RICO is used plenty of times against Street Gangs and it's leaders. You only need to look back at the Reagan era to see that most of the heads of those drug crews were given life sentences off of RICO cases. OG Mack was convicted off RICO. King Blood, RICO, they tried to use it ln King Tone more than once, he was lucky.
Proving a RICO offense just isn't as easy with a street gang as it is with a mafia family. There are 4 overarching types of RICO violations. Here's an exempt from my White Collar Crime Outline.
(a) Use income from “racketeering pattern” to acquire an illegal enterprise
- buying the enterprise
(b) Acquiring an interest in an enterprise through pattern of racketeering.
- Acquiring FROM racketeering
- Goodfellas “Bamboo Lounge”
(c) Employed by enterprise
- Made guy/ associate
- Employer/ Enterprise = distinct
(d) Helping further a,b,c- Enterprise
- Common Purpose
- Relationship btwn associates
- Longevity
- 2+ people
If you look at the bottom, the "common purpose" element is often difficult to satisfy with a street gang. With the mafia, it's a glorified pyramid scheme. The purpose is to keep the organization going. It's been stated that LCN is intended on "outlasting" it's present generation. Gangs aren't the same way. Often times there's no criminal activity-for-profit outside of hurting/ killing people.
