“A spectacle of fearsome acts. That's what maintains the order of things. Fear.”
-Bill the Butcher, Gangs Of New York 2002
Our society, our government, has been remarkably successful at breaking up organized crime. Both in the formal Mafia sense all the way down to home-grown neighborhood gangs and crews. It's too bad, y'all were better off back when the boogie man had a name. Though you don't realize it, and though many of you will never admit it, you played yourselves. Congratulations.
Welcome to the aftermath of catastrophic success and my completely research-free rant about it. Here there be no graphs.
Because we Gen-X kids can't help it, let's hop in our way-back machine and travel to the mid-90’s and to the waning days of these underground empires. After the Mafia's yet before the chaos.
~~~~~~~~~~time travel symbols~~~~~~~~~
“Evray’ware I luke I see stupi’t men oo tink dey ahr ly-ons. Ahr you a ly-on mistah Brown?” He asked Ray-Ray while bouncing a 45. on the side of his thigh menacingly. His smooth, Nigerian accent making the implied threat sound almost musically beautiful. No one in the room dared speak, especially the man whom he addressed. “Den if you ahr naut, geev me ah re-sun why I should keep lehing you beh stupi’t wih my moan-ay.”
Ray-Ray began stumbling over his words as he tried to explain how he could make things right, how he could get the Nigerians money back. Ray-Ray, a man who I watched kill a killer for no other reason than a disrespectful tone of voice being used. I was uncomfortable standing there in the corner while this gangsta, who'd been a rising star just the day before, all but begged for his life.
However I wasn't uncomfortable because of this emasculating scene playing out in front of a room full of criminals. I was uncomfortable because I was the reason Ray-Ray was in this predicament. I was the one who stole the Nigerians money from him after all.
A job the Nigerian paid me to do.
“Dis stupi’t niggah drahin’g ahttention to us” he'd told me a day before that in private. Using the term “us” to refer to our entire neighborhood. Like most, I was afraid of him while pretending not to be. I wanted to say something, to stick my chest out about how he'd said that, given he was literally the only human being I had ever heard use that term as a slur, but I didn't. There was an indescribable menace behind his bright and charming smile that kept my body in a constant state of pre-flight readiness.
The Nigerian then loosely vented about how Ray-Ray had gotten too big for his britches and how venturing out into the “good neighborhoods” was going to bring the weight of the police down on all of us. I was smart enough to see that what he really needed was an excuse to justifiably bring this thug down a few pegs for everyone to see. The nuances of power plays weren't lost on me given it's always how things operated in the hood.
Masked, I rolled Ray-Ray while he transported the days take as instructed like the good little stuck-up boy I was. They may have been his corners, but it was the Nigerians dope.
What the average person doesn't realize is, back in the day, we largely kept ourselves in check and contained. Sounds like the opposite of what you remember, doesn't it? Stay with me, we're about to go down a very dark rabbit hole.
“But crime has dramatically decreased since then. Haven't you seen the statistics and graphs and pie charts and” yadda yadda yadda.
SoURcE?!?!
My research is literally looking around. Googling whatever graph you need to argue is for dorks and NPC’s. Go use them to slap-fight with other dweebs. I notice you never source yourself when using sources.
If crime is a fraction of what it once was, why don't y'all feel safer?
One of the reasons the statisti-dorks leave out is who the crimes were and are being committed against. You, personally as a law abiding citizen, are more likely to be a victim today than back then. This is because the vast majority of the crimes being committed were against other criminals in very specific neighborhoods. We largely went after each other.
In hindsight I know I'm guilty of glorifying this as simply being how the Game functioned. Only players can get played. However, that's me trying to justify that life using the Code I later adopted in prison. The truth is that we victimized ourselves because we were easily accessible and lived in a culture that avoided law enforcement even when we ourselves suffered.
Yes, crews and gangs fought for territory, but only where others like us were located. There was a hierarchy where someone always kept the others close to home. I had protection from retribution where I lived so long as I didn't stray to where people like you lived. I understood that drawing heat was an unforgivable act.
Additionally to keeping ourselves within limits, the police were very good back then at keeping it contained to specific areas. Society hadn't hamstrung them yet. “Best not cross this street or we’re coming in to bust heads”. I've literally seen Narcos tell drug dealers to switch corners and those boys move on without a fuss. If a group decided to act up, the cops would swoop in, knock them around, and drive them to where they're allowed to be.
Before you start, this wasn't a bunch of crooked cops. They kept the problem out where they could see it and manage things. It kept the dope fiends in a small area like flies circling a pile of shit. They knew that arresting the corner boys accomplished absolutely nothing. Drugs were going to be moved no matter what and each arrest only meant they'd have to figure out who the replacement guy was. Whether you know it or not, they did an unbelievably effective job at protecting all of you.
All of that to say, yes, there was a lot more crime back then and proportionately very little of it had any effect on your life as a citizen. Whereas, while statistically less crime is being committed, you're now a very large percentage of the victim pool. It doesn't have borders anymore.
Once society chopped off the head you assumed you'd won. Drugs were going to flow no matter what and now the fiends don't have to go to a specific neighborhood to get and use them. Now it's just out and everywhere. The asylum has no one managing it anymore.
Add to this the fact that people who understood nothing about that world began writing “feel good” laws which only made things worse. You ever wonder why a cop just files a report now? It's because so many of these crimes have been downgraded that it doesn't even make sense to try and catch a guy knowing it wouldn't even result in jail time. You're mad at them when they're actively not wasting your tax dollars.
So there's another reason the numbers dropped. I still know a few people and I know this new generation of criminals won't even do county jail time for things guys used to get a nickel in the joint for doing. I've personally gone to jail for things that wouldn't even be prosecuted now. So why wouldn't they keep doing it and why wouldn't they do it to you? It's catch and release baby.
Adding to this is the fact that the drugs are actually worse than ever. What happened? Didn't y'all bust the drug lords and break up all of the gangs? Where's the utopia?
Oh right, crime isn't just a local issue. Turns out there's a few more people in the world outside of where you live. This is where things get really messed up. Turns out, your local neighborhood criminals were keeping the outsiders away.
You shot the bear only to discover that it was the only thing keeping the wolves at bay.
Unintentional consequences are a mutha-fucka, amirite?
I've been in the periphery a time or two when some outside group, always Mexicans where I was, tried to set up shop and were ran off by the neighborhood hitters. Bangers were pretty damn patriotic in that sense. They weren't about to allow some outsiders, who didn't care about how things were done, to come in and bleed the city dry. Flooding it with dope that kills the users while shipping the money out. Yes, even the Somalians, Nigerians and Slavs got in on that fight too. They may have come from another country but they were fully American and those were their neighborhoods.
It's funny if you think about how that's changed as well. Even the criminal immigrants were flag flying Americans who, though they committed crime, still spat on the countries they fled from. But that's a tangent.
Getting back on track, now that there's no centralized power or beef between rival powers keeping each other and outsiders in check, it's all just wild and random. It's why the bad neighborhoods now bleed over and eventually devour the surrounding areas. They didn't used to expand and now that expansion is inevitable. They go where you live now.
It is just my opinion but average citizens were safer back then than now. There's less crime but now you're the statistics instead of us. Still feel like you're winning?
There was once a devil you knew who could be managed but now you don't even know who's causing the problems anymore.
There is no utopia and in its pursuit you accidentally moved in the opposite direction.
Catastrophic Success and unintended consequences. Congratulations, ya played yourselves.
Here in NYC, can confirm.
Anyone with a functioning brain can tell you, regardless of whatever charts and statistics the Mayor or police commissioner want to throw at us, our city is in no way safer than it was a decade ago. There are no more “good neighborhoods” and no times to avoid being out. You can get clapped whenever and for seemingly no good reason other than having the misfortune of being there. Just yesterday in lower Manhattan SoHo region, which is the epicenter of bourgeois cool-girl shopping, a man was shot at 2 in the afternoon. One of the “good” and “rich” neighborhoods.
The next time someone tells you crime is down, why is the National Guard patrolling the subway system?
Anyway Gangs of New York is fucking great.
Great perspective. I’ve heard the saying often, “no one cares as long as they’re killing each other.” The even bigger problem is that our overlords make money on all this. That’s why no Sackler family member or doctor ever went to prison for flooding the nation with opioids, big banks get off with fines for laundering billions in drug money, the few well known manufacturers of essential drug ingredients are left alone by “law enforcement,” and recovery centers are now an investment opportunity. It’s so much bigger than local police departments.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-vast-sums-of-dirty-money-after-paying-record-laundering-fine/