That's a very good point. But 3 years or 30, once your name and photo graces the top of the pyramid you become one of the top 5 targets in NYC, (back in the 80's) there was 7 agents for every made guy counting clerks and whatnot. An entire legal team gets set up to take you down. So on the flipside, Chin's 30 years vs Gotti's 10 (or whatever) prior to becoming boss, made no difference, they were swept up in the 90's. But I do see your point.East Bronx wrote:It's not worthless, Christie. What you say has a lot of merit. But it should be noted that if you take Gigante's years as a skipper and ad them to his run as boss, he had thirty years as a powerhouse in the street after he came home from the dope pinch. Gotti didn't have half that.Chris Christie wrote:My own worthless 2cents is that Gotti and Chin were achiral images of each other. Wearing a 2000 dollar suit and walking around in a bathrobe are two sides of extremities. Gotti (according to Gravano) believed he could cultivate a popular media image, Chin thought he could fake mental illness. But it doesn't matter because between those two extemes, lesser covered bosses in the other families went down at the same time Gotti and Gigante did. If Gotti crashed and burned in '91 while the other 4 bosses went onto become 4 Gamcardos with 20 year reigns then the argument of Gotti's style would have more merit. But it seems everyone went down at about the same time (early 90's). And if you're going to be a boss and then go to prison to die, do you really want 5 Chin years or 5 Gotti years? Granted Chin lasted a little longer out of prison but he was still facing legal problems by 92.East Bronx wrote: That's always been my position too, Rocco. I've posted it ad nauseam over the years.
If I had to walk around in a bath robe and piss in the street in open public in order to be a successful criminal, I'd just conclude it's not worth the effort and get a job but that's me.
The lesson is, you can't run crime anymore on the local level. Back in the 1950's they could shoot and kill someone in broad daylight and no one would talk. In the 80's they could sit around construction sites collecting "no show" jobs. Those days are over. The guys that are members who have legitimate jobs don't work them as a cover, they work them to pay bills. Organized crime doesn't pay like it used to. On the Sopranos you seen families having sitdowns over 50,000, try 5,000 in real life. Is there even going to be a single social club in NYC come 2020?
