Mafia 2 Gun Locations

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Cloris Sopha

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Aug 3, 2024, 4:16:32 PM8/3/24

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The American Mafia,[23][24][25] commonly referred to in North America as the Italian-American Mafia, the Mafia, or the Mob,[23][24][25] is a highly organized Italian American criminal society and organized crime group.

In North America, the organization is often colloquially referred to as the Italian Mafia or Italian Mob, though these terms may also apply to the separate yet related Sicilian Mafia or other organized crime groups in Italy, or ethnic Italian crime groups in other countries. The organization is often referred to by its members as Cosa Nostra (.mw-parser-output .IPA-label-smallfont-size:85%.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-smallfont-size:100%Italian pronunciation: [ˈkɔːza ˈnɔstra, ˈkɔːsa -], "our thing" or "this thing of ours") and by the American government as La Cosa Nostra (LCN). The organization's name is derived from the original Mafia or Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, with "American Mafia" originally referring simply to Mafia groups from Sicily operating in the United States.

The Mafia in the United States emerged in impoverished Italian immigrant neighborhoods in New York's East Harlem (or "Italian Harlem"), the Lower East Side, and Brooklyn; also emerging in other areas of the Northeastern United States and several other major metropolitan areas (such as New Orleans[26] and Chicago) during the late 19th century and early 20th century, following waves of Italian immigration especially from Sicily and other regions of Southern Italy. Campanian, Calabrian and other Italian criminal groups in the United States, as well as independent Italian American criminals, eventually merged with Sicilian Mafiosi to create the modern pan-Italian Mafia in North America. Today, the Italian-American Mafia cooperates in various criminal activities with Italian organized crime groups, such as the Sicilian Mafia, the Camorra of Campania and the 'Ndrangheta of Calabria. The most important unit of the American Mafia is that of a "family", as the various criminal organizations that make up the Mafia are known. Despite the name of "family" to describe the various units, they are not familial groupings.[27]

The Mafia is currently most active in the Northeastern United States, with the heaviest activity in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and New England, in areas such as Boston, Providence, and Hartford. It also remains heavily active in Chicago and has a significant and powerful presence in other Midwestern metropolitan areas such as Kansas City, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and St. Louis. Outside of these areas, the Mafia is also very active in Florida, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. Mafia families have previously existed to a greater extent and continue to exist to a lesser extent in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Dallas, Denver, New Orleans, Rochester, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Tampa. While some of the regional crime families in these areas may no longer exist to the same extent as before, descendants have continued to engage in criminal operations, while consolidation has occurred in other areas, with rackets being controlled by more powerful crime families from nearby cities.[28] At the Mafia's peak, there were at least 26 cities around the United States with Cosa Nostra families, with many more offshoots and associates in other cities. There are five main New York City Mafia families, known as the Five Families: the Gambino, Lucchese, Genovese, Bonanno, and Colombo families. The Italian-American Mafia has long dominated organized crime in the United States. Each crime family has its own territory and operates independently, while nationwide coordination is overseen by the Commission, which consists of the bosses of each of the strongest families. Though the majority of the Mafia's activities are contained to the Northeastern United States and Chicago, they continue to dominate organized crime in the United States, despite the increasing numbers of other crime groups.[29][30]

The word mafia (Italian: [ˈmaːfja]) derives from the Sicilian adjective mafiusu, which, roughly translated, means "swagger", but can also be translated as "boldness" or "bravado". In reference to a man, mafiusu (mafioso in Italian) in 19th-century Sicily signified "fearless", "enterprising", and "proud", according to scholar Diego Gambetta.[31] In reference to a woman, however, the feminine-form adjective mafiusa means 'beautiful' or 'attractive'. In North America, the Italian-American Mafia may be colloquially referred to as simply "The Mafia" or "The Mob". However, without context, these two terms may cause confusion; "The Mafia" may also refer to the Sicilian Mafia specifically or Italian organized crime in general, while "The Mob" can refer to other similar organized crime groups (such as the Irish Mob) or organized crime in general.

The first published account of what became the Mafia in the United States dates to the spring of 1869. The New Orleans Times reported that the city's Second District had become overrun by "well-known and notorious Sicilian murderers, counterfeiters and burglars, who, in the last month, have formed a sort of general co-partnership or stock company for the plunder and disturbance of the city."[citation needed] Emigration from southern Italy to the Americas was primarily to Brazil and Argentina, and New Orleans had a heavy volume of port traffic to and from both locales.

Mafia groups in the United States first became influential in the New York metropolitan area, gradually progressing from small neighborhood operations in poor Italian ghettos to citywide and eventually national organizations. "The Black Hand" was a name given to an extortion method used in Italian neighborhoods at the turn of the 20th century. It has been sometimes mistaken for the Mafia itself, which it is not. The Black Hand was a criminal society, but there were many small Black Hand gangs. Black Hand extortion was often (wrongly) viewed as the activity of a single organization, because Black Hand criminals in Italian communities throughout the United States used the same methods of extortion.[32]

Giuseppe Esposito was the first known Mafia member to emigrate to the United States.[28] He and six other Sicilians fled to New York after murdering eleven wealthy landowners, the chancellor and a vice-chancellor of a Sicilian province.[28] He was arrested in New Orleans in 1881 and extradited to Italy.[28]

From the 1890s to 1920 in New York City the Five Points Gang, founded by Paul Kelly, were very powerful in the Little Italy of the Lower East Side. Kelly recruited some street hoodlums who later became some of the most famous crime bosses of the century - such as Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and Frankie Yale. They were often in conflict with the Jewish Eastmans of the same area. There was also an influential Mafia family in East Harlem. The Neapolitan Camorra was very active in Brooklyn. In Chicago, the 19th Ward was an Italian neighborhood that became known as the "Bloody Nineteenth" due to the frequent violence in the ward, mostly as a result of Mafia activity, feuds, and vendettas.

New Orleans was possibly the site of the first Mafia incident in the United States that received both national and international attention.[28] On October 15, 1890, New Orleans Police Superintendent David Hennessy was murdered execution-style. It is still unclear whether Italian immigrants actually killed him, or whether it was a frame-up by nativists against the reviled underclass immigrants.[28] Hundreds of Sicilians were arrested on mostly baseless charges, and nineteen were eventually indicted for the murder. An acquittal followed, with rumors of bribed and intimidated witnesses.[28] On March 14, 1891, after the acquittal, the outraged citizens of New Orleans organized a lynch mob and proceeded to kill eleven of the nineteen defendants. Two were hanged, nine were shot, and the remaining eight escaped.[33][34][35]

In the early 1920s, fascist Benito Mussolini took control of Italy and waves of Italian immigrants fled to the United States. Sicilian Mafia members also fled to the United States, as Mussolini cracked down on Mafia activities in Italy.[40] Most Italian immigrants resided in tenement buildings. As a way to escape the poor lifestyle, some Italian immigrants chose to join the American Mafia.

The Mafia took advantage of prohibition and began selling illegal alcohol. The profits from bootlegging far exceeded the traditional crimes of protection, extortion, gambling, and prostitution. Prohibition allowed Mafia families to make fortunes.[41][42] As prohibition continued, victorious factions went on to dominate organized crime in their respective cities, setting up the family structure of each city. The bootlegging industry organized members of these gangs before they were distinguished as today's known families. The new industry required members at all different employment levels, such as bosses, lawyers, truckers, and even members to eliminate competitors through threat/force. Gangs hijacked each other's alcohol shipments, forcing rivals to pay them for "protection" to leave their operations alone, and armed guards almost invariably accompanied the caravans that delivered the liquor.[43][44]

As an alternative to the previous despotic Mafia practice of naming a single Mafia boss as capo di tutti capi, or "boss of all bosses", Luciano created The Commission in 1931,[28] where the bosses of the most powerful families would have equal say and vote on important matters and solve disputes between families. This group ruled over the National Crime Syndicate and brought in an era of peace and prosperity for the American Mafia.[47] By mid-century, there were 26 official Commission-sanctioned Mafia crime families, each based in a different city (except for the Five Families which were all based in New York).[48] Each family operated independently from the others and generally had exclusive territory it controlled.[28] As opposed to the older generation of "Mustache Petes" such as Maranzano and Masseria, who usually worked only with fellow Italians, the "Young Turks" led by Luciano were more open to working with other groups, most notably the Jewish-American criminal syndicates to achieve greater profits. The Mafia thrived by following a strict set of rules that originated in Sicily that called for an organized hierarchical structure and a code of silence that forbade its members from cooperating with the police (Omert). Failure to follow any of these rules was punishable by death.