Present-day Outfit territory?

[Ivan]

So where is the present day Outfit most active? The territories for the various crews, if they are even really defined (and I'm sure there's overlap even if they are). I saw some examples of where they're most active now on Reddit and all the places I looked up were way the fuck out the suburbs, I'm talking like the second or third layer of suburbs starting toward the periphery or even just outside of Cook County and continuing further outward for the most part. Like the "Cicero Crew" today is in reality more like the "several miles west of Cicero Crew." Is that really accurate?

[Snakes]

So where is the present day Outfit most active? The territories for the various crews, if they are even really defined (and I'm sure there's overlap even if they are). I saw some examples of where they're most active now on Reddit and all the places I looked up were way the fuck out the suburbs, I'm talking like the second or third layer of suburbs starting toward the periphery or even just outside of Cook County and continuing further outward for the most part. Like the "Cicero Crew" today is in reality more like the "several miles west of Cicero Crew." Is that really accurate?

Unless one knows firsthand, it is difficult to say. Most of the activity associated with the Sarno indictment was located around the Cicero-Berwyn area with some of the offenses occurring in suburbs further out. However, most indictments since the early 90s also concerned activity in that same area, so this isn't anything new. Around that time, the North Side and Heights crews ceased to exist and rackets in those respective areas dried up. I'd say that most present-day operations exist in the Cicero-Berwyn-Melrose Park area, extending out into neighboring suburbs. There are probably still presences in the city-proper -- particularly the Southside and West Chicago, but unless we receive accurate information to the contrary, it isn't to the same extent as the western suburbs.

[Ivan]

So where is the present day Outfit most active? The territories for the various crews, if they are even really defined (and I'm sure there's overlap even if they are). I saw some examples of where they're most active now on Reddit and all the places I looked up were way the fuck out the suburbs, I'm talking like the second or third layer of suburbs starting toward the periphery or even just outside of Cook County and continuing further outward for the most part. Like the "Cicero Crew" today is in reality more like the "several miles west of Cicero Crew." Is that really accurate?

Unless one knows firsthand, it is difficult to say. Most of the activity associated with the Sarno indictment was located around the Cicero-Berwyn area with some of the offenses occurring in suburbs further out. However, most indictments since the early 90s also concerned activity in that same area, so this isn't anything new. Around that time, the North Side and Heights crews ceased to exist and rackets in those respective areas dried up. I'd say that most present-day operations exist in the Cicero-Berwyn-Melrose Park area, extending out into neighboring suburbs. There are probably still presences in the city-proper -- particularly the Southside and West Chicago, but unless we receive accurate information to the contrary, it isn't to the same extent as the western suburbs.

Thanks, Snakes. Could you name some of the other suburbs besides the three you mentioned where they're active?

I just checked a map and those three are clustered closer together than I thought, with Elmwood Park not that far away either.

The present-day Outfit seems tiny compared to say 50 years ago.

[Snakes]

So where is the present day Outfit most active? The territories for the various crews, if they are even really defined (and I'm sure there's overlap even if they are). I saw some examples of where they're most active now on Reddit and all the places I looked up were way the fuck out the suburbs, I'm talking like the second or third layer of suburbs starting toward the periphery or even just outside of Cook County and continuing further outward for the most part. Like the "Cicero Crew" today is in reality more like the "several miles west of Cicero Crew." Is that really accurate?

Unless one knows firsthand, it is difficult to say. Most of the activity associated with the Sarno indictment was located around the Cicero-Berwyn area with some of the offenses occurring in suburbs further out. However, most indictments since the early 90s also concerned activity in that same area, so this isn't anything new. Around that time, the North Side and Heights crews ceased to exist and rackets in those respective areas dried up. I'd say that most present-day operations exist in the Cicero-Berwyn-Melrose Park area, extending out into neighboring suburbs. There are probably still presences in the city-proper -- particularly the Southside and West Chicago, but unless we receive accurate information to the contrary, it isn't to the same extent as the western suburbs.

Thanks, Snakes. Could you name some of the other suburbs besides the three you mentioned where they're active?

I just checked a map and those three are clustered closer together than I thought, with Elmwood Park not that far away either.

The present-day Outfit seems tiny compared to say 50 years ago.

That's because they are. They have always had a strong presence in the western suburbs going back to Al Capone. Cicero, Berwyn, Melrose Park, Franklin Park, Oak Park, Maywood, etc.

The Sarno indictment mentioned several locations where defendants met or crimes were committed, including:

Berwyn
Cicero
Justice
Hickory Hills
St. Charles
Hinsdale
LaGrange Park

Recent court documents also indicate an Outfit presence still remains in Elmwood Park.

[Ivan]

This is very illuminating and I'm now able to put a geography of the Outfit together in my mind. Thanks a lot Snakes!

I looked up this St Charles place and it might as well be in Iowa it's so far west. All kidding aside, I didn't know they were that far out in the exurbs.

Where does the Chinatown crew operate? It seems spatially detached from the Elmwood Park/Cicero/Berwyn/Melrose Park suburban nexus. They still in Bridgeport any? Probably not the Loop, right? What about southern suburbs?

[JeremyTheJew]

Is this because cartels and gangs have taken over CHICAGO city???

Chicago and Detroit have had a mini murder capital competion for the last 10/15 years (Detroit is generally higher) but that’s bc of GANG violence/drug beefs

And Detroit would be the same way - the mafia is on the suburbs - grosse point , east point, oak park, Southfield , Bloomfield , etc etc

I’m assuming this is same for Chicago???

[Ivan]

Dunno Jeremy. Maybe white migration out of the city just shifted most of their old customer base west of the city limits, too?

Probably multicausal.

[PolackTony]

There aren’t many Italians in the City and haven’t been for decades, apart from the pockets that remained in Armour Square and Grand Ave (with the latter being displaced since the 90s by heavy gentrification, which has mainly erased the longstanding Italian character of the neighborhood).

The original port-of-entry Italian colonies were all located in a band surrounding the Loop, in what used to be called the “River Wards”. There was Little Sicily, on the Near Northside (north of the Loop); Grand Ave (NW of the Loop); Taylor St (W of the Loop); and the Chinatown/Armour Square community on the Near Southside (S of the Loop). Melrose Park formed a strong Italian community during the same period, in the late 19th Century, centered on the Parish of Our Lady of Mt Carmel founded by immigrants from Basilicata. Italians were moving to Cicero by the 1890s, with more arriving in the early 1900s, drawn by work in the massive Grant Works industrial complex (this community is still known by some today as “The Island”). During this same period, Italians moved in large numbers into the industrial city of Chicago Heights, along with nearby towns in the heavily industrial Calumet Region along the IL/IN border (Hammond, Cal City, Gary, Blue Island, etc).

One will note that the basic structure of the mafia in Chicago was strongly shaped by patterns of Italian settlement, with the general crew structure, at least so far as we’ve known it since the 1960s, corresponding to the primary Italian communities in the City and inner-ring suburbs (there were also smaller Italian colonies in the City around Englewood, Grand Crossing, Roseland, and Kensington, as well as up in Lake County).

After WW2, Italians began moving in larger numbers to the Western Suburbs, which already had well-established Italian communities. The old inner city neighborhoods (the Italian “Patches” as people called them when I was a kid) were largely blighted and full of run down tenements and as Italians moved up on the socioeconomic ladder, they sought more spacious and pleasant accommodations in the “bungalow belt” farther out in the City and the adjacent suburbs. Patterns of settlement in Chicagoland for all immigrant groups were like a series of concentric circles emanating out from the Loop. Inner city-> Bungalow Belt -> Inner Ring Burbs -> Farther Burbs.

This migration accelerated rapidly in the 1960s, as urban renewal projects and demographic turnover transformed inner city Chicago. Little Sicily was razed for the construction of the Cabrini-Greene projects, most of Taylor St for the ABLA projects and the UIC Circle and Medical Campuses. Sections of Taylor St, Grand Ave, and the Near Southside were demolished for expressway construction, while Westside neighborhoods with significant secondary Italian settlement, like Garfield Park, Fifth City, Austin, and Humboldt Park, rapidly became majority black, or, in the case of Humboldt Park, Puerto Rican, over the space of a few years (there were also riots, of course, in these Westside neighborhoods that swiftly cemented them as full-on slums. Additionally, the Italian community in Humboldt Park never recovered from the horrific fire at Our Lady of Angels in 1958, which killed 92 elementary school students and led to the rapid abandonment of the neighborhood by traumatized community members). Italians moved en masse to the Western Burbs and adjacent sections of the City along the Elmwood Park border, apart from a few holdouts (around Grand Ave these were mainly those who were too poor to move, as well as some recent immigrants from Bari and Sicily, while Armour Square fared much better due to the extremely insular character of the neighborhood and the large number of City jobs held by residents). By the time I was a kid in the 80s/90s, Italian life in Chicago was mainly concentrated on the fringe of the City around Harlem Ave, while the bulk of the population was suburbanized. These areas, along with towns like Addison, Bloomingdale, Wood Dale, etc, also were major concentrations of “second wave” immigrants Southern Italy and Sicily who greatly reinforced the Italian character of these communities, founded many Italian businesses, and rejuvenated the old paesani societies and feste.

The South Burbs/Calumet fared even worse, as the steel and other heavy industries this region depended on declined. This is the Chicagoland section of the Rust Belt, and as with places like Youngstown and Pittsburgh, the decline of mafia activity in this region tracks with the new post-industrial reality after the 60s. It’s totally unsurprising that this area, as well the Near Northside, where both housing projects and gentrification almost entirely displaced the old Sicilian community, saw mafia activity fall off the earliest, with the formal crews corresponding to these communities in sharp decline already by the 70s and defunct after the 80s. One can go to Chicago Heights (I wouldn’t recommend it lol) today and have almost no inkling that the town was once half Italian. Gary and its decades of serious problems probably need no introduction. Italians in this region were dispersed and never formed secondary settlements of strong Italian character. Neither did the post-industrial south burbs have anything like the kind of “second wave” immigration that continually re-Italianized the communities in Chicago and Western and Northern Cook County.

Since the 90s, the Far NW Side of the City and the inner ring West Burbs have become increasingly Hispanic, as PRs and Mexicans move up the socioeconomic ladder themselves and follow the earlier Italians and Polish out to these areas. In turn, many Italians have left the inner ring suburbs for farther out towns, part of the general process in this period of expanding “exurban” settlement in metro areas around the country. Many have also left Chicagoland altogether, fleeing high taxes and awful winters for FL, AZ, and NV. IL is entering a “death spiral” of ballooning public debt and declining population. Almost every county in IL, from metro Chicagoland down to the former coal regions of Southern IL, is bleeding population, and I doubt the situation will reverse itself. While strong familial ties between Chicagoland Italians and hometowns in Italy/Sicily remain, there will never be a “third wave” of Italian immigration, of course, as the Mezzogiorno’s population is itself aging and declining. Chicagoland’s Italians will thus continue to disperse, assimilate, and in many cases eventually abandon Chicagoland altogether.

[Patrickgold]

Is this because cartels and gangs have taken over CHICAGO city???

Chicago and Detroit have had a mini murder capital competion for the last 10/15 years (Detroit is generally higher) but that’s bc of GANG violence/drug beefs

And Detroit would be the same way - the mafia is on the suburbs - grosse point , east point, oak park, Southfield , Bloomfield , etc etc

I’m assuming this is same for Chicago???

The Outfit is still very heavily involved within Chicago (the North Side of Chicago particularly around Belmont and Harlem area, also Grand and Ogden and Bridgeport). Slot machines are still illegal in Chicago city limits and they have them in many places throughout the City mostly in cafes, dive bars and even in liquor stores. They are called Sweepstake machines and pay out just like the old machines. Outfit member Gino Cassano controls one of the businesses that distribute them and is based out of Harwood Heights.

[PolackTony]

Is this because cartels and gangs have taken over CHICAGO city???

Chicago and Detroit have had a mini murder capital competion for the last 10/15 years (Detroit is generally higher) but that’s bc of GANG violence/drug beefs

And Detroit would be the same way - the mafia is on the suburbs - grosse point , east point, oak park, Southfield , Bloomfield , etc etc

I’m assuming this is same for Chicago???

The Outfit is still very heavily involved within Chicago (the North Side of Chicago particularly around Belmont and Harlem area, also Grand and Ogden and Bridgeport). Slot machines are still illegal in Chicago city limits and they have them in many places throughout the City mostly in cafes, dive bars and even in liquor stores. They are called Sweepstake machines and pay out just like the old machines. Outfit member Gino Cassano controls one of the businesses that distribute them and is based out of Harwood Heights.

Yeah these machines are still to be found in the back rooms of taverns and liquor stores all over the N and NW Side for sure. I have relatives back home that are constantly playing these fucking machines. They know they can go to the legal “video gaming parlors” that now saturated whole sections of the suburbs, but they prefer to go to their old neighborhood taverns and play the back room machines. Payouts aren’t taxed I suppose is part of the appeal, though the “underground” aspect is also part of it for sure. These are old
school City types and are the same kinds of people that will always prefer to place bets with “their guy” than use a legal sports book service. They’re also all boomers though and I wonder very much to what degree generations younger than, say, Gen X, will continue with the black market gambling operations.

On a recent trip back to Chicago I was really struck by how much less Italian in character the Harlem Ave corridor is becoming. That little corner of Dunning west of Harlem and north of Diversey is still the most Italian community left in the City limits proper, especially the strip along Addison with the Sicilian “members only” social clubs and the Cìnisi and Caccamo Societies. But the surrounding areas are becoming rapidly less Italian, and the remaining Italians are aging. The demographic momentum has really turned against them and most of the young people, families with kids, in these areas seem to be Latino now (anecdotally most of the Puerto Ricans I grew up with have all left the hood and are now living in Dunning and Elmwood Park, Stone Park, etc., where they have been able to buy property as the older Italian and Polish residents die off or move out).

This, BTW, is no different than what I see here in the East Bronx, where increasingly the Italians that remain are older and the kids you see in the neighborhood are mainly Latino (and South Asian). In both Chicago and the Bx, there are also quite a few Italian/Latino intermarriages in the younger generations that I know of, which is another factor that will be significant in the coming years (just like how for decades Italians intermarried with fellow Catholics like the Irish, Polish, Croatians, etc).

[Ivan]

Great stuff guys, thanks.

[funkster]

As PT and Patrick have said, there are parts of the city their presence is felt. It's exactly the same in NY, most have moved out of their normal haunts and the guys that still have anything in places like Brooklyn reside in the suburbs not Brooklyn itself.

Having said that, you still see a lot of this in the city neighborhoods close to Elmwood Park. Dunning/Schorsch Village/Montclare/to a lesser extent Galewood. There are still multiple social clubs in these city neighborhoods, one of which (the last time i checked it was still open) was the club held up during a late night card game a la Jackie Aprile and Tony Soprano which was reported on by the Sun Times in 2013. I dont think you can think of territory in the same way as you once did, the Frontier court document highlighted that Gary Gags who is with Elmwood Park was muscling a madame for money who operated her business out of a place on Augusta close to Ashland, which is close to where I live in the old Grand and Ogden neighborhood.

[Patrickgold]

Is this because cartels and gangs have taken over CHICAGO city???

Chicago and Detroit have had a mini murder capital competion for the last 10/15 years (Detroit is generally higher) but that’s bc of GANG violence/drug beefs

And Detroit would be the same way - the mafia is on the suburbs - grosse point , east point, oak park, Southfield , Bloomfield , etc etc

I’m assuming this is same for Chicago???

The Outfit is still very heavily involved within Chicago (the North Side of Chicago particularly around Belmont and Harlem area, also Grand and Ogden and Bridgeport). Slot machines are still illegal in Chicago city limits and they have them in many places throughout the City mostly in cafes, dive bars and even in liquor stores. They are called Sweepstake machines and pay out just like the old machines. Outfit member Gino Cassano controls one of the businesses that distribute them and is based out of Harwood Heights.

Yeah these machines are still to be found in the back rooms of taverns and liquor stores all over the N and NW Side for sure. I have relatives back home that are constantly playing these fucking machines. They know they can go to the legal “video gaming parlors” that now saturated whole sections of the suburbs, but they prefer to go to their old neighborhood taverns and play the back room machines. Payouts aren’t taxed I suppose is part of the appeal, though the “underground” aspect is also part of it for sure. These are old
school City types and are the same kinds of people that will always prefer to place bets with “their guy” than use a legal sports book service. They’re also all boomers though and I wonder very much to what degree generations younger than, say, Gen X, will continue with the black market gambling operations.

On a recent trip back to Chicago I was really struck by how much less Italian in character the Harlem Ave corridor is becoming. That little corner of Dunning west of Harlem and north of Diversey is still the most Italian community left in the City limits proper, especially the strip along Addison with the Sicilian “members only” social clubs and the Cìnisi and Caccamo Societies. But the surrounding areas are becoming rapidly less Italian, and the remaining Italians are aging. The demographic momentum has really turned against them and most of the young people, families with kids, in these areas seem to be Latino now (anecdotally most of the Puerto Ricans I grew up with have all left the hood and are now living in Dunning and Elmwood Park, Stone Park, etc., where they have been able to buy property as the older Italian and Polish residents die off or move out).

This, BTW, is no different than what I see here in the East Bronx, where increasingly the Italians that remain are older and the kids you see in the neighborhood are mainly Latino (and South Asian). In both Chicago and the Bx, there are also quite a few Italian/Latino intermarriages in the younger generations that I know of, which is another factor that will be significant in the coming years (just like how for decades Italians intermarried with fellow Catholics like the Irish, Polish, Croatians, etc).

Yes Harlem Ave is finished. I live right there and let’s say maybe I would see one black person once a week at most about 15 or 20 years ago. Now I see blacks everyday and lots. Harlem Ave use to be Italian from North all the way to Foster. Now it’s some Italian places like Plaza Italia and a couple cafes and restaurants and that’s it. Agostinos closed down last month. That was the last upscale restaurant on Harlem. That being said if you go to the small cafes in the area you will only see Italians guys speaking Italian. Some travel from outside the area but a lot do still live around.

[Ciro_DiMarzio]

There aren’t many Italians in the City and haven’t been for decades, apart from the pockets that remained in Armour Square and Grand Ave (with the latter being displaced since the 90s by heavy gentrification, which has mainly erased the longstanding Italian character of the neighborhood).

Great post Tony.

I remember when Italy won Euro 2020 and I saw videos on youtube of the celebrations and it was all still on Harlem Ave. There's some juice head who keeps dropping gang signs and yelling "C note or C nothing". Around 15:30 part

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUYraMcsInU&t=1874s

What are the odds he's active in the gang or just talking shit?

[Patrickgold]

There aren’t many Italians in the City and haven’t been for decades, apart from the pockets that remained in Armour Square and Grand Ave (with the latter being displaced since the 90s by heavy gentrification, which has mainly erased the longstanding Italian character of the neighborhood).

Great post Tony.

I remember when Italy won Euro 2020 and I saw videos on youtube of the celebrations and it was all still on Harlem Ave. There's some juice head who keeps dropping gang signs and yelling "C note or C nothing". Around 15:30 part

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUYraMcsInU&t=1874s

What are the odds he's active in the gang or just talking shit?

He’s an Addison guy