by PolackTony » Thu Sep 19, 2024 1:27 pm
This info isn’t very accessible in the sense that it isn’t compiled in one place but has been discussed in detail here previously, many times over now.
The FBI had poor insight into the Chicago Family in the 1960s and 70s, with only a couple of member informants, and even these seem to have provided little in-depth intel on the membership and structure of the organization (many of the FBI’s Chicago sources in this period were either associates or even people who were not formally affiliated with the organization in any meaningful way and thus had little to no insight into how things actually were set up and gave distorted or partial accounts: the problem of the “Blind Men and the Elephant”).
As no Chicago member source specified or estimated the total membership of the Family (Chicago had no Joe Valachi), the best sources we have are from NYC Families. In the early 60s, Genovese captain Ray DeCarlo was recorded discussing Chicago with other members in NJ and stated that they had around 50 members total. Later in the 60s, FBI confidential informant Greg Scarpa reported back from a Colombo Family meeting, where Joe Colombo had discussed Chicago and again reported that their membership was about 50 (Colombo told his Family in this same meeting that Chicago had an associate that had killed more people than the entire Colombo Family combined). Worth noting that in both cases, Chicago’s more restrictive membership numbers were seen as a positive, with both DeCarlo and Colombo advocating that their own Families should emulate that model.
Based on the evidence that we do have for Chicago, it seems to have always operated as a highly clandestine and in many ways very “traditional” Family, with a high level of internal security (members only having access to info on a “need to know” basis), little gossip or discussion of organizational LCN matters around outsiders, and a low tolerance for failure on the part of its membership (members being killed for messing up hits, for “honor” reasons such as not killing an unfaithful wife). They were deadly serious about the “secret” part of “secret society”. Having a relatively low membership — in relation to the size of the metro area and its Italian population as well as the scope of criminal activities controlled in whole or part by the mafia — is in line with this general picture of conservatism and secrecy. They didn’t make nearly as many guys as they could have and, like other conservative Midwestern Families, placed a high premium on the ability to commit murder on behalf of the organization, which had comparatively declined as a prerequisite for members in NYC.
By the time that the FBI released a Chicago members list in 1985 based on its updated protocols for LCN member identification (which were overhauled in the early 80s, as the laxer standards employed previously allowed for many unreliable member identifications), they had just under 50 guys listed. We know of a few confirmed members not listed there, but even with a couple of “sleepers”, which Chicago always had, the plausible membership at that time would very unlikely have been over 60. Interesting to note that this was in the same range that DeCarlo and Scarpa/Colombo had given ~20 years prior. Snakes gave an upper range estimate of 75 to 100. He’s being generous because of uncertainty, I think, but this would be the *absolute maximum* range. I’d be very surprised if Chicago ever had more than 75 members myself, and this for a metro area of 9 million people, one of the largest Italian populations in the US, and a very old and deeply implanted mafia tradition and longstanding OC subculture. In other words, Chicago almost certainly never had a membership approaching even the smaller NYC Families, or Buffalo, for that matter, but was in the range of Families like Philly and NE, historically.
This info isn’t very accessible in the sense that it isn’t compiled in one place but has been discussed in detail here previously, many times over now.
The FBI had poor insight into the Chicago Family in the 1960s and 70s, with only a couple of member informants, and even these seem to have provided little in-depth intel on the membership and structure of the organization (many of the FBI’s Chicago sources in this period were either associates or even people who were not formally affiliated with the organization in any meaningful way and thus had little to no insight into how things actually were set up and gave distorted or partial accounts: the problem of the “Blind Men and the Elephant”).
As no Chicago member source specified or estimated the total membership of the Family (Chicago had no Joe Valachi), the best sources we have are from NYC Families. In the early 60s, Genovese captain Ray DeCarlo was recorded discussing Chicago with other members in NJ and stated that they had around 50 members total. Later in the 60s, FBI confidential informant Greg Scarpa reported back from a Colombo Family meeting, where Joe Colombo had discussed Chicago and again reported that their membership was about 50 (Colombo told his Family in this same meeting that Chicago had an associate that had killed more people than the entire Colombo Family combined). Worth noting that in both cases, Chicago’s more restrictive membership numbers were seen as a positive, with both DeCarlo and Colombo advocating that their own Families should emulate that model.
Based on the evidence that we do have for Chicago, it seems to have always operated as a highly clandestine and in many ways very “traditional” Family, with a high level of internal security (members only having access to info on a “need to know” basis), little gossip or discussion of organizational LCN matters around outsiders, and a low tolerance for failure on the part of its membership (members being killed for messing up hits, for “honor” reasons such as not killing an unfaithful wife). They were deadly serious about the “secret” part of “secret society”. Having a relatively low membership — in relation to the size of the metro area and its Italian population as well as the scope of criminal activities controlled in whole or part by the mafia — is in line with this general picture of conservatism and secrecy. They didn’t make nearly as many guys as they could have and, like other conservative Midwestern Families, placed a high premium on the ability to commit murder on behalf of the organization, which had comparatively declined as a prerequisite for members in NYC.
By the time that the FBI released a Chicago members list in 1985 based on its updated protocols for LCN member identification (which were overhauled in the early 80s, as the laxer standards employed previously allowed for many unreliable member identifications), they had just under 50 guys listed. We know of a few confirmed members not listed there, but even with a couple of “sleepers”, which Chicago always had, the plausible membership at that time would very unlikely have been over 60. Interesting to note that this was in the same range that DeCarlo and Scarpa/Colombo had given ~20 years prior. Snakes gave an upper range estimate of 75 to 100. He’s being generous because of uncertainty, I think, but this would be the *absolute maximum* range. I’d be very surprised if Chicago ever had more than 75 members myself, and this for a metro area of 9 million people, one of the largest Italian populations in the US, and a very old and deeply implanted mafia tradition and longstanding OC subculture. In other words, Chicago almost certainly never had a membership approaching even the smaller NYC Families, or Buffalo, for that matter, but was in the range of Families like Philly and NE, historically.