genovese disciple once barked when pressed on the final number.

The World War II veteran was initially a member of a local gang named the Jets — the crew later immortalized in the musical “West Side Story.” The friend of Genovese bigwig Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno eventually became a made man at a ceremony in Harlem.

Barone served as the family rep when the Genovese and Gambino crime families divvied up the waterfronts of New York and New Jersey in the late 1960s, a rare business decision reached without a body count.

Gangsters from both sides reached a bloodless peace: The Gambinos, later home to Dapper Don John Gotti, received control of the ports in Brooklyn and Staten Island. The Genovese would operate in Manhattan and New Jersey.

How entrenched was organized crime on the Hudson? By 2003, former NYPD Commissioner Robert McGuire was brought in to investigate a New Jersey union local whose last three presidents faced criminal charges.

A fourth high-ranking Genovese member linked to Local 1588 in Bayonne was found floating in the Hackensack River with two bullets behind his ear in 1988.

But times have changed: Garden State Gov. Phil Murphy said its state police will soon take over as the main law enforcers on their side of the river, now home to more than 90% of the port’s commerce.

Which, as the Commission argued, doesn’t eliminate the need for its work in the nation’s largest city. This past August, Brooklyn federal prosecutors cited the agency’s aid in the arrests of nine members and associates of the Genovese and Bonanno crime families for racketeering and running illegal gambling operations.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, born 12 years after the Waterfront Commission was created, wrote in the court’s unanimous decision that the organization’s founding document allowed New Jersey to opt out of the long-standing agreement — the last legal volley in the battle between the states.

The decision, while cheered by Murphy, was lamented by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and state Attorney General Letitia James.

“For decades, the Waterfront Commission has been a vital law enforcement agency protecting essential industries at the port and cracking down on organized crime,” the pair said in a joint statement.

Though the timetable for the turnover remained uncertain, Murphy happily bid farewell to an operation once considered a key law enforcement player.

“For many years, frustration over the Commission’s operations has been building,” said Murphy. “New Jersey’s sovereign right to govern our ports has been vindicated.”