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The letters in question by ��ѿ��ý County Executive Steve S Police Chief Jon Belmar on behalf of Michael Saracino II. Saracino, 27, was sentenced in December to 24 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to possession and intent to distribute more than 1,000 kilos of marijuana. He had been arrested in 2014 as part of a federal and local drug sting in a massive drug dealing operation that included airplanes and spanned several states. Evidence in the cases included at least one firebombing, beatings and a kidnapping. This was not some rich kid growing doobie in his dad’s basement.

Prosecutors sought a sentence about twice that long. Saracino, though, knows people. His uncle is a former county police board member who is now Stenger’s right-hand man, earning $130,000 a year. His family owns three ��ѿ��ý area restaurants, including . The restaurants are popular with cops, offering plenty of free meals over the years. And Stenger once represented the young Saracino after he refused to take a breath test after a traffic stop.

So that the two men would write letters that would end up in the hands of U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Perry shouldn’t shock the senses. In fact, the very namesake of the building where Saracino was sentenced once did a similar thing.

It was the summer of 1983, and a politically connected ��ѿ��ý lawyer with ties to the mob was awaiting sentencing from a federal judge in Nevada after being convicted of tax fraud. The feds said Sorkis J. Webbe Sr. filed false tax returns to help cover up a kickback scheme involving the Aladdin Hotel and Casino. The federal investigation tied the scheme to mob figures in Chicago, Kansas City and Detroit, including and Tony “the Ant” Spilotro.

None of that seedy background mattered much to the politicians in ��ѿ��ý — most of them Democrats — who were connected to the Webbe family, which wielded quite a bit of labor and South Side political influence. This was a different time.

Among those writing letters asking for leniency? U.S. Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton.

“Insofar as such contacts I had with Mr. Webbe, he conducted himself honestly,” wrote Eagleton, whose name now adorns the federal building where Saracino was sentenced. “I never observed, nor did I know of, a thing which would cause me to be dubious of his integrity.”

Forty-one such community leaders wrote letters mentioning nothing of Webbe’s mob ties. Only one of them truly came to regret it: Col. John A. Doherty, who was then the chief of detectives for the ��ѿ��ý Police Department.

That one of the city’s top cops, whose job it was to put away mobsters at a time in which there were car bombings galore in ��ѿ��ý, as rival Syrian and Lebanese gangsters fought over labor power, didn’t sit well with law-and-order types. In fact, the federal prosecutor was so upset he subpoenaed Doherty to appear at the Nevada sentencing.

“You should advise the chief (of police) not to allow these kinds of letters on department stationery and to rid the department of these connections,” special U.S. attorney Marvin L. Rudnick told a police board attorney at the time.

Belmar would have been wise to think of Doherty before doing the same thing more than three decades later. Both the chief and Stenger said they were asked to write the letters by John Saracino, according to Post-Dispatch reporters Christine Byers and Robert Patrick, who broke the story on Thursday. The ��ѿ��ý County police union official told the reporters that rank-and-file officers were upset about the letter, because it was such a major drug bust and county police officers were involved in the investigation. The police union is considering a no-confidence vote in Belmar.

“I believe I have a good track record of law and order,” Belmar said.

Indeed, so many years ago, Doherty offered a similar defense.

“The federal government should know how I cleaned up the hoodlums in this town,” he said. “But I feel like I’m the one on trial.”

Fair or not, he was.

A month after Webbe was sentenced, Doherty was censured by the police department.

A year later, the man who many thought would rise to be the next chief retired.

One year after that, the owner of a popular south ��ѿ��ý restaurant was sentenced in a completely unrelated tax fraud case. His name was Bartolomeo Saracino. His grandson, Michael Saracino II, was not yet born.

Prosecutors recommended a lengthy sentence for Saracino. The judge gave him three months in work release.

Eighty civic leaders in ��ѿ��ý wrote letters to the judge vouching for his character.

You might call it the ��ѿ��ý Way.