by PolackTony » Fri Apr 18, 2025 8:04 pm
FWIW, my assumptions are the same here as Snakes, on both questions. This is with a lowish-to-medium level of confidence, however, given the near total dearth of reliable evidence about the organization since Family Secrets. Which is to say, if it actually turns out that the organization is in much worse shape than I tend to believe they are, it wouldn’t be a huge shock to me and I wouldn’t be losing any sleep over it. I tend to prefer to err on the side of just admitting “we really don’t know”, while also being explicit about what my assumptions are when giving an opinion (TBH, apart from the period from the late 50s - 90s, this is basically my approach to most questions about the Chicago Family, as in most cases we really don’t know much).
Here, I assume that they have continued to make guys, selectively and in small numbers (which is, so far as we know, essentially who they’ve always done it). When Sarno came in as boss, I don’t think that it’s absurd that he would have made some new guys, as traditionally this was done when a new boss was installed, and Sarno was positioned within a network of tough street guys from Cicero/Berwyn who had cut their teeth in the gang life and whose utility as a pool of recruits is obvious (no different than guys close to Giancana having come up in the Forty Twos). Same as pretty much everyone else, I find the idea that Sarno therefore inducted something on the order of a couple dozen guys to be totally implausible; to keep this in perspective, we’d be saying that Sarno inducted more guys than Giancana or Aiuppa when they came in lol. Given that some crews (in the formal, organizational sense of mafia decine) in Chicago in past eras had only a small handful of made guys, if Chicago has somewhere around 30 members today — a number that I find totally plausible, though obviously unproven — than they could well have 4 viable crews still. Everyone on the interwebs had written Elmwood Park off years ago (largely due to the claims from Fosco, IMO), and then rhe recent stuff around Cassano and Gary Gags at least strongly suggests to me that this probably remains a viable crew, so I’m not quick to write off Chinatown. However, given how much we’re in the dark, again, I don’t think we have the basis to make strong pronouncements one way or the other; further, even if the membership today is such that 4 crews in fact remain viable, we can’t assume that all of them necessarily align neatly with the ones we know from the past, as there may well have been significant restructuring. When Solly came in as boss, by the same token, I think it’s fully plausible that he also brought in a handful of guys. Given that I’ve never seen any good reason to accept the claim that they simply stopped making guys since, like, the 90s, my assumption is that they have continued to make guys, though it’s very unlikely to have been at the rate to keep them in the ~50 member range that they had historically, again IMO.
FWIW, my assumptions are the same here as Snakes, on both questions. This is with a lowish-to-medium level of confidence, however, given the near total dearth of reliable evidence about the organization since Family Secrets. Which is to say, if it actually turns out that the organization is in much worse shape than I tend to believe they are, it wouldn’t be a huge shock to me and I wouldn’t be losing any sleep over it. I tend to prefer to err on the side of just admitting “we really don’t know”, while also being explicit about what my assumptions are when giving an opinion (TBH, apart from the period from the late 50s - 90s, this is basically my approach to most questions about the Chicago Family, as in most cases we really don’t know much).
Here, I assume that they have continued to make guys, selectively and in small numbers (which is, so far as we know, essentially who they’ve always done it). When Sarno came in as boss, I don’t think that it’s absurd that he would have made some new guys, as traditionally this was done when a new boss was installed, and Sarno was positioned within a network of tough street guys from Cicero/Berwyn who had cut their teeth in the gang life and whose utility as a pool of recruits is obvious (no different than guys close to Giancana having come up in the Forty Twos). Same as pretty much everyone else, I find the idea that Sarno therefore inducted something on the order of a couple dozen guys to be totally implausible; to keep this in perspective, we’d be saying that Sarno inducted more guys than Giancana or Aiuppa when they came in lol. Given that some crews (in the formal, organizational sense of mafia decine) in Chicago in past eras had only a small handful of made guys, if Chicago has somewhere around 30 members today — a number that I find totally plausible, though obviously unproven — than they could well have 4 viable crews still. Everyone on the interwebs had written Elmwood Park off years ago (largely due to the claims from Fosco, IMO), and then rhe recent stuff around Cassano and Gary Gags at least strongly suggests to me that this probably remains a viable crew, so I’m not quick to write off Chinatown. However, given how much we’re in the dark, again, I don’t think we have the basis to make strong pronouncements one way or the other; further, even if the membership today is such that 4 crews in fact remain viable, we can’t assume that all of them necessarily align neatly with the ones we know from the past, as there may well have been significant restructuring. When Solly came in as boss, by the same token, I think it’s fully plausible that he also brought in a handful of guys. Given that I’ve never seen any good reason to accept the claim that they simply stopped making guys since, like, the 90s, my assumption is that they have continued to make guys, though it’s very unlikely to have been at the rate to keep them in the ~50 member range that they had historically, again IMO.