Mafia And Organized Crim Essay, Research Paper

Mafia and Organized Crime have wreaked havoc for many years upon society in an entirety and it has definitely corrupted government in a way too. Gang leaders and such have left families broken or in dismay with family members dead, crippled, wounded, or with shattered dreams and memories that can tear a person apart mentally. Organized crime is not extended to such crime and Mafia leaders such as Capone, but it can be even farther reached as to mention L.A. Gangs like Crips and Bloods that have been ongoing since 1962. Organized Crime can be anything from planning a bank heist with a friend to mapping out a murder of an entire rival gang. Crime exists everywhere has been told to many people, but Organized Crime is being plotted many places. Mafia and other gangs have ruled city slums to high corporate businesses. Take Al Scarface Capone for example. Al Capone is perhaps the best known gangster of all time and by far the most powerful mob boss of his era. His mob dominated the Chicago area from 1925 to 1931, when he was imprisoned for income tax evasion. This was the only crime the courts could prove against him. He went to jail at Alcatraz for eight years until he became very ill with syphilis and died from the disease in 1947. Soon after, Capone joined the James Street gang which was headed by a guy named Johnny Torrio. In 1920, Torrio asked Capone to go to Chicago and work with his uncle who controlled the city’s largest prostitution and gambling ring at the time. Later that year the Prohibition act came into affect and Capone became interested in selling illegal whiskey and other alcoholic beverages. Torrio’s uncle did not agree with this idea but within the next month Torrio s uncle was shot and killed. Capone and Torrio took over Torrio’s uncles business and added the selling of illegal alcohol. After Torrio was gunned down and almost killed by a rival gang, he retired from the underworld which left Capone to run the empire alone. At the age of 26, Capone was managing more than 1,000 employees with a payroll of more than $300,000 a week. He demanded total loyalty from all of his employees. By 1927, Capone was grossing about $105,000,000 a year from various illegal operations. Capone was a marked man by this time, and after several attempts on his life from a rival gang, he struck back with the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on February 14, 1929. It may be the greatest violence that ever occurred during the Chicago gang era, as seven members of “Bugsy” Moran’s mob were killed with machine-guns by Capone’s mob posing as police . The massacre was credited to the Capone mob, although Capone himself was in Florida and no one was ever charged with the killings. This gruesome execution of several of his enemies ended any gang resistance against Capone and his empire. Capone believed to be responsible for at least 300 murders and ended up just being charged with tax evasion. Organized crime doesn t just lead to illegal running of alcohol and murder, they also corrupt and influence business. It started getting more involved with gambling once Las Vegas started to boom. Bugsy Siegal, a half insane murderer who was sent to Nevada to enforce mob control of the race wire services, opened up the first hotel/casino in Las Vegas. His hotel, the Flamingo began a long period of gang involvement in Las Vegas. In 1947, the Desert Inn opened, run by a gang from Cleveland. A savage group of people, including the infamous Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, established the Desert Inn in 1947. Lansky, the brains of this group, was a genius with numbers, while Luciano, the brute of the group, was a genius for finding Lansky. 1952 brought the opening of the Sahara by some run-out’s from Oregon. The Sands, with Frank Sinatra as a

headliner, opened in 1953, funded with Chicago mob money. This was the first attempt at bringing big time entertainment out to Las Vegas to draw people to casinos. Tony Stralla, a hoodlum from California, opened the Stardust in 1955. The Stardust towered over the rest of the hotels on the strip and had more luxuries inside. Each hotel became bigger than the next and all made a lot of money. Much of the money was “skimmed” off the top and sent around the country to different mob headquarters before taxes could be taken out. By the late 1950’s, federal accusations such as the Kefauver expose and investigations by the Treasury Justice, showed the mobs involvement in Las Vegas and the ways they were stealing money from the government such as skimming. Once again, the public saw decided gambling was bad after, the news of corruption and fraud, just like in the 1890’s. Gangs and violence also erupted in the early to mid 1990 s when heavy gang activity started to become in Southern Los Angeles. Rap artists and such told stories in their songs of how gangs were killing other gang members, doing drugs, and acting as little armies to control a city. Crips and Bloods were starting nationwide violence with other offspring of these gangs appearing all over the United States. Police and other city officials have managed to stop some gang-oriented activities but yet it still exists all over. To prevent such activities from going on, cops have identified gang criteria (i.e.: large crowds wearing similar clothing or colors, headbands and scarves covering faces or head, commonplaces for crime and gang activities to be happening) and try to stop it. Most of these street gangs commit crimes together or for a group benefit. Delaware has been spared from alot of the gang activity, but yet some still try to press it on teenagers as the cool thing to do . In the early 1990 s, when O.J. Simpson was on trial for first-degree murder, total chaos broke loose in South Central L.A. Gang violence and mobs swarmed the streets doing anything they can to cause hell to Los Angeles. This is when many gang activities and killing sprees broke out the heaviest. From the riots, injuries and murders climbed continuously on the crime charts. Gangs went rampant among one another as feeling that the riots were a perfect time to press heaviest against one another. After tension ceased in South Central L.A., gang involvement increased due to a lack of protection to teens that felt that gangs were the way to go if you were to be safe. Since then, Compton, L.A., Englewood, and many other Californian cities have become massive gang areas where it is so bad, walking down the streets isn t even safe anymore. Mobs such as Capone, Bugsy, and Gatti were not all that made up history s stories of murder, crime organizations, and mafias. Organized crime has spread to teenage gangs, widespread violence and murder among gangs, and other heinous activities. Originally, mobs such as Capone and Bugsy did start many off on a crime life and did give some sort of motivation due to the success and profit they made, but many also failed to read about how their downfalls came about. Gang violence is everywhere and will be ended in time, but only by knowledge and persistence. Organized crime exists too but like gangs, it takes time to rid. Mafia and Organized crime are the basis of our nation s problems, but still many problems exist to end before those will all come to a halt. BIBLIOGRAPHY http://www.broonale.co.uk/austria/capone.html, 1927 – Al Capone, 1997 http://www.nara.gov/nara/ events/calendar/capone.html, Al Capone Biography, 1995 Al Scarface Capone , Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia 1996, 1997, Http://www.streetgangs.com/ Streetgangs In L.A. , 1996-1998, Alejandro A. Alonso http://www.detnews.com/menu/stories/40492.htm, Rise of PACs, drug means death for mob , 1996, Detroit News http://www.well.com/user/mod79/gangsters/luciano.html, Charles Lucky Luciano , 1996, mod79@well