Although Small in Numbers, American Mafia Still Terrorizes such Cities as Chicago
Although the Mafia remains active in America, it has taken many major hits and its impact has been reduced in recent decades. However, the Mafia is currently most active in New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia, New England, Detroit and Chicago. There have been at least 26 cities around the United States with Cosa Nostra families, with many more offshoots, splinter groups and associates in other cities.
There are five main New York City Mafia families, known as the Five Families: the Gambino, Lucchese, Genovese, Bonanno and Colombo families. At its peak, the Mafia dominated organized crime in the U.S. While each crime family operates independently, nationwide coordination is provided by the Commission, which consists of the bosses of each of the strongest families. Law enforcement still considers the Mafia the largest organized crime group in the United States.
It has maintained control over much of the organized crime activity in the United States and certain parts of Canada.
Today most of the Mafia's activities are contained to the Northeastern United States and Chicago where they continue to dominate organized crime despite the increasing numbers of street gangs and other organizations that are not of Italian origin.
The term Mafia was originally used in Italy by the media and law enforcement to describe criminal groups in Sicily. The first published account of what would evolve into the Mafia in the United States came in the spring of 1869. The New Orleans Times reported that the city's Second District had become overrun by "well-known and notorious Sicilian murderers, counterfeiters and burglars, who, in the last month, have formed a sort of general co-partnership or stock company for the plunder and disturbance of the city."
Emigration from southern Italy to the Americas was primarily to Brazil and Argentina, and New Orleans had a heavy volume of port traffic to and from both locales.
In the 21st century, the Mafia has continued to be involved in a broad spectrum of illegal activities. These include murder, extortion, corruption of public officials, gambling, infiltration of legitimate businesses, labor racketeering, loan sharking, tax fraud schemes and stock manipulation schemes.
Another factor contributing to the Mafia's downfall is the assimilation of Italian Americans, which left a shallower recruitment pool of new mobsters. Although the Mafia used to be nationwide, today most of its activities are confined to the Northeast and Chicago.
While other criminal organizations such as Russian Mafia, Chinese Triad, Mexican drug cartels and others have all grabbed a share of criminal activities, the Mafia continues to be the dominant criminal organization in these regions, partly due to its strict hierarchical structure.
U.S. Naval Intelligence entered into an agreement with Lucky Luciano to gain his assistance in keeping the New York waterfront free from saboteurs after the destruction of the SS Normandie.
In August 1960, Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the Office of Security of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), proposed the assassination of Cuban head of state Fidel Castro by Mafia assassins. Between August 1960 and April 1961, the CIA, with the help of the Mafia, pursued a series of plots to poison or shoot Castro.
Those allegedly involved included Sam Giancana, Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante, Jr., and John Roselli.
Gregory ScarpaIn 2007, Linda Schiro testified in an unrelated court case that her late boyfriend, Gregory Scarpa Sr. (pictured at left), a capo in the Colombo family, had been recruited by the FBI to help find the bodies of three civil rights workers who had been murdered in Mississippi in 1964 by the Ku Klux Klan. She said that she had been with Scarpa in Mississippi at the time and had witnessed him being given a gun, and later a cash payment, by FBI agents.
She testified that Scarpa had threatened a Klansman by placing a gun in the Klansman's mouth, forcing the Klansman to reveal the location of the bodies. Similar stories of Mafia involvement in recovering the bodies had been circulating for years, and had been previously published in the New York Daily News, but had never before been introduced in court.
Book cover: Organized Ccrime in ChicagoRobert M. Lombardo is an associate professor of criminal justice at Loyola University Chicago and a former Chicago Police officer. He answered our questions about his new book Organized Crime in Chicago: Beyond the Mafia. This interview was posted on the University of Illinois Press Blog:
Q: What is your definition of organized crime?
Lombardo: I use the term organized crime to define the political corruption that afforded protection to gambling, prostitution, and other vice activity in large American cities from the second half of the nineteenth century until the end of the twentieth century.
Q: Conventional wisdom traces the roots of organized crime in large U.S. urban centers to the Sicilian mafia. What’s wrong with this paradigm?
Lombardo: Tracing organized crime to the South of Italy ignores the historical record. Organized crime in Chicago existed before Italian immigration, and it existed in Chicago’s black community independent of Italian participation for a period of almost 50 years. Additionally, much of the information upon which this “importation” model is based comes from popular, non academic sources.
Q: When did reports of organized crime first surface in Chicago?
Lombardo: In 1873 Michael Cassius McDonald organized Chicago’s saloon and gambling interests into “Mike McDonald’s Democrats,” and elected their own candidate, Harvey Colvin, Mayor of Chicago. With Colvin in office, McDonald organized the first criminal syndicate in Chicago composed of both gamblers and compliant politicians.
Al CaponeQ: Al Capone is synonymous with “Chicago mafia.” Are there more influential figures about which the general public is unaware?
Lombardo: Mike McDonald for sure, but also Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly. Kelly “franchised” all vice activity in Chicago to the Capone Syndicate during the 1940s.
Q: Do related crime syndicates still operate in Chicago today?
Lombardo: There may be some bookmakers and old-time gangsters still around, but traditional organized crime in Chicago is largely a thing of the past. The Chicago Outfit as the progeny of the old Capone Syndicate is almost dead. They have been destroyed by law-enforcement efforts.
Q: What was the most interesting thing that you learned while researching the book?
Lombardo: What I found most interesting was the untold story of Lt. Joe Morris and the Chicago Police Scotland Yard detail under Mayor Kennelly. Had they not been disbanded by Richard J. Daley, they would have drove the Chicago Outfit out of town.
Q&A with Organized Crime in Chicago author Robert M. Lombardo at University of Illinois Press.
