Manf wrote: ↑Tue Apr 08, 2025 4:58 am
Have any members in Chicago or other parts of the country ever actually referred to called the family as Outfit or the Chicago Outfit or has it always been a media/law enforcement thing?
It’s not made up by the press or LE. We have member and associate sources that referred to the Chicago Family as “the outfit” since the 1960s, and the use clearly predated that time. But Chicago guys also used this term interchangeably with other terms like “the Family”, “the life”, “our people”, and “mafia”. LE and the press I believe were responsible for solidifying “outfit” as *the term* used for the Chicago mob, picking it up and amplifying it.
Also worth noting that that “the outfit” was in no way specific to Chicago either. It was used around the US by affiliates of many LCN Families in the same way: to denote a specific Family (“he was with the Bonanno outfit”), as well as a synonym for “Cosa Nostra” or “mafia” to denote the entire LCN phenomenon as a collective (“outfit guys from New York and Chicago ran things in Vegas”). I have documented many instances of its use among affiliates of Families all across the Midwest (e.g., Detroit guys actually mainly called their organization “the outfit”, not “The Partnership”, a term almost totally propagated by the press, etc.), to Los Angeles, Tampa, New England (e.g., informants like Whitey Bulger and Vinnie Teresa referred to the Parriarca Family as “the outfit”), and the NYC area (e.g., Genovese member George Barone repeatedly referred to his Family as “the outfit”, while Sam DeCavalcante was recorded using it frequently to refer to his own and NYC Families).
So, yes, it was in fact an insider term used by Chicago affiliates to refer to both LCN as a whole as well as their own specific Family. But the idea that this term solely and specifically denoted the Chicago mafia organization is a consequence of the ways that it got picked up and amplified by LE and the press.
