Wiseguy wrote: ↑Tue Jul 30, 2019 9:20 pmI get what you're saying but you have to admit the law enforcement view/approach reflects the practical reality of things much better. If someone asked you how many Mafia families were still around, and you told them 20, would that really give them an accurate idea of things?
I'll admit that it's a good lens to view the mafia through, but it's not the only lens. And despite my previous diatribe about the mafia not necessarily having to be engaged in crime to exist, it stands as a fact that not a single Mafia LCN Family has went any single decade without criminal activity. So measuring active/viable status through the scope of criminal activity is damn solid. It, in theory, should perfectly measure these groups' existence. It's similar to Rick and I's recently discovered methodology of associating people with specific families based on their regional origin, it has proved mostly accurate and has managed to answer many many questions about events pre-1930's. It still doesn't take everything into account, such as intermarriages and if Corleonese man marries a Sciaccatani woman from a Mafia family and the Corleonese is introduced to it that way, in America he'd be affiliated with the Sciaccatani which fell under Lupo even if he lives in a Corleonese neighborhood alongside Corleonese Mafia members. In this case, it would be wrong to conclude he's with Morello based on his hometown origin alone which has been 90% accurate. Or drawing back to the non-Ital Andy Knapik Merola example, his existence doesn't erase from our thesis that the majority of Gambinos were Palermitan. We need to measure things from different lenses.
Let's say in 1910 my grandfather was the only citizen to own a Buick in the state of New Mexico and wrapped himself around a tree. If we view this statistically then in 1910 100% of Buick owners in NM got into accidents. It could be taken away that if you bought a Buick and moved to NM then there's a 100% chance you'd get into an accident. Statistics can be useful but they can also be misleading and if you know what you're doing you can create results you want to create. Look no further than the Medical industry.
No one here or in law enforcement can ever say that LA and the Colombos were equal in anything: amount of members, criminal activity, whatever comparison you want to make, the Colombos are the NY Yankees and LA Little League. Milano headed a very weak organization, in its last decades they had no underboss, a captain attended a mafia sitdown using bikers as muscle. They had no long term rackets, it was members basically dabbling in crime... But that didn't stop Donnie Shacks of the Colombos from contacting Milano as soon as he made it out to LA. What occurred was Shacks, a ranking member of one of the Five Families deferring to a Boss of a much weakened nearly defunct group. What was to stop Donnie Shacks from telling Pete to fuck off and start up a new LA-based faction of the Colombos? Protocol. Shacks and Milano were never at odds, in fact they lived close by and would spend time at each other's houses.
So while the practical reality is that LA was all but finished and according to Fratianno and Kenji Gallo, Milano was a complete pussy, it doesn't alter the fact that Donnie Shacks recognized him. That's the protocol and it exists regardless of what we on the board or at the FBI thought of Milano or his Mickey Mouse Mafia.