It seems to me that Italian gangsters - and their Catholicism? - makes them far nicer than many OC criminals and gangsters.
Some OC organizations are nothing more than animals or gorillas who only understand pain and violence. By comparison, the Italians seem to 'keep their cool' and fly beneath the radar or underneath the cover of darkness entirely.
That's just a thought. It isn't rare to come across a career criminal - regardless of ethnicity or background - that acts amicable. Many, especially the reasonably "successful" ones, are polite enough. Until you give them a reason not to be polite, which doesn't even mean that you disrespected them. If you can be useful in any way, but you don't allow your usefulness to be easily exploited, the perceived politeness can quickly make way for some less pleasant tendencies. Things like these only really happen when you're in too deep with them already; casual talk won't get this far.
Italian gangsters aren't any different from any other kind of gangsters and can turn savage as quick as the other.
If you think an Irish Traveller is being friendly to you then they are probably scoping you out and seeing if/how they can scam you. I'm sure it's the same with other criminals. Always thinking about the next con.
Irish Travellers run some of the most moronic scams in existence. A year ago I was at a gas station and there were two relatively young Irish guys in a van asking EVERYONE who stopped at the gas station for whatever money they had because they missed the boat and weren't able to pay for their trip back to Ireland and blablablabla. Most people aren't all that streetwise and they ended up giving them a bill of 5 euros or 10 euros. They were very friendly, in a pleading way, while asking for the money, but when someone gave them money, they just took it, turned around without a single "thank you" and immediately went on to the next person.
I told them to fuck off. Which they thankfully did without much of a problem.
These kind of low level petty scams are a nuisance to everybody. I'd say that the vast majority of higher echelon criminals are rarely a personal nuisance to the average civilian - exceptions do exist of course and when there are "conflicting business interests" it's best to play ball if you want to avoid a bad outcome. Though most people that are sucked dry by them are those that are, even in the slightest way, connected to "The Game" themselves. Now these aren't necessarily serious gangsters themselves. They can be regular businessmen that asked them for a favor in the past - everybody knows they don't do favors for free and this means that they'll stick to you like a glue and once you're into deep there's no way back. You have to be very careful about l how far you're willing to go with them; a sporadic greeting isn't a problem, but once you give them the impression you owe them something, it's often too late to rewind.
