being born and raised in nyc i can't fathom the italian mafia having much power at all these days. nyc has totally and completely been gentrified and transformed as a city; in many ways it's a completely different place than it was 20 or even 10 years ago. crime is down across the board and it is now one of the safest cities in the country, possibly the world.

i can see the mafia being involved in wholesaling drugs or exerting some union control (even though so many laws pertaining to unions were so radically changed in the '90s i can't even imagine this being the case any more) but the more "traditional" money making schemes have to completely dead. loansharking, numbers, book making and small time protection/extortion? lol no way. there simply aren't enough blue collar italians left in the city anymore to make any of this viable, both in terms of actually having people around as muscle to commit these crimes and in terms of actually having enough people around willing to take $10k loan to cover a gambling debt. the blue collar, mostly italian base that the mafia depended on for making money for so long simply doesn't exist in this city any more. what little italians that are left are all 3rd or 4th generation with plenty of money as is from legitimate ventures.

i could be wrong but i don't see the mafia in nyc as anything more than an old boys club that has most of its money tied in legitimate ventures, along with some side income coming from smuggling stolen goods or drugs from abroad into and out of the city.