Sergeant John Koncilja Jr. was a tough Pueblo police detective who took on crooked cops and mobsters in the 1970s.
"He wasn't afraid," his son told the Pueblo Chieftain.
Pueblo was a mob town on the national scale with ties to "The Commission" - much more so than Denver and its famed Smaldone gang. Koncilja, in turn, was a local Frank Serpico - the famed cop who took on police corruption in New York City.
Police scandals in the "Steel City" involved La Cosa Nostra rigged police promotional exams, a cop-led burglary and fencing ring, traffic ticket fixing, procuring abortions in Walsenburg before they were legal - and assorted other crime.
Thugs even tried to bribe a Missouri cop who was an applicant for Pueblo police chief and attempted to put a contract on a Pueblo County commissioner in a zoning dispute. (Beat him, but don't kill him.)
Cops were on the payroll of Colorado's top mob boss Joesph "Scotty" Spinuzzi, a violent character straight out of central casting. "We often felt like there were only four or five of us who weren’t on the take or afraid to fight back,” Koncilja said.
A key organized crime player was tavern owner Joseph A. “Jo-Jo” Concialdi, who was tried and shipped off to prison. The one-time Pueblo high school football star operated the Branch Inn in Pueblo for almost 50 years. Concialdi said Koncilja would never be promoted because he wasn’t "one of our boys."
Koncilja, who died at age 83 in May 2021, went on to serve as an investigator for the Colorado Organized Crime Strike Force and 10th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
“Jo-Jo” Concialdi
"Scotty" Spinuzzi
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