Towards the end in the baptism scene,we see Neri in his cop uniform. Was he a former police officer or was that a stolen uniform?

He was a former police officer. That information isn't discussed in the film, but they tell a good deal of Neri's backstory in the novel. Basically, he was called to a crackhouse, where he subsequently killed a drug dealer who was raping a woman. He got in trouble with the department, Michael Corleone recruited him, and the rest is history (in a nutshell, I'm sure JustMe, Turnbull or some of the others can give a more accurate re-telling of Neri's story).

xXxDCxXx is correct. Neri was a former police ofiicer who answered a call on his beat one day and found a 12 year old girl and her mother badly sliced up from a pimp who used a razor on them. Neri tried apprehending this pimp but the pimp attmepted to stab Neri. So Neri cracked him across the head with his falshlight and knocked him cold. However Neri proceeded to crack this guy a second time and the guy died! Neri was brought up on criminal charges, found guilty and sentenced to prison. Neri's father in-law knew people connected with The Corleones and asked them for help. A judge reconsidered Neri's case and decided to suspend his sentence and release him. Once released Neri found out from his father in-law that an associate of his contacted the Corleones, so Neri went out to the Corleone Mall to personally thank Michael. Meanwhile Tom Hagen had gone over Neri's police records from when he was a cop up intil his trial and realized that Neri could be a real assest to The Corleones. Michael offered Neri work out in Las Vegas. After a couple of days Neri contacted Michael and respectfully told Michael that he would rather work in New York than in Las Vegas. Neri did so with such honesty and respect that Michael was impressed at Neri's sincerity of wanting to be a loyal soldier to The Corleones, so he put him under Clemenza and after some time Clemenza realized that this guy could be the next Luca Brasi for the Corleones. And the rest is history.


Don Cardi

was the thing with the thing with the pimp after Neri got in trouble for smashing all the car windows of the ppl with diplomatic immunity?

I guess you are trying to ask if the incident with the pimp was after Neri smashed all the windows of the diplomats cars.
If this is what you are trying to ask then the answer is yes, it was.


Don Cardi

yea thats wat im asking, cause i was confused for a sec, becuase for some reason i dont remember that incident, i guess i was zoning out while i was reading or was tired or somethin

Ah I see,thanks.

One little addition.
The point is a bit deeper.
There's a line saying, that Neri's father-in-law, a shrewd Italian, understood too well that a man like Neri will never survive even a year in prison.
That's why he contacted Corleones.
So, in fact, Michael didn't just rescue him from jail, he saved his life.

As you can see, this was one of the best sub-plots in the novel. Too bad it wasn't included in the film.

Since Al was to become Michael's Luca, I always felt that his hasty introduction (or non-introduction, really) in the movie was a shame. I, too, think that his sub-plot was very interesting in the book. I thought it was an excellent example of how Vito took Michael under his wing, was showing him the ropes. I also thought that Michael's handling of Al, inviting him to stay for dinner, sending him on the nice vacation to Florida, also showed a side of Michael that we really didn't see in the movie - just how he got these people to be loyal to him.

The one thing I found interesting about Neri's father-in-law is that he goes to the Corleones for help out of guilt, because his daughter had left Al because she was afraid of him. Al sounds like such a force in the book, and I don't think the character was ever developed fully in the movie.

Wow, I never knew that! Thanks xxx. Man, I really need to read that novel when I get a chance, but I'm still only halfway through The Hobbit and I still want to read all of the Harry Potter books, so it'll be on the back burner for awhile

Why wouldn't Neri survive a year in prison?? That seems like a contradiction to me.

Because Neri was too agressive for prison. There is such a thing. He would have been killed by the guards or inmates. Keep in mind that his imprisonment would have been at a time when prisons were viewed almost exclusively as places where you "reformed" people by any means necessary, before th era of civil liberties and the ACLU, and before rehabilitation became any kind of science.

I would also imagine that cops who have a habit of breaking the skulls of suspects don't fare well amongst the criminal population of a prison.

I really like Al, too bad the backround story isn't included in the films.

As explained further in the book, any of prisoners would kill him , and if not, he was sure to kill one of them.
Remember what he was - it's fully described in that chapter.