Organized Crime, The Mafia, The Gangsters…

To read the AskMen.Com article
Mafioso: A History of Mafia Names
Click Here





Well to start with this post is being done after I received an email from AskMen.Com. They recently posted some articles about the Mafia and thought the articles would be of interest to people reading my blog so they asked if I would be interested in making a post for my blog regarding the Mafia.

At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to take the time to complete a detailed post about the Mafia, but when I read there article and seen they had included Scarface (Al Capone) it of course caught my attention and I decided to read the article and then decided to complete a post for my blog about the Mafia.

Now after reading some of the comments on AskMen.Com, I want to point out that this post for my blog is not about looking at mobsters, gangsters or mafia members as a hero.Seems some people reading the AskMen.Com article was concerned that AskMen.Com was holding the past mobsters in the highlight and making them look like a hero.

When you think of the Mafia and the organized crime back in that time it’s hard not to have some admiration for the amount of control certain Mafia leaders were able to maintain over very large criminal organizations. But in the long run people have to remember the Mafia was just that, the Mafia. They lived by their own rules and regulations and each of the men in the AskMen.Com article ran their organization in different manors.

Just as an example, Al “Scarface” Capone, loved the media. While most mobsters avoided the media at all cost, Al Capone loved to look good in the public eye and thought that he needed that good appearance in public so if those people ever served on a jury against him, they would have known him as a good person. Regardless of the number of murders and violent crimes he was responsible for, he wanted to be known as a good guy.

How many other Mafia members went that far to maintain a positive public image? Now of course Scarface has been one of my favorite mobsters of all time. Part of that my have come from when I attended the police academy, we actually studied Al Capone. There were others as well that we talked about, but the majority of that training always went back to Al Capone. The academy even had the books about Capone and I checked out several of them just to learn more about him.

Again, that wasn’t done to hold Capone to some hero title, it was done out of some admiration for him and more so fascination of him and the amount of control that one man had over an entire city.

Now when we think of the criminal aspect of the empires these men had built we have to consider what law enforcement was in those days and the tools they had available to them. I mean DNA was never heard of, there was no computers, no automated fingerprint systems and police work was done the old fashioned way and at the same time we have to consider who some mobsters had on their payroll and how that assisted them in running a criminal enterprise without a lot of legal hassle.

Look at Al Capone, it has been said that he had police, judges, court officials, politicians and other high ranking city and state officials on his payroll. So with that in mind we have to wonder how those very people paid to serve and protect assisted Al Capone in building his criminal empire.

Even after I read the article at AskMen.Com, I went home and watched the movie “The Untouchables.” It’s still amazing to me the amount of team work and control over a large team that Capone was able to maintain. Just like in the movie when he was talking about team work and how every one had to work as a team and then one man had his head bashed in by Capone. I guess each and every leader had a way to maintain their organization with everyone working as a team and people losing their own life to protect that team and the criminal enterprise they were a part of.

In today’s time it’s nothing to hear about the arrest of gang members and as a result of that arrest they were able to arrest more people related to those crimes or involved in that gang. Just like the recent gang arrest in LA, the F13 gang had 102 defendants named in recent indictments.

That post is here

They are among 102 defendants named in four F13 related indictments that were returned by a Federal Grand Jury in the fall of 2007. The investigation into F13, which was called Operation Joker’s Wild, led to the largest gang takedown in American history, with 96 of the 102 defendants being taken into custody. 76 of the defendants have now been convicted, either at trial or as the result of guilty pleas, with the remaining defendants pending trial.

When reading about cases like that we have to wonder how many of those arrest were the result of inside information, or an informant. How many gang members took a plea deal to save them self while the gang was being further destroyed by their lack of commitment to the organization.

Al Capone never had that problem. Even when the federal officials named Capone as a public enemy and sent in Elliot Ness, the only charges they proved against him in court was income tax laws. Sure people may have talked, but that talking would cost them their own life. How sad is it that a man responsible for a countless number of murders, attacks and other violent crimes and operating a large criminal empire only went to jail for income tax law violations.

With that said, I think I will post the information located at AskMen.Com so the next portion of the post has been copied from AskMen.Com.


No conversation about the history of baseball is complete without mentioning the last names Ruth, Mantle and Bonds, just as no conversation about American politics is complete without saying the names Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. The Mafia is no different; it’s got its legends, its hall-of-famers, if you will. I know there are a lot of my readers who love to learn about the history of the Mafia. So, for those of you who love Mafia history, pay attention (and the rest of yous, shut your traps and just read the article). So here’s a history of Mafia names you should know and remember if you think you’re a true Mafioso.

Colombo

The Colombo family is one of the five families of New York. Before it was called the Colombo family, it was known as the Profaci family. The name changed in 1963 when Joseph Colombo became the capo. Joseph Colombo was unlike any capo before… or since. He didn’t shun the spotlight one bit. When the FBI began scrutinizing his activities, Colombo responded by calling it harassment against Italian-Americans. He even went so far as to organize the Italian-American Civil Rights League. His group began doing demonstrations such as picketing outside of the New York FBI building. He attracted the likes of government officials, as well as prominent entertainers like Frank Sinatra, to help his cause, and he received a lot of national attention. It was at one such Italian-American rally that Joe Colombo approached the podium and was shot three times in the head by a man named Jerome Johnson. A second gunman appeared and shot Johnson and disappeared into the crowd. To this day, nobody knows for sure who was really behind Colombo’s death. Many argue that is was Joey Gallo, a member of the Colombo family and critic of Joe Colombo’s. Others argue Carlo Gambino set it up.

"The Attorney General hates our guts. I think the President is behind it. I want to make the League the greatest organization in the country, the greatest organization in the world, so that people will be proud of us no matter what we do, where we are -- even if we are in prison."

- Joe Colombo

Gambino

Gambino is the name of one of the five crime families in La Cosa Nostra in New York. Gambino has become synonymous with Mafia life since the 1950s. At times, the Gambino family has been the most powerful of the five families of New York, and there was one man that made that happen: Carlo "Don Carlo" Gambino. To this day, the family still calls itself by the name of its greatest boss. Don Carlo ruled the outfit from 1957 to 1976, and eventually became the boss of bosses. During this time, his outfit was the most profitable it had ever been; he had at his command over 1,000 Soldatis and is said to have had rackets worth $500,000,000 per year. Gambino is most remembered for his ability to keep himself out of the press and out of jail -- he never spent a day behind bars.

“Judges, lawyers and politicians have a license to steal. We don’t need one.”
- Carlo Gambino

Capone

No list of famous gangsters would be complete without talking about Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone. He was known as “Scarface.” In his youth in New York, he insulted a sister of a Mafioso named Frank Gallucio. Capone apologized and said it was a misunderstanding, but Gallucio slashed him three times across the face, and that’s how he got his nickname. In 1921, Capone moved to Chicago and joined the Chicago Outfit. The rest is history, as they say. Capone became famous for the way that he completely took over the city of Chicago, including its police officers, judges and city officials. They were all on his payroll, and they all took orders from Capone. He lived in the Lexington Hotel, which the Chicagoans called Capone’s Castle. He didn’t need to shy away from the spotlight because he controlled just about everything in Chicago. Because of his power in Chicago, he caught the eye of the FBI. They called him a public enemy and began looking for ways to take him down. It was in 1931 that they got Capone for income-tax evasion, and Capone’s empire fell once and for all.

“This American system of ours -- call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will -- gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.”
- Al Capone

Luciano

Charles “Lucky” Luciano is one of the most famous and best-remembered of all gangsters. He is like the Joe DiMaggio of the Mafia. He got his name “Lucky” when he was kidnapped and attacked by three assassins in 1929; they beat him and stabbed him multiple times and left him to die on the beach in New York. He survived the ordeal, which is why they called him “lucky,” but he received the scar and droopy eye that he became famous for. What Luciano did from there is what makes him famous: he plotted to kill his capo, Joe Masseria, with Salvatore Maranzano on the condition that Maranzano make Luciano an equal capo when Masseria was gone. After he took out Masseria, Maranzano went back on his word; he declared himself the capo di tutti capi (the boss of bosses) and demanded payments from Luciano. Luciano tolerated this until he found out that Maranzano was plotting to whack him. When Luciano heard this, he sent his men to Maranzano’s office dressed as FBI agents, so they wouldn’t receive any resistance, and they mowed Maranzano and his closest men down, including the man that was supposed to assassinate Luciano. From this point on, Luciano ruled as the capo of the Genovese family. He is remembered by some to be the father of organized crime.

"I learned too late that you need just as good a brain to make a crooked million as an honest million.”
- Charles “Lucky” Luciano (born Salvatore Lucania)


With that said, what do you think about the Mafia and the gangsters of the past?
What do you think of the godfathers of organized crime? I personally think that the article was a good article and I want to thank AskMen.Com for contacting me and allowing me to use their article on my blog.

How do you think today’s organized crime compares to the organized crime of the past?




To read the AskMen.Com article
Mafioso: A History of Mafia Names
Click Here