by PolackTony » Wed Mar 15, 2023 4:19 pm
Stopflexing wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 2:38 pm
I know absolutely nothing about Chicago or The Outfit, but do they really have a crew that operates in Chinatown? I couldn’t imagine Phillys Chinatown having any made guys running around up there.
Chinatown in Chicago encompasses an old inner-city Italian port of entry colony, centered around Cermak Rd (22nd St) and Wentworth. The original Chinatown was located a little way to the North in the South Loop, and when the Chinese were displaced from there they took root alongside the burgeoning Italian colony on the Near South Side. The area had a mafia presence possibly going back to the 1870s, when a murder linked to a counterfeiting ring allegedly led by notorious New Orleans mafioso Gaetano Russo occurred near 18th and Clark (where Jim Colosimo's HQ in the center of what was then the city's major vice district was later located). Over the 20th century, the Italian population (primarily Sicilian, Calabrese, and Salernitan') expanded southward into the adjacent Armour Square and Bridgeport neighborhoods, where there is still a notable remnant of the old Italian community today. People refer to the crew (the Roti/Caruso/LaPietra crew) as the "Chinatown crew", but you will also see it referred to as the 26th St crew (as LaPietra maintained his base of operations in the original Old Neighborhood Italian American Club at 26th and Princeton (most of the surrounding blocks were demolished in the early 60s for the Dan Ryan E'way), the Bridgeport crew or just the Southside crew.
Over the decades, the Chinese population increased significantly while many Italians moved farther out or to the suburbs (the same dynamic that happened between Lower Manhattan's "Little "Italy" and the Mott St Chinatown). The mafia presence in the neighborhood was thus mainly due to longstanding historical factors by the early 1980s, with few Italians left by then in the core Chinatown area. The mob had close ties, however, to significant Chinese gambling and loansharking operations there, particularly to the On Leong Tong Chinese Merchants Association (a fraternal society whose Chicago branch was the most influential after the NYC mother branch and was linked to Chinese OC and street gang groups like the infamous Ghost Shadows).
The On Leong paid street taxes to the "outfit" and in return also received representation and protection. For example, in the early '80s, an internal conflict in the On Leong broke out, and a crew of gunners from the Ghost Shadows was sent from NYC to Chicago to assist the On Leong there. On Leong wound up using its mob connections to rampant judicial corruption in Cook County to fix a murder case, which was exposed by mobbed-up lawyer and CW Bob Cooley.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm ... story.html
During the same period, it was revealed by a CW that the On Leong branches in Chicago and Pittsburgh had connections to the "outfit" in both cities:
[quote=Stopflexing post_id=256115 time=1678916337 user_id=7527]
I know absolutely nothing about Chicago or The Outfit, but do they really have a crew that operates in Chinatown? I couldn’t imagine Phillys Chinatown having any made guys running around up there.
[/quote]
Chinatown in Chicago encompasses an old inner-city Italian port of entry colony, centered around Cermak Rd (22nd St) and Wentworth. The original Chinatown was located a little way to the North in the South Loop, and when the Chinese were displaced from there they took root alongside the burgeoning Italian colony on the Near South Side. The area had a mafia presence possibly going back to the 1870s, when a murder linked to a counterfeiting ring allegedly led by notorious New Orleans mafioso Gaetano Russo occurred near 18th and Clark (where Jim Colosimo's HQ in the center of what was then the city's major vice district was later located). Over the 20th century, the Italian population (primarily Sicilian, Calabrese, and Salernitan') expanded southward into the adjacent Armour Square and Bridgeport neighborhoods, where there is still a notable remnant of the old Italian community today. People refer to the crew (the Roti/Caruso/LaPietra crew) as the "Chinatown crew", but you will also see it referred to as the 26th St crew (as LaPietra maintained his base of operations in the original Old Neighborhood Italian American Club at 26th and Princeton (most of the surrounding blocks were demolished in the early 60s for the Dan Ryan E'way), the Bridgeport crew or just the Southside crew.
Over the decades, the Chinese population increased significantly while many Italians moved farther out or to the suburbs (the same dynamic that happened between Lower Manhattan's "Little "Italy" and the Mott St Chinatown). The mafia presence in the neighborhood was thus mainly due to longstanding historical factors by the early 1980s, with few Italians left by then in the core Chinatown area. The mob had close ties, however, to significant Chinese gambling and loansharking operations there, particularly to the On Leong Tong Chinese Merchants Association (a fraternal society whose Chicago branch was the most influential after the NYC mother branch and was linked to Chinese OC and street gang groups like the infamous Ghost Shadows).
The On Leong paid street taxes to the "outfit" and in return also received representation and protection. For example, in the early '80s, an internal conflict in the On Leong broke out, and a crew of gunners from the Ghost Shadows was sent from NYC to Chicago to assist the On Leong there. On Leong wound up using its mob connections to rampant judicial corruption in Cook County to fix a murder case, which was exposed by mobbed-up lawyer and CW Bob Cooley. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-05-20-mn-1460-story.html
During the same period, it was revealed by a CW that the On Leong branches in Chicago and Pittsburgh had connections to the "outfit" in both cities:
[img]http://theblackhand.club/forum/ext/dmzx/imageupload/files/236306c7e143ef9dfffc75dac9db6205.jpg[/img]