Crim 412 - La Cosa Nostra and Lucky Luciano: Rising through the Ranks PDF

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La Cosa Nostra and Lucky Luciano: Rising through the Ranks...

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La Cosa Nostra and Lucky Luciano: Rising through the Ranks Author: Mike Bailey 300108253

Crim 412: Organized Crime Instructor: Mike Trump Submitted: July 6, 2018

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In the early 1900’s, New York City was home to nearly 500,000 Italian immigrants, most of whom lived in deprived neighborhoods with low socioeconomic circumstances were suffering, crime and filth were dominant in daily life (Abadinsky, 2017). The large influx of immigrants brought law-abiding citizens and criminalized individuals, some of which were member of the Sicilian Mafia in Italy, into neighborhoods where criminal gangs formed and began to take advantage of those living within these communities. To establish themselves in the city and secure a place in society, the Sicilians reproduced and adapted the kind of illegal groups they had been a part of back in Italy and employed the same rules to help them dominate the criminal underworld in New York City (Abadinsky, 2017). This would be the beginning of the Mafia presence in the New York area, and would lead to New York City becoming the hub of Mafia business and organized crime in the United States (“Mafia in the United States,” 2009). The following paper aims to describe a brief history about the Mafia and their involvement in organized crime, such as racketeering, as well as giving a brief summary of a man named Charles “Lucky” Luciano and his involvement in the organized crime and how he became the head of one of the largest organized crime families in the United States (“Lucky Luciano Biography,” n.d.). The New York City Mafia The Mafia, which is also known as the mob, the outfit, or La Cosa Nostra, is a group of Italian-American organized crime “families” that has been operating in the United States since the Prohibition era in the 1920s, and have been the most prominent criminal organization in the U.S. since their founding (Finckenauer, 2007). The Mafia in New York City is comprised of mainly five crime families: the Bonanno, the Colombo, the Genovese, the Gambino, and the

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Lucchese families, each having an organizational structure that mirrors the one another which includes a boss that controls the family and makes executive decisions, followed by a senior advisor, then a number of “capos” who supervise a number of individual “soldiers,” also known as “made members” (Finckenauer, 2007). The made members commit the crimes that directly benefit the capos, senior advisors and bosses monetarily. The Mafia’s organized crime business is one built from exploiting market vulnerabilities and through the use of violence. By establishing a reputation for using violence, such as ruthless beatings, murder and property-related violence, the Mafia was able to gain monopoly control over criminal enterprises by deterring and eliminating competing criminals (Finckenauer, 2007). The Mafia had multiple criminal business ventures, from hijacking, murder, air cargo theft and extortion, to their most profitable ventures in gambling and drugs (Finckenauer, 2007). However, the five families of the New York Mafia had a unique set of crimes that had become specialties of theirs; these crimes included labor racketeering, which involved organized crime control over labor unions where, through the threat of violence, large amounts of money were siphoned from union pension. Local businesses were also extorted in return for labor peace and an absence of strikes, and bribes were solicited for sweetheart contracts (Finckenauer, 2007). Another unique crime of the Mafia was business racketeering, which had profound effects on the construction, music, and garbage industries in New York City. From controlling unions, bars, strip clubs, restaurants, the Fulton Fish Market, the New York Coliseum, and the air cargo operations at JFK, the Mafia used violence and extorted large amounts of money through their control of these targets (Finckenauer, 2007). One of the most prominent examples of the Mafia’s stronghold and extortion tactics on targets such as these was their monopoly on the

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waste hauling industry in New York City—for almost 50 years, the Mafia used their control over local unions to set up a cartel in order to force consumers to pay an inflated price for hauling waste (known as the “mob tax”), which resulted in hundreds of millions in profits for the Mafia (Finckenauer, 2007). The Mafia’s monopolistic control over various illegal markets, and its diversification in legal markets, has not been matched by any other criminal organization in the United States (Finckenauer, 2007). Prohibition Era During the 1920’s, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Volstead Act, which created Prohibition by banning the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcoholic beverages, came into effect and unintentionally led to unprecedented profits for criminals. The wide-scale distribution of alcohol required logistics and abilities that were beyond those of regular, disorganized urban criminals, and highly organized crime groups were able to take advantage of and capitalize on the need for illegal alcohol which brought them enormous profits and great power (Richardson, 2014). The Italian Mafia, along with Jewish American, Irish American, and other gangsters, organized the supply of foreign and locally produced spirits and beer and illegally transported, otherwise known as “bootlegged,” this contraband to an ever-expanding market in the United States (Schneider, 2016). Some of the newly arrived Italian immigrants from Sicily got involved in the booming bootlegging liquor business and became part of the burgeoning American Mafia that would become the sophisticated criminal enterprise previously mentioned, skilled at smuggling, money laundering and bribing police officers and other public officials, and many other ventures (“Mafia in the United States,” 2009).

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A man named Charles “Lucky” Luciano became one of the "Big Six" of bootlegging due to his efforts in the rum-running organized crime business, along with childhood friend Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro and Abner "Longy" Zwillman, all of whom were key players that dominated the illegal liquor trade on the U.S. east coast (“Lucky Luciano Biography,” n.d.). Charles “Lucky” Luciano Born in Sicily in November of 1897, Salvatore Lucania, who would later be known as Charles “Lucky” Luciano, moved to New York City in 1906 (Critchley, 2009). The following year, Lucky had his first arrest for shoplifting and later that same year, began his first racket offering protection from beating to younger schoolkids (Sifakis, 2005). This would be Lucky’s first experience what would become a lengthy rap sheet of criminal endeavours. Eventually moving up to the leading member of the Five Points Gang in 1916, Lucky’s notoriety grew through his associations, and also being named the prime suspect by the local police in a series of murders (Sifakis, 2005). Four years later in 1920, Lucky was a key player in bootlegging rackets and working alongside other Italian gangsters like Frank Costello (Sifakis, 2005). Lucky lived up to his name in 1929 when a top crime boss named Giuseppe Masseria ordered a group of men to beat and stab him while he was in Staten Island—and although Lucky had previously worked for Masseria for many years, Lucky helped to arrange his death later in April of 1931 (“Lucky Luciano Biography,” n.d.). This was a strategic move for Lucky because it put him in Masseria’s position as top crime boss in New York City and the leader of one of the city’s five families—a position that allowed for Lucky to focus on improving how criminal gangs operated and establish a national organized crime network known as “the Commission,”

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which was used to settle disputes between families and provide guidelines for business, ultimately taking organized crime to a new level (“Lucky Luciano Biography,” n.d.). Once established, Lucky lived the high life until 1935 when a man named Thomas E. Dewey was appointed to serve as a special prosecutor to look into organized crime. A year later, Lucky and eight members of his vice racket were brought to trial and convicted on extortion and prostitution charges, and faced a prison sentence of 30 to 50 years (“Lucky Luciano Biography,” n.d.). During Lucky’s prison sentence, he assisted in the WWII efforts from his prison cell by using his connections back home in Italy to help advance Allies’ troops, and once the war had ended, he received parole and a deportation order to return back to Italy, serving the rest of his years until his death in 1962 (“Lucky Luciano Biography,” n.d.). Conclusion The immigration of Southern Italians to New York City brought traditional Mafia-style culture which flourished into a substantial organized crime network that would forever change the face of organized crime in the United States of America. The organizational structure and methods of business, such as extorting legitimate businesses and using intimidation and violence to influence individuals, groups, labor unions, police and other figureheads was not commonplace until the Mafia employed these tactics. The success of the Mafia can also be contributed to Lucky Luciano and his establishment of the Commission to oversee and regulate the organized crime families in America. Overall, the Mafia was instrumental with influencing and shaping organized crime as we know it today.

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References: Abadinsky, H. (2017). Organized crime. 11th ed. C  engage Learning, c2017. Critchley, D. (2009). The origin of organized crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891-1931. N  ew York, NY: Routledge.

 ational Institute of Justice. Finckenauer, J. O. (2007). La Cosa Nostra in the United States. N Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/218555.pdf Lucky Luciano Biography. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/ people/lucky-luciano-9388350

 etrieved from https://www.history.com Mafia in the United States. (2009). History.com R /topics/mafia-in-the-united-states Richardson, B. (2014). Gangsters of the Prohibition era. Salem Press Encyclopedia . Schneider, P. (2016). Havana, Cuba: Contraband Capitalism and Criminal Organization in North America. Italian American Review , 6( 1), 111-125. Sifakis, C. (2005). The mafia encyclopedia. 3 rd ed. New York, NY: Facts on File, Inc....