Is organized crime dead in Detroit?

[johnny1954]

A friend of mine [[former Detroit Police officer, he's a cop in San Diego now) told me recently, when he came across a dead body in Detroit it was usually a mystery why this person got shot. In San Diego, the police usually know why the person was shot. He explained to me the organized crime element in San Diego is very well developed and respected. Detroit he said, orgainzed crime was weak and people just got killed for no reason.

[reddog289]

People get killed in Detroit for reasons. Alot of stupid reasons none the less. As for organized crime I am in the dark.

[Zacha341]

Well there's more than enough disorganized crime about.......

[johnny1954]

Organized crime is alive and well in Toronto, yet Toronto is one of the safest cities in North America. Homicide rate is 3.3 per 100,000 people, Detroit rate is 33.8 per 100,000.
Maybe the return of the Purple Gange would reduce violence in Detroit.

[Meddle]

Not a proponent of organized crime at all, but they do bring a sense of order among thieves. They'll take care of their own problems and go after anyone who crosses them, but you don't have the wild west situations where every block or two is a different turf war or where you have competing drug houses on the same block. Once they took control of a city or area, things would be pretty quiet for a while. They wouldn't whack somebody for minor things like a $20 crack rock. They might break something or 'borrow' your sister/wife/girlfriend for a while, but they were interested in being paid and you couldn't pay if you weren't breathing.

[sumas]

I can't believe "organized" crime is being discussed as if it were some kind of underground police force.

Gangs are still an issue and they are lawless. The drive bys have killed too many blameless citizens.

Note Eastland: where a store employee recently got caught in the cross fire.

[canuck]

Montreal's alleged godfather was killed by a single bullet to the head last month. He was sitting down in a room with his daughter and wife in his Mcmansion when a sniper shot him. His grandson also named Nick Rizzuto was killed in december 09 and his second in command; Paolo Renda was abducted this summer and hasnt been seen since. There is a turf war between probably newcomers maybe the calabrian as opposed to the sicilian clans that the Rizzutos represent. This war has not been too violent so far but a series of firebombings on italian and haitian
businesses in the city has a lot of people wondering who the next boss will be. Vito Rizzuto Old man Nick's son was the acting godfather until he was convited of a murder committed in 1981 for the Bonanno clan in New York. He is in prison in Colorado and will be out in a couple of years and might serve some time in Canada and may be extradited to Italy to face conspiracy charges in the contracting for the Messina Bridge in Sicily.

The italian mafia and other gangs do business together instead of against each other so long as they get what they deem is their fair share. When one team senses a breech or weakness, another team moves in and tries to take over. In Montreal, there is the West End Gang or Irish Gang and the Hell's Angels that vie for a piece of the pie. Many of the Hell's Angels are now behind bars after a major police investigation "wolverine".


Here is some stuff on the Rizzutos and on several made men over the years...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vito_Rizzuto
http://mafiascene.com/forum/viewtopi...12286&start=75

[Stosh]

Organized crime is always there, the names and ethnicity just change.

[davewindsor]

Organized crime is alive and well in Toronto, yet Toronto is one of the safest cities in North America. Homicide rate is 3.3 per 100,000 people, Detroit rate is 33.8 per 100,000.
Maybe the return of the Purple Gange would reduce violence in Detroit.

Yet, across the river in Windsor, the homicide rate is 2.5 per 100,000. Your logic would also suggest there's more organized crime in Windsor than Toronto because the homicide rate is lower in Windsor than Toronto. Yet, in Metro suburbia, the homicide rates are a lot lower than the City of Detroit too.

What organized crime does Windsor have? Please name them. Are you referring to biker gangs in Windsor? Detroit has biker gangs too. Google "biker gangs" and "Detroit". So, Detroit has organized crime too.

I think there's something wrong with the variables here in your two city comparison. I'm sure that Detroit's poorly funded police force has nothing to do with this huge crime stat difference between Toronto and Detroit. Or better funded police forces in cities in Metro having lower homicide rates than the City of Detroit does not factor in either. Homicide rates just have a strong correlation with the degree of organized crime.

It's the purple gang that kept violence down in Detroit, not a better funded police force. The more organized crime is, the lower the homicide rate??? Come on guys, you've got to be better educated than this.

[GrandCircus289]

Still around...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Partnership

[Magnatomicflux]

What organized crime does Windsor have? Please name them. Are you referring to biker gangs in Windsor?
.

dave....you know as well as I do, all they do is screw off with some poor kids Huffy

There is a Hell's Angels clubhouse out on Howard in the county....but they don't cause any trouble.

[johnny1954]

Im just looking for variables why Detroit has such a high violent crime rate. It seems everyday someone is killed over a jacket, tv, $20 or some other small item. It's like Detroit has a terminial case but we don't know the cause. Race, economics, education, climate, labor, and other demographic factors dont point to a root cause, only point to possible contributing factors.

[davewindsor]

dave....you know as well as I do, all they do is screw off with some poor kids Huffy

There is a Hell's Angels clubhouse out on Howard in the county....but they don't cause any trouble.

There a clubhouse on Drouillard Rd. I've seen like 80 bikes park in front of it and guys going in and out of it on certain evenings this summer.

[davewindsor]

Im just looking for variables why Detroit has such a high violent crime rate. It seems everyday someone is killed over a jacket, tv, $20 or some other small item. It's like Detroit has a terminial case but we don't know the cause. Race, economics, education, climate, labor, and other demographic factors dont point to a root cause, only point to possible contributing factors.

Poorly funded policing. A weak legal system doesn't make it any easier. When the stats are that 70% of the homicides go unsolved in Detroit and 100% of homicides are solved in Windsor [[for the past couple decades), there's not much of a deterrent factor in Detroit for someone to kill someone else for $20.

Have you read this article among others in the Free Press before on poorly funded policing and homicde rates in Detroit?
http://forums.roadfly.com/forums/pol...9351690-6.html

Getting away with murder is the norm in Detroit
Police chief calls city's closure rate 'abysmal'
Charlie LeDuff / The Detroit News
Detroit

At least 7 in 10 people who committed murder in this city last year have gotten away with it.

The most generous interpretation of 2008 homicide warrants and convictions supplied by local law enforcement officials shows that in more than 70 percent of homicide cases no suspect has been identified, arrested, charged or convicted of a killing.

"The reality is, we have a reputation in the state that if you want to commit a crime, come here," said Kym Worthy, the Wayne County prosecutor who said she does not challenge the analysis. "The chance of arrest is quite low, the chance of prosecution is quite low. What does that say about the commitment to the public's safety?"

The Detroit Police Department reports 375 people were murdered in 2008, revising its number up from 306 after a Detroit News investigation into those statistics earlier this year. The Prosecutor's Office ruled 13 of those killings as justifiable or self-defense, lowering the number of criminal homicides to 362.

According to The News' review of warrants requested by the Detroit Police homicide squad last year, at most 70 cases ended with at least one person being sent to prison for murder or manslaughter. Another 31 homicide cases still are being prosecuted.

In another 22 cases, the prosecutor refused to issue an arrest warrant, instead returning the case to detectives for lack of evidence. In six cases, a defendant was penalized with only fines or probation after being charged with premeditated murder. And in another six cases, defendants pleaded to lesser crimes such as armed robbery or accessory after the fact.

And of those 2008 murder prosecutions, Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans estimates that as many as 10 percent were actually committed in prior years. That means that as many as three of four killings committed in Detroit in 2008 may end without a killer being brought to justice.

As a comparison, Oakland County reported 29 homicides last year. In all but one case, the defendants were sent to prison for murder. The other was sentenced for manslaughter, said Jessica Cooper, the Oakland County prosecutor.

"Is it hopeless?" asked Evans, who took command of the department seven weeks ago. "No. But do we have serious challenges? Absolutely."

Workload is huge
The closure rate for homicide –– defined by the FBI as a case when at least one person is arrested and turned over to the prosecutor for prosecution –– in 2008 was an " abysmal" 33 percent to 35 percent, Evans said. The national average, according to the FBI, is 62 percent. In Los Angeles –– a city with five times the population and three times the police force of Detroit –– the homicide closure rate was nearly 70 percent.

"In the end, it is what the police do that makes a difference as to whether a homicide is solved," said Charles Wellford, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Maryland who has studied homicide in Detroit and Los Angeles. "There is no big city with a clearance rate as low as Detroit's."

The Detroit Police force, for its part, is underfunded and understaffed, said Evans, who was recently named the third Detroit police chief in a year. The Prosecutor's Office maintains that its budget has been slashed by a third over the past six years, leaving too few prosecutors and investigators to handle the load.

"I only have one part-time homicide investigator, if you can believe that," Worthy said.

There also is the "no-snitch" phenomenon in Detroit, which means citizens often are either too frightened or too hardened to cooperate with police. And even in the rare cases when a suspect does make it to trial, there have been unpredictable elements of judge and jury.

Take the case of Deandre Woolfolk. In January 2008, Woolfolk and two confederates participated in a drug-related drive-by shooting in Detroit, killing a 15-year-old girl. Woolfolk was read his Miranda rights before he gave his confession on videotape, according to court documents.

Nevertheless, Woolfolk, who police say belongs to a deadly drug cartel, successfully argued later in court that he had earlier asked for a lawyer but detectives had denied him access. The judge released him in late February 2009.

Woolfolk, 20, now sits in the Oakland County Jail, accused of beating a man to death in early August at a Southfield nightclub.

The witness, Anthony Alls, who told police he saw Woolfolk deliver the deadly blow, was gunned downed two weeks later on Woodward as he left a barber shop. Alls was an applicant with the Detroit Police Department. There are no witnesses or arrests in his killing.

"It is absolutely horrible," said Gary Brown, a former deputy chief of police and current City Council candidate. "Today, I'm packing my gun just to go to CVS. The city is not safe. The city is out of control. And anyone who lives here knows so."

Evans said that during his brief tenure as police chief, he has discovered:

• An evidence property room in chaos.

• A crime lab shut down due to incompetence.

• Computers in squad cars that don't work.

• A new $2.5 million camera system in patrol cars that does not function.

The department cannot recoup the loss on the cameras because it never purchased a warranty, police have said. The system known as Compstat, a crime data and computer mapping system used by most major cities to identify crime hot spots, was discarded.

"No one has a clear understanding why Compstat was abandoned," said John Roach, the new police spokesman.

As many as 200 officers in the 3,000-person department who work behind a desk need to be returned to street patrol, Evans said. Those who work the streets often work with defective equipment, he added.

Detroit languishing
Detroit homicide investigators are overworked, handling as many as three times the caseload of their counterparts across the country. One detective, exchanging his candor for confidentiality because he fears reprisal from his superiors, recalled having to take a bus to a crime scene because there were no working pool cars. Predictably, experienced detectives have been retiring.

"We're going to have to analyze crime patterns and deploy our resources accordingly," Evans said. "We're going to have to develop a relationship with the community. That's how you solve murders. Through witnesses. Eyeballs.

"Look, the only thing I've been longer than a cop is black. I understand people's feelings about the police. We're going to have to work to let them know we're on their side."

His recipe for solving Detroit's crime problems mirrors that used in Los Angeles by William Bratton, the police commissioner hired by Mayor Ken Hahn in 2002.

Bratton, a former New York City Police commissioner, went to Los Angeles when crime was high and the morale in the Police Department was low. The department had been placed under federal oversight after it was discovered that rogue police officers had framed innocent citizens, stolen drugs and beaten suspects.

Employing an obsessive focus on crime data, Bratton cleaned up the City of Angels. Last year, Los Angeles reported 382 homicides –– just five more than Detroit. Violent crime is down 50 percent and the LAPD was removed from federal oversight last month. Bratton has resigned effective Oct. 31.

Detroit, on the other hand, has languished under federal supervision since 2003, for among other things using excessive force and illegally detaining witnesses. The department made little headway under the stewardship of Kwame Kilpatrick, the disgraced former mayor who was sent to prison for perjury, among other things. It also was revealed recently that Kilpatrick had a personal relationship with the federal monitor.

The governmental oversight, meanwhile, has been extended to at least 2011.

At the same time, the number of murders may climb well above 400 by year's end, said Evans. To make matters worse, he said, 50 to 200 people involved in murder and serving prison time will be paroled into Detroit this year by the state Department of Corrections.

"It's getting worse," said Evans. "But it will get better. It has to."

[Magnatomicflux]

There a clubhouse on Drouillard Rd. I've seen like 80 bikes park in front of it and guys going in and out of it on certain evenings this summer.

Now that I think of it....I've seen that too. Never really thought much of it though.

[Melocoton]

How are organized drug gangs not "organized crime"? What do these terms mean? Is it that "organized crime"=white people and "gangs"=black people?

[johnny1954]

Yes, crime is out of control in Detroit. However, 1974 was the absolute worst year in Detroit for crimes, especially homicides, over 700.The reasons why Detroits legal/police departments are a mess go way back. 70% of all murders go unsolved, that is 3rd world country stats. Why doesnt the Wayne county prosecutors office declare an emergency and get help from the state or federal government? The feds could easily supply an additional 200 prosecutors if that's what's needed.

[kraig]

There's a lot of organized crime in Detroit. Most of it is conducted by people that understand that doing it in a quiet manner, and not on the streets for all to see and hear, goes a long way in staying off of law enforcements radar. Which is why we don't hear too much about it.

[gdogslim]

You mean the Syndicate, The Detroit Partnership, the Outfit, Our Thing, Mob, Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, the Detroit Combination or the Tocco-Licavoli-Zerilli crime family
Or the various organized drug cartels that control tens of millions of drug running?

Per Wiki
The group's illicit activities include laborracketeering, gambling, loansharking, extortion, hijacking, fencing, narcotics and a number of legitimate businesses that include a race track, trucking and garbage hauling firms, construction companies, restaurants, food supply and laundry services.
Who would want to give up all that juice and excitement?

Are you trying to write a book on recent mobsters in Detroit.?

[canuck]

A lot of disorganized crime is due to the trickle down effects of organized crime. The codes of honor of the big fish are not worth the paper they are not written on; likewise the smaller fry.

[j to the jeremy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mafia_Family

[detroitbob66]

The Italians are still around.....trust me!!!!! They are just not as noticeable as they used to be.

[mauser]

"Is organized crime dead in Detroit?"

no.

[Gannon]

My girlfriend used to live in Philadelphia, and mentioned that one of her favorite restaurants was the one very famously known as the place where the 'last supper' would be served to someone scheduled to be whacked.

She said the tension among the made men in the room would be palpable, because until it happened...nearly nobody knew who was the hit. Apparently it was NOT done in the restaurant...I'd think it would be bad for business.


She holds a distinctively romantic view of the Mob, from her time there. I understand it, in a Soprano's sorta way.


From documentation many decades old, the CIA has worked with the Mafia to supply drugs to the inner city, while taking the profits out for their world-wide manipulations and war-mongering...and God-playing. This association keeps many of these folks free to do their thing, away from local prying eyes. Once the DEA or FBI [[or higher) declares their authority over an investigation, locals must back down.


No cheers on this one...

[mauser]

there is much more to organized crime than Sicilians, of course. gangs are a very serious form of organized crime. street gangs can be very complicated organizations. smaller ones model after pack animal behavior, and the larger ones rival the complexity of any large corporation or distributor.