I know every decades, the position of the five families changes... at one time, one family is a the top of the commission, and 10 years later, another family is a the top.

But how would you describe each of the five families?
I just started to look more into the 5 families, and it look like the Genovese were the family that most of the time were the richest(maybe I’m wrong).
And the Colombo family, look like they had many prolific killers.... like they had a good number of well known killers....

So how would you describe each of the five families?

Today...

Genovese - Fortune 500, Blue-Chip Business. Big, steady, serious. Well-managed and organized. The Rolls Royce of LCN in America.


Gambino - Great big, brutal, hot mess - seen better days but not to be underestimated. The only truly worthy rival to the Genovese family, but solidly in second place.


Lucchese - The middle of the pack. While not as big or as well managed or as dangerous as the others, it has more or less held everything together after the disastrous Amuso/Casso years.


Bonanno - Big(ger) in numbers but sorely lacking in quality at all levels, from associate to the wife-murdering boss. Have had to suffer endless humiliations, including but not limited to:
- it's founders' book
- losing its spot on the commission
- Donnie Brasco
- the only true boss to have flipped in LCN history,
- a slain former Boss and a taped induction in Montreal
-an associate (some say member) who appeared on Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.
-...and much, much more!

I'm not saying I'd insult any of these guys to their faces, but in LCN terms this family is a joke - joining the Bonannos is likely no more difficult than joining AA.

Colombo - A once important family destroyed by decades of Persico family nepotism. Not a lot of young blood of any talent in the ranks. The future looks grim. I wouldn't insult any of these guys either but let's put it this way: if a geriatric Colombo captain had a hot Ariana Grande-lookalike granddaughter I wouldn't be afraid to take her to pound town without reprisal.

Pretty good assessment Eastside

Nice infos

How come the Colombo are last?
The Bonano I guess its because of the Boss snitching and donnie Brasco thing.

But the Colombo?
I see they had 3 internal wars.... that most have weakened the family I guess.
Did the other families had as many internal wars?

Colombos are last for many reasons, but most of which can be summed up by pointing out that they haven't had a boss on the street since the Reagan administration. They have been completely decimated by nepotism and internecine warfare and have little influence outside of Long Island at this point.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were totally absorbed by the Gambinos in the next 10 years.

Sonthe genoces and gambino are the two crime family with alot of weight in the ogrnaized crime world?

Look like the Colombo’s had alot of strong heads or dumb heads to go to war that many times.

Too many gun mens

Five families each described in one word...at their peaks:

Genovese: Organized

Gambino: Powerful

Lucchese: Secretive

Colombo: Ambitious

Bonanno: Traditional

My Man Oak as Fan.......Welcome back back my knowledgeable long lost professor .....I felt that u left because of Moe...well... he (of course) has new enemy's 2 play w/// thank u 4 returning..we always need ur open opinion on 2 days world (politics begrugingly)..but I Know U & I have had r differences yrs. ago but I've grown 2 respect ur commentaries ..whether I like them r not...I miss ur politically correct or incorrect views of the world in this day & age..they were always inspiring ....even back in the day....please contribute more of ur dry humor & wit & serious knowledge of the mob,,the world in which we live(u were always good @ that) & the world according 2 OAK..Cheers!!!!!

a previous poster said that in 10 yrs he wouldn't be surprised if the gambinos would absorb the colombos.
i've wondered at one point do the genovese or gambinos or any family start taking over other families entirely or a crew at a time.
all the NYC families work together on different rackets from time to time the indictments ovet the past 5-10 yrs prove this.
and in this hypothetical scenario what families would takeover whom.
ex=would philadelphia ever absorb the remnants of the decavalcante or vice versa?

Genovese: still traditional, somewhat stable and sophisticated, still has secrecy, currently trying to hold on to what's left of themselves, have benefitted from previous capable management but they too feel the heat, with reduced membership rolls from prior years

Gambino: large size, very bad publicity, some international reach, somewhat sophisticated, trying to correct mistakes of upper management (Gotti, etc), but they are no longer in Carlo's image

Bonanno: once the most secretive, larger than LE thought, very international in scope, but currently helmed by mental weaklings and incapable leaders, in very poor shape, too many rats. mostly into blue collar rackets

Lucchese: once a small but very powerful entity, completely imploded by bad upper management of Amuso and Casso, they will likely never rebound, too many rats, membership cut down tremendously. They lost most of their power and union rackets.

Colombo: once a major player but stupidity, greed, wanton violence over 50+ years ruined them. Persico's bloody rule led to a distrust of each other, too many rats, membership cut to less than half of what they once had. presently mostly into blue collar rackets

De Cavalcante: always small and largely unsophisticated but stable under Sam and Riggi. Now they are a wisp of what they once were. Almost a non-entity with a shell of a membership left.
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Note: With over 100 "inducted" informants (made men), and many more important associate members having turned, coupled with high-tech LE techniques its only a matter of time before ALL crews as we now know them will be a memory. What will be left will be almost unrecognizable from what it once was. Italy/Sicily will always be. CN in the USA has to hope they can import capable recruits from the homeland, because as we now know it the current American underworld is very weak. They will not get stronger on their own. It's their only hope.

As I've repeatedly stated in my opinion pieces and articles, 1 "rat" is one rat too many for the health of "This Thing." But 100 rats is insurmountable in the overall scheme of things. Add in the legions of others who shit out secrets today, and it's been a recipe for permanent disaster. There are NO two ways about it either!

MOST IMPORTANTLY: The number #1 challenge for all the borgatas (the Genovese included) and the major problem is finding capable manpower today. There just isn't any solid and capable young (or older) Italians available for induction into the ranks of the various Families. Period!

95% of new recruits are mentally ignorant, incapable, un-sophisticated, and "green" to mob life. The evidence proves me out. No sooner does a man become "made," most wanna run for the hills because it's not what they "thought" it would be. Lol.... They are novices, most of whom don't even understand what they are truly getting into. Incompetence and havoc generally rules the day.

Even the newly installed bosses today have little savvy, knowledge and foresight to be able to steer the "ship" so to speak in the proper direction. Its not gonna get better because there is no one waiting in the lurch that has the tools to correct the situation. It's their biggest problem.

The other 5% who do indeed have more than enough savvy, smarts, and organizational ability to perform the task are TOO smart to engage. They know that it's a losing battle and they would only be shoveling shit against the tide. So they stay hidden and protected where they are. Safe in the shadows.... Who could blame them?

I've heard FBI agent use the saying "They were unsophisticated in the way they kill", what does "unsophisticated" or "sophisticated" mean regarding CN?

That I cannot speak to. murder is murder. There are better executed plans and so forth. But essentially its all the same in my book

I think I understand now. The agent was talking about the Bonannos, so I think he meant how they executed plans

In the past there have been parts of crews and/or whole crews absorbed into other families.

The Genovese absorbed a bunch of the Colombo's from Joe Gallo's crew.

The Detroit family absorbed a whole crew in Canada from the Buffalo LCN, family.

I believe a crew from Utica N.Y. also jumped from Buffalo to the Bonanno.

Rochester N.Y, again jumped from Buffalo to become its own family.

Then you have the Rizzuto's that jumped from the Bonnano to their own family as well.

The Trafficante's I believe were absorbed by the Gambinos's in Fl.

The LA. family was again absorbed by the Gambino family.

Really the Decalvacante family has been absorbed by the Gambino's.

I know the above isn't 100% accurate but I am pretty sure most of the above is somewhat true.

The Bonnanos have survived a lot but after the murder of Galante it went downhill.

I want to hear about that. Did the Buffalo crew get absorbed in to the Detroit Windsor crew?

I've been meaning to bring this up for the while. When the Gallo rebellion sparked mayhem, were captains and bosses in other families trying to back their play? What would a machiavellian schemer in another gain from backing the Gallos instead of Profaci, who had been stable for thirty years? The politics of the Gallo war are kind of opaque.

I think Neil Dellacroce tried to have a stake in the gallo war but I don't know on what side.

I think a lot of what we think the families are now, is what we would like them to be now based on the past histories of the families. I believe they’re fairly strong and making money. I don’t believe any of them are strong enough to have much influence if any at all politically or in the courts. This directly weakens them, then take into account there are zero Italian ghettos left the recruitment of new hard core loyal members is nil. Take a kid from the burbs away from from his video games, woke bs, and full bellies make for a wanna be only. Not a gangster who can do what needs to be done or the time for doing it. It does provide loud mouths who love the rep, but run to the feds when it comes crashing down. So the families are hanging on because of the past strength and weakening daily. Unless they get new members who know what it means to suffer a lil bit and survive by 2050 or so they’ll be extinct and or reduced to blood and crip status. Individual crime gangs or crews and oc in name only. My opinion

They’re control of the unions still give them a ton of clout...they’re street presence has been substantially reduced but the money and power from the unions separate them from every other crime group. A lot of these kids that are groomed for the life are raised in violent households that foster gangster behavior. Violent fathers usually beget Violent sons.



This is the situation on the waterfront today..This gives the mob enormous clout today...



In the view of Walter M. Arsenault, the executive director of the Waterfront Commission, the fundamental relationship between the waterfront and the mob remains unchanged since “On the Waterfront.”

“The only difference is now, it’s in color,” Mr. Arsenault said.

He based that assessment on several indicators, such as the number of relatives of organized-crime figures who continue to hold choice jobs, many of which involve little work and pay unusually high salaries, like the union shop steward position held by Ralph Gigante, the nephew of the boss of the Genovese family, the late Vincent (Chin) Gigante. Ralph Gigante earned $419,000 in 2014, and has said he believes he holds the union office for life — “until death do us part.”

There is also the fact that some of the same New York and New Jersey union officials whom federal prosecutors have in the past accused of racketeering have since risen to the top ranks of the East Coast waterfront union, the International Longshoremen’s Association.

One is Harold J. Daggett, the garrulous president, who owns a 76-foot yacht, the Obsession, and has been spotted by his members riding in a Bentley. One longshoreman said he had been surprised to catch sight of a holster strapped to Mr. Daggett’s ankle during a meeting.
Mr. Daggett declined, through the longshoremen’s association’s spokesman, to be interviewed. But alluding to his brushes with the Justice Department, Mr. Daggett joked at a union conference in Puerto Rico in 2015 that when he was invited to the White House for a labor meeting, “I thought I might have a better chance ending up in the big house, but there I was, your I.L.A. president, at the White House.”
The waterfront today has largely receded from the city’s consciousness and even its geography. And to some extent, so has the mob. Decimated by mass prosecutions over the last three decades, New York’s five crime families have struggled to adapt. While there have been some new, profitable ventures, like online gambling, the waterfront still exerts its own pull. Mr. Arsenault referred to the waterfront as the mob’s “last candy jar.”

In recent years, the union has brazenly recommended friends or relatives of organized crime figures for jobs on the docks, said Phoebe S. Sorial, the general counsel for the Waterfront Commission. She said the union has sought waterfront jobs for “people who posted bail for organized figures” and “people who are in business with organized crime figures,” along with any number of relatives.

In 2014, for instance, the union recommended the 62-year-old daughter of one of New York’s most famous mobsters, Benjamin (Lefty) Ruggiero (played by Al Pacino in the film “Donnie Brasco”), Mr. Arsenault said, adding that other such cases abound.

“You can’t throw a rock on either side of the waterfront without hitting a brother, son or daughter of a made member,” Mr. Arsenault said, using the terminology for someone who has been inducted into a crime family.
The bi-state Waterfront Commission was formed in 1953 to fight organized crime on the docks. For many years, before it came under new leadership in 2008, it was a scandal-scarred and sleepy agency. Since then it has focused on extensive background checks, mapping the familial relationships between mobsters and longshoremen — an elaborate genealogy project.

The Gigantes, for instance, have 10 relatives — mostly nephews, in-laws and grandsons — working on the waterfront, according to the commission. This kind of blatant nepotism was impressive if not especially unusual.

And yet Mr. Daggett, the union president, objects to the assumption that these sorts of arrangements necessarily signal corruption. “There is an old saying,” he once proclaimed at a public hearing, slightly stretching the degree of kinship in the adage, “‘The son or a nephew should not carry the sins of a father or an uncle.’”

Many of those with relatives in organized crime say the insinuation that they themselves are mixed up in racketeering is hurtful, untrue and yet maybe inescapable.
Yet just a few years later, Mr. Catucci, now locked in a battle over a contract to operate the Red Hook port, accused the longshoremen’s union of threatening him during negotiations. He had been told he would be taken out “in a box,” according to a lawsuit he filed. One vice president of the union “shoved me and threatened to knock me out,” Mr. Catucci said in a 2014 affidavit, in which he claimed that some of the waterfront’s most powerful figures “are, or are associated with, thugs who get their way by intimidation and force.”
For years, investigators have suspected that the mob’s most lucrative targets on the waterfront are the longshoremen benefit funds, including what is known as the “container royalty fund,” the fund that pays extra wages to longshoremen each year as compensation for the diminished work that came with containerization. The funds are worth a great deal of money; one received more than $95 million in 2014. They also tend to be rather opaque.

“It is an awfully inviting target, and knowing the cast of characters involved here, to think they’re not getting a piece of this is unrealistic,” Mr. Stewart said.

The list of employees at the benefits fund, said one law enforcement official, include an accountant and a director of operations who are the children of dead organized crime figures.