Chicago Chinatown crew question

[Stopflexing]

I know absolutely nothing about Chicago or The Outfit, but do they really have a crew that operates in Chinatown? I couldn’t imagine Phillys Chinatown having any made guys running around up there.

[Antiliar]

Scott has sources that say that Chicago's Chinatown is still alive and well, even expanding into Gary, Indiana. Apparently Frank "Toots" Caruso is the capo in charge. My source has no knowledge of Chinatown, so I can't confirm or deny. Scott does have some good Chicago sources though.

[SonnyC]

I know absolutely nothing about Chicago or The Outfit, but do they really have a crew that operates in Chinatown? I couldn’t imagine Phillys Chinatown having any made guys running around up there.

Chicago's Chinatown is small, and borders Bridgeport/Armor Square which has a lot of people of Italian background, as well as Irish and Croatians.

[PolackTony]

I know absolutely nothing about Chicago or The Outfit, but do they really have a crew that operates in Chinatown? I couldn’t imagine Phillys Chinatown having any made guys running around up there.

Chinatown in Chicago encompasses an old inner-city Italian port of entry colony, centered around Cermak Rd (22nd St) and Wentworth. The original Chinatown was located a little way to the North in the South Loop, and when the Chinese were displaced from there they took root alongside the burgeoning Italian colony on the Near South Side. The area had a mafia presence possibly going back to the 1870s, when a murder linked to a counterfeiting ring allegedly led by notorious New Orleans mafioso Gaetano Russo occurred near 18th and Clark (where Jim Colosimo's HQ in the center of what was then the city's major vice district was later located). Over the 20th century, the Italian population (primarily Sicilian, Calabrese, and Salernitan') expanded southward into the adjacent Armour Square and Bridgeport neighborhoods, where there is still a notable remnant of the old Italian community today. People refer to the crew (the Roti/Caruso/LaPietra crew) as the "Chinatown crew", but you will also see it referred to as the 26th St crew (as LaPietra maintained his base of operations in the original Old Neighborhood Italian American Club at 26th and Princeton (most of the surrounding blocks were demolished in the early 60s for the Dan Ryan E'way), the Bridgeport crew or just the Southside crew.

Over the decades, the Chinese population increased significantly while many Italians moved farther out or to the suburbs (the same dynamic that happened between Lower Manhattan's "Little "Italy" and the Mott St Chinatown). The mafia presence in the neighborhood was thus mainly due to longstanding historical factors by the early 1980s, with few Italians left by then in the core Chinatown area. The mob had close ties, however, to significant Chinese gambling and loansharking operations there, particularly to the On Leong Tong Chinese Merchants Association (a fraternal society whose Chicago branch was the most influential after the NYC mother branch and was linked to Chinese OC and street gang groups like the infamous Ghost Shadows).

The On Leong paid street taxes to the "outfit" and in return also received representation and protection. For example, in the early '80s, an internal conflict in the On Leong broke out, and a crew of gunners from the Ghost Shadows was sent from NYC to Chicago to assist the On Leong there. On Leong wound up using its mob connections to rampant judicial corruption in Cook County to fix a murder case, which was exposed by mobbed-up lawyer and CW Bob Cooley. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm ... story.html

During the same period, it was revealed by a CW that the On Leong branches in Chicago and Pittsburgh had connections to the "outfit" in both cities:

[Stopflexing]

Great post, Thanks Tony

[funkster]

Bridgeport/Armour Square area still has five or six active social clubs for what it's worth. Of course not necessarily mafia activity taking place in them, but you know how it goes.

Tony, you may know...is the old ONIAC still in use? Cause it's still very much still there, "Members Only" door and everything. As discussed before it's technically owned by the Ricobenes people. The last time i was out there, there was a flyer in the window that was promoting a candidate for alderman, so someone uses it for something.

[SonnyC]

If someone is using the old club, it's definitely undercover. The "new" club is still very much in use, but most of the old timers are gone. I was there for a visit last Christmas.

[NorthBuffalo]

Chinatown Bridgeport is more than Chinatown in Chicago - it was where the Daley family was from 11th Ward and a ton of Outfit guys and power brokers. A lot of Tribune articles talk about how that ward continues to get money. I've wondered whether Mayor Dimfoot has the mob involved with the casino going into Chicago's downtown.