Chinatown crew in Chicago has very powerful contacts with gang leaders, politicians, and pastors on the Southside.

Christopher gets robbed by some puerto rican drug dealers as well in one episode. The sopranos is a tv show so its supposed to make them look powerful due to the fact that they were the main characters.

Gotti associate lewis kasman hired a latin king gang member to assault a mob associate in prison once. Junior gotti alledgedly hired the latin kings to kill an informant in a florida prison aswell.

So, in your opinion, La Cosa Nostra (mafia) is like a boy scout group that local Newark or New York street thugs can simply pick on and abuse?

I understand that, but with so few members, how does the Outfit stay in power? What's stopping one of the large street gangs like the Latin Kings or Gangster Disciples from encroaching on some of the Outfits rackets or areas? I'm sure some of the "elder" members of some of these gangs are more business oriented and are eyeing some of the same types of activities that the Outfit might be involved in.
I realize that most gangs and most LCN families operate in different spheres, but with increased law enforcement crackdowns and tremendous competition to make a buck, you'd think many of these groups would start to enter into each other's areas as the criminal landscape changes.

If they weren't so busy croaking each other and getting pinched and thrown in the can every other week sure what would stop them? You tell me?

If they could breeze into upsale neighborhoods and trash everything in sight without the Cops showing up then I guess yeah what I'm saying is they could pretty much do as they pleased if they had the smarts to stop slinging on their own corners and decided to lose the hood mentality and venture out into the big wide world.

That's war, which would never happen of course.

All I'm really saying is that mob guys don't carry no prestige to most of these street guys because they live in a world where the only thing that means anything is how tough you are in the moment, how much you are willing t throw down and not give a fuck in these kinds of situations. The guys that have that mentality are for the most part black and Spanish these days. What's even a tough Italian blue collar kinda guy from Brooklyn or the Bronx gonna do? Smoke one, two, then what?

Buy the rest of the street guys off? And still face the possibility of getting whacked by one of the kid's long lost demented puss ridden cousins one day coming out of a car lot?

Only working relationship mob guys could have is with the cabbage. This can always buy you lots of friends. But they ain't on the streets busing heads. And they ain't showing up at all hours of the night outside ghetto fried chicken joints in their Cadillacs shuffling up to the front of the queue like Archie Bunker giving his state of the union address.

You know how quickly street guys get dead? One wrong word to one of these guys in a park or a club and they will throw down with you and you better be ready. They will stick you in no time at all.

Personally I can't stand all that "pssss, wassap pappy" bullshit but that's the way it is on the streets in 2012 the odd exception here and there aside.

gangs have already moved out to the suburbs, engage in money laundering and increasingly become involved with more sophisticated crimes such as fraud.
street gangs target the rich in id theft ring
gangs move to the suburbs
the older mobsters in their 80s don't want any trouble, they have to think whether its worth it and also about he wants to live day to day in new york with a group of young reckless gangbangers looking to kill him, whos got more to lose in that situation? not the gang bangers.

Think of Chicago street organizations like fraternities; Despite there large numbers, not all of them are engage in criminal activities. So subtract that portion of the membership away, you have your young generation of members that are the ones constantly in headline news the live fast, die young type, they aren't concern with racketeering just quick money to blow away. Subtract them away. That lives the mild, mature and old members that will be involved in racketeering but not to the extent such as a takeover just business partners with organized crime because they see eye to eye. Old/ Mild members are the mobsters type and younger are the bangers.

You raise a lot of interesting points, and I can't say that I disagree with everything you write. I enjoy reading your posts.

It's sort of perverse how the criminal world has morphed over the years. It wasn't long ago that there were more clearly defined hierarchies within the underworld, with most of the traditional organized crime families being at the top of the food chain. But those delineations and hierarchies are not so well-defined and, in actuality, quite different from just a short time ago.

I can't say that I actually feel sorry for traditional organized crime families that their fortunes and powers have declined, but it seemed as if the average citizen was safer when LCN was controlling a certain area rather than one of these upstart, class of 2012 gangs. The whole value thing, whereby most hardcore LCN families don't engage in simple violence just for the sake of it.

But still, I can't see how a guy, for instance, like John Gotti (when he was boss) would tolerate any type of abuse or injury from one of these upstart criminals without striking back in a way that would send a clear message. But who knows. Maybe if Gotti stopped in at a waffle house and was robbed and beaten by a group of thugs, maybe he would just walk out with his tail between his legs and that would be the end of it! LOL.......Who the heck knows!

100% correct

Back in the day the wiseguys had something to offer other criminals, They supplied the heroin they had alot of officials in their pockets and they had a massive street presence in the inner city to, and they had a significant amount of power in the prisons to. Today they dont have hardly any of that.

Black p. Stones push the Chicago Outfit out of the street level protection racket back in 1971. Even after a sit-down with the blackstone chief Jeff Fort, he didn't backed down and had two of the outfit associates killed.

thats interesting. is there an article or something with that story in, can you post it up. i didn't know that fort had any dealings with them.

Sure. My source is the book African-American Organized Crime:A Social History pg 201-202.

He should have killed Accardo. Really, that man was mentally ill (at least partially): I understand he was angry of being robbed, but those kind of tortures he ordered then are just revolting

Thanks but i aint got the book and theres no excerpt either online. i did find this though on how the gangs took over activities.

The increasing number of black youth would form new gangs replacing their 1940s, more civil older brothers. Most formed alá Thrasher, but the two largest, the Vice Lords and Blackstone Rangers, were founded in St. Charles, the city’s juvenile prison. Gangs were proliferating in black communities that had few legitimate jobs, and were cut out of both Policy and drugs, which were still dominated by the Outfit. One Vice Lord leader said the gang took its name from wanting to take the job of “lords of vice” from whites. Interviews with both Vice Lords and Rangers who were active in the 1960s describe both violence against Italian heroin runners and negotiated deals with the Outfit for the black gangs to take over distribution of heroin. The decimation of the black Policy Kings left a void in adult leadership for the youth gangs, who were left to find their own way. The founding of multi-neighborhood “super-gangs” is testimony both to the lack of existing black leadership and the daring, innovation of the youthful gangs.
While the Outfit set up Chicago’s heroin markets through the infamous “French Connection” in Marseilles (McCoy 1972), heroin was never meant as a drug for Italians. “Not in our neighborhood” said Giancana. “but shines (African Americans) want it and somebody’s gotta supply it. It may as well be us.” (Giancana and Giancana 1992. p. 246). The long-term concentration of “opium dens” and cocaine in the Black Belt (Spillane 1998) also formed a ready-made retail outlet for the new drug, heroin and their Italian suppliers. But by the end of the 1950s, the growing strength of the black gangs meant that retail could no longer be controlled by Italians, so a deal was struck. One Outfit leader told me that the “blacks were rough” and it made sense to withdraw from retail, while controlling the supply of heroin. It was just “good business” he said.
Black gangs were taking over street level illicit enterprises in their community. On the southside, the Blackstone Rangers painted “Stones Run It” all over walls, an explicit challenge to police and the Outfit. “There will be no killing,” Stones leader Jeff Fort told police on camera, “without killing in return.” The black community, long docile and under control of the machine, was rising up and the youth were especially angry. The civil rights movement challenged the city, but also posed an ethical challenge to the gangs as black people. Selling drugs made money, which was in short supply. But it also meant harm and death to the black community.

lol.am i the only one who thinks this debate is hilarious?

Apples & Oranges.

'apples and bowling balls'.hahaha.

Yeah, and who can forget Papa Gotti enlisting the help of the AB. Crazy stuff. And those AB guys are psychos.

I agree, I guess no mafia organization is able to protect its members from some maniacs from the ghetto who don't give a shit about anything, but in some other episodes of the Sopranos it was made clear that the NJ mafia doesn't control the streets and is not feared in some areas: Chris getting robbed, black gangsters attacking Bobby, Tony having to use some black kids to clean that building (during the HUD scam), and you didn't get the feeling that the Russian mob fears the Italians, same goes for those Hispanic guys in Florida in 6th season, even those bikers shot back.

What didn't seem realistic to me was the way they made the Colombians look like an easy target. I don't believe that a small mafia family would nowadays have the balls to steal huge ammounts of money from the Colombians, but in Sopranos, it happened twice. Even in Roy DeMeo's times the Gambino family didn't want to risk problems with them after Rosenberg pissed them off.