One thing you guys should keep in mind is that with maybe a dozen active made members left, most of whom are older, and perhaps twice as many associates, most of whom are older, the Detroit Family is microscopic compared with its city. The city itself is still huge, even after the emptying out, but the urban area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_area) is over 3 million people (still the 11th largest in the country), and if you count the suburbs, exurbs, Windsor, and Toledo that are all interconnected heavily, it's nearly six million. That's a lot of territory for a handful of old college graduates to cover.

So I reckon what Burnstein says about the family's remaining membership is reasonable. And I agree that most (all?) their business is out in the suburbs. Also, law enforcement in the region (especially in the municipality of Detroit) has priorities and limited resources. 911 calls go unanswered quite a bit. They have better things to do than go after a bunch of older white guys who run gambling and loansharking operations.

I would bet that active law enforcement scrutiny of the Detroit Family is limited to those two or three FBI agents that Burnstein seems to know, who probably occasionally check in on what's left of the mob to make sure it doesn't get ambitious and cross over into the UAW or something, but spend more time on things like making sure the substantial Mideastern population in the area doesn't have any Al-Qaeda members. I would bet that the local cops don't give a shit about them AT ALL as they are not an imminent threat to public well-being in any substantial way.

Burnstein has also stated that he feels the family will be defunct in 20 years due to the fact that the membership is so old. He or his co-authors have an unfortunate tendency to write with a kind of hyperbolic style, which is too bad, but other than they some of you don't give him enough credit. Other than the aforementioned writing style, which is sadly common in "true crime" stuff, I don't think he personally says anything fanboyish.