John Gotti Essay Example For Students

John Gotti Essay If ever there was an incubator for crime it was the Italian Harlem tenements of the South Bronx. In one of those crowded dirty apartments, a young John Gotti seeked an impoverished existence with his parents and eleven sisters and brothers. His father rarely worked and then, only at menial jobs, risking the money that the family did have on gambling. Eventually the family moved to central Brooklyn, which was known as East New York. In East New York, for a poor boy like John Gotti with nothing in the way of prospects, the Cosa Nostra represented something to which he could realistic aspire to gain the power and respect he craved. He started as many young boys did, running errands for the gangsters, molding himself into a young bully with a future. His first major incident with the police occurred when he tried to steal a cement mixer and it fell on his feet, an injury that affected his gait for the rest of his life. He quit school at sixteen and rose to leadership in a local street gang of thieves called the Fulton-Rockaway Boys, named after two streets in their neighborhood. At an early age he exerted his bad temper, dominance and readiness to engage in fistfights. These were just the right characteristics to develop his potential as a Mafia boss. In the mid-1960s, Gottis boss Carmine Fatico moved his headquarters out to Ozone Park near JFK Airport. Gotti, his brothers, Angelo and Willie Boy became relatively successful hijackers. That is, until they got caught in 1968 and landed in prison. In 1972, when Gotti got out of prison and went back to Ozone Park, the headquarters had been imaginatively renamed the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club. Two important things happened in his life to significantly lift his status in the Cosa Nostra. The first was that his boss Carmine Fatico faced a loansharking indictment, so Gotti became Faticos man on the street to keep him informed about what was happening at a grass-roots level. The second was that Gotti met Neil Dellacroce, an important under boss to Carl Gambino. Neil accomplished Carlos violent dirty work from a headquarters in Little Italys Mulberry Street called the Ravenite Social Club. Neil, who was disappointed that his only son Armond became a drug addict, saw in Gotti a young protege who was a younger version of his own violent, macho self. Like Gotti, he had a weakness for gambling and one such episode got him in trouble with the IRS. Neil ended up in jail for at least a year. With both Fatico and Dellacroce in the slammer, John Gotti was handed a lot of new responsibilities. For one thing, he gained incredible visibility by reporting directly to Carlo Gambino while Fatico was in jail. Before that opportunity, Carlo did not particularly value Gottis crowd in Ozone Park. To the sophisticated Carlo, they were just a bunch of hotheaded thugs. This was a chance for Gotti to show himself in a different light. Gotti brought home to the Ozone Park crowd Carlos prohibition on drug dealing. But the warnings fell on deaf ears. Many of the men very close to Gotti were dealing and using heroin and cocaine. But Gotti kept the faith by warning them: If youre dealin, youre f..kin playin with fire, and if you get caught, youre f..kin dead. Through Neil Dellacroce, Gotti and his Ozone Park boys had a chance to vastly improve their status under Carlo. Carlo had lost a nephew in 1973 to a kidnapper who collected the $100K ransom and then murdered the boy. Gotti was given the opportunity to get revenge for Carlo. The kidnapper was a man named James McBratney.Gotti, Angelo Ruggiero and another one of the Bergin soldiers dressed up as cops and shot McBratney in a pub in front of several witnesses. Angelo was arrested first and later, the police also arrested Gotti for the murder. Fortunately for Gotti, Carlo gave the McBratney case to his talented lawyer Roy Cohn who was able to get the charge reduced to manslaughter. While Gotti was in jail in 1976, Carlo Gambino had a heart attack and was dying. Carlo made a decision that was to create problems for the crime family for almost a decade-he named his brother-in-law Paul Castellano as his successor. Castellano was not respected and admired like Carlo. Perhaps his insecurity caused him to keep Neil as his under boss in charge of all of the more violent activities, such as hijacking. While Paul would focus the family efforts on the more sophisticated criminal activities like union rackets and bid-rigging in c onstruction projects. Wendy Martin EssayIt has been called The Outfit, The Arm, The Clique, The Tradition, The Syndicate, The Honored Society, The Office, and The Combination, but to its members it is La Cosa Nostra (this thing of ours). The face of the Mafia has changed from the faceless, mysterious, and impenetrable power that it was fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, no member of La Cosa Nostra would have considered breaking omerta, the code of silence which, in many ways, is responsible for the power of the Mafia.To do this was to be labeled a rat (called that because a rat will do anything to survive) and be marked for certain death. Today, things are different. It has been blamed on drugs, and it has been blamed on youth. One thing is certain: powerful members of the Mafia have broken omerta, and the entire organization has paid the price. In 1988, Angelo Lonardo, former acting boss of the Cleveland Family, testified before the Senate Committee on Government Affairs. The issue of the changing of t he Mafia was addressed. Senator Roth stated: we are facing a new generation of the LCN La Cosa Nostra They lack respect for tradition and for the family, they have succumbed to the influence of drugs, both as traffickers and as users. As a result, they have become more greedy, selfish, more violent. Many have chosen to forsake omerta, the traditional vow of silence and turn in other family members to save their own skins. Mr.Lombardo himself stated that there were no men of honor anymore. He states: It has changed since I first joined in the 1940s, especially in the last few years with the growth of narcotics. Greed is causing younger members to go into narcotics without the knowledge of the families. These younger members lack the discipline and respect that made This Thing as strong as it once was.