Rise and fall of The Westies, New Yorks last Irish gang, as new series charts their murders and shakedowns

Thousands of families visit the Jacob K.Javits Convention Center every year for events like the Westminster dog show, Comic Con and International Auto Show.Very few of them realize the blood spilled, extortion extracted and dead bodies connected with the exhibition space, as it rose from the ashes of former rail-yards to host such jazzy gatherings.During construction between 1979 through 1986 and in the early years of operation, the burgeoning Center on the very West end of 34th Street was a cash cow for New York’s criminal elite.It also limned the rise and fall of a violent Hell’s Kitchen-based Irish gang, the Westies.

Those gangsters and the Javits Center play key roles in a new scripted crime series, “The Westies,” premiering July 12 on MGM+.“The Westies felt like they owned the neighborhood where the Javits Center was,” series co-creator Chris Brancato, who specializes in historically inspired crime dramas, told The Post.“Cops were on the pad [payroll] and the Westies felt a sense of freedom to do what they wanted, whether it was legal or not,” such as bookmaking, loan sharking, drug dealing and contract killings.Underhand opportunities abounded at the New York City signature construction project of the ‘80s, which required the use of workers from a wide swath of unions, who already had mobsters rifling their coffers.“Everyone understood that the Javits Center was going to be an unprecedented bounty of criminal rackets,” T.J.English, author of the definitive book on the gang, “The Westies” (not part of the series, which is more a “historical fiction,” according to Brancato) told The Post.At the time, English explained, no source of kickback or extortion was too trivial for milking: “That included food carts for the workers, the laying of cement, painting,” even porta-potties.“Everything from soup to nuts [and bolts] in the construction.

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