Why did America have such a problem with organised crime syndicates and armed gangsters in its largest cities...

I found that the biggest thing I suffered as a law student is family, friends, and friends of friends asking you how to get out of parking or other motor tickets.

Going medieval on crime does work if you know what you're doing. Singapore is a good example of this.

isn't there a law prohibiting the federal government from using the army to police its citizens?
that's why whenever shit gets heavy states use their national guard.

Those are harsh laws applied by a relatively transparent and fair court system. Whilst their laws are certainly harsh, I'm not sure I'd compare it to Dueterte's vigilante style justice.

>Gangsters didn't hang around in a clubhouse labeled "gang hideout."
would be awesome if they did that tbph.

People say Hawks invented the genre with "Scarface", but Cagney was modernity. Muni was not, so i give the nod to William Wellman.

singapore is also a tiny ass city state that is dependent upon it's neighbouring countries.

I love how americans argue that their guns will protect them from government brutality while their fellow citizens get increasingly tormented by a militarized police

Who is the most effective American gangster of all time? Meyer Lansky (died rich as shit of old age)? Lucky Luciano (Revolutionized mob interaction, making involved organizations far more effective)? Whitey Bulger (Manipulated the FBI for years into taking his competition out, was only caught a few years ago)? someone else?

Government officials got a cut of the profit in exchange for allowing the mob to operate without too much legal trouble.

Every now and then a mobster who was particularly obvious would get arrested to keep up appearances, but the goal was never to eliminate organized crime altogether.

Joe Profaci

See, it's one part actual policing to ten parts economics.

Most people in Singapore are too busy being wageslaves to get into the cool shit.

Meyer Lansky would be my candidate, never spent a day in jail is pretty successful.

>Couldn't they just send the army in to the streets and brutally crush all the gangsters?

That goes against what Americans used to believe in.

1) That woulda been radically illegal, particularly at the time.

2) A lot of those gangstas were in the government towards middle-late prohibition, and thus never would have let it happen.

3) They were highly decentralized.

4) They were often quite popular, as they were actually providing various sorts of social welfare and employment in those areas where they were strongest.

5) Why go through all that when you can just do the sensible thing and end prohibition, thus cutting them off at the balls?

Prohibitions just drive legalize crime, often until it takes over your government. Thankfully we came to our senses before we ended up like Mexico... Well, in regards to alcohol, at least.

>race and culture have nothing to do with it
Kys

>culture is static
>implying the Nordic states haven't been carefully working on their system for generations

>if you know what you're doing

Nobody ever knows what they're doing where politics is concerned.

The people who like they're guns aren't the same ones defending police brutality you fucking nitwit

A lot them are. A lot of gun owners in the US are bootlickers obsessed with the military and police.

Source: from /k/

What really busted organized crime wide open was the advent of undercover law enforcement. Because traditional police methods of investigation don't work on smart, organized criminals who keep themselves safely removed from the criminal activities of their subordinates. So no matter how many pushers, pimps, thugs, and racketeers you put away you have nothing to tie any of it to the guy you know is calling all the shots because none of those low-level guys is part of the inner circle, none of them is pertinent to information like how the boss's money is laundered from his various criminal operations, say. You need to be able to tie the head honcho to the beatings, the murders, the smuggling, the racketeering, etc or else you have nothing.

So for that you need somebody on the inside, and most mobsters run a very tight ship, only trusting family or friends they've known for a very long time. Turning one of those people is more a matter of luck than skill, so it's better to try and plant somebody into the organization and work your way up.

>bootlicker
>making fun of people who have respect for the government's employees and take an interest in them
Guess I should call you a nerd, then? Since you're on a history board, talking about affairs that happened nearly a century ago?

Going medieval might not help lower crime rates, but the government has to invest less in prisons if people are executed.

>source: Veeky Forums imageboard
don't do that

the posse comitatus act doesn't allow for the government to deploy troops on U.S soil

sweet.

oh please.
The I have met plenty of people in real life who think that niggers and natives being beaten up by cops deserve it because they are hoodlums but still think they can fight against Milsurp using police using their semi autos.

but most gunowners have an AR-15.

> Couldn't they just send the army
You need to find out who is mafia first and that isn't easy...

most won't be able to shoot their AR-15s when a flashbang goes off in their face and they get shot by SWAT teams.

Well if it's anything like Epic Mafia it won't turn out well

i think there's been a couple cases where police serving no knock warrants have been killed in shootouts.

obviously it depends on a number of factors

I'd really like to take this away from the 2nd amendment debate, but I also know a lotta gun nuts who think the cops need to be put down.

Though I know a lot more gun nuts who realize that you don't have to fight the army. You just need to make politicians realize that if they push it too far, both they, their entire extended family, and all their friends and business associates will have to spend the rest of their lives in underground bunkers, and there's next to nothing you can do to stop a man who's willing to exchange his life for his target's.

In other words, you don't have to attack the whole snake - just the head of the snake. (Granted, sniper rifles work better for that than AR-15's.)

Constitutionally speaking, though, at the time, you couldn't mobilize the army to take out the mafia on US soil in that way, and no one had done anything of the sort since the Civil War. They spawned the FBI in reaction to the mafia, and that was controversial enough.

We hadn't yet quite entered the age where the US citizens widely accepted rule by force, and folks were still regularly decrying the (debatably unconstitutional) large standing army we had. If the military had tried to move into the cities in that environment, the military very likely would have ended up fighting everyone. It's was not at all today's era, when the national guard moves in to put down riots, and near everyone accepts it.

...And, again, a whole lot easier and less messy to simply undo Prohibition, which put the nail in the mafia's coffin better than all the army's of the world combined could ever have.

This is one of many problems where giving people more freedom just solves the problem by itself. ...Rather than trying to dictate what informed adults can and can't ingest.

But alas, like so much of our history, we ain't learning dick from it.

The OKC bombing really put a damper on the militia movement.

But Mussolini pretty much eradicated the Sicilian mafia but they reappeared and flourished during the American military occupation of Sicily

>You just need to make politicians realize that if they push it too far, both they, their entire extended family, and all their friends and business associates will have to spend the rest of their lives in underground bunkers, and there's next to nothing you can do to stop a man who's willing to exchange his life for his target's.

Lol those people are total jokes though and make their cause look really bad.

They were just suppressed and many innocents were ruined by the witch hunt

>Why did America have such a problem with organised crime syndicates and armed gangsters in its largest cities?
Because they got the protection from the bankers and congressmen in exchange for support of US external affairs.
>Couldn't they just send the army in to the streets and brutally crush all the gangsters?
No, because that's violation of their rights and that kills the profits the banks have.

its the eternal Italian

Because the goverment made them strong, directly or indirectly.

>all that imigration
>all that prohibition

So killing people is an economic motive now?

the armed forces are not a policing power

Kinda always has been.

Life is not a fucking video game.

Third world solutions for third world problems.

They're only a joke until they happen.
Historically, assassins have an incredibly high success rate if they are not caught prior to making the attempt, and lone wolves are almost never caught this way.

It's the scariest thing to politicians, the idea that some "suicidal gun nut" could come after them. Some of them openly talk about it on the news how the idea anyone can buy an "assault weapon" is scary.
And ask yourself, why do these people think it's scary? These detached rich shmucks living in their golden mansions with armed security in tow.
They're not scared of getting mugged or having their home broken into, and they're certainly not scared that the little guy will be hurt by this since they have no issue dumping nuclear waste into small towns in Mexico (looking at you, Bernie, yeah those little brown kids sure are feeling the Bern)
They're scared someone they fucked over is gonna blow their brains over the pavement.

That's what I'd be scared of if I was rich and a politician. They don't have many fears aside from cancer and murder, seeing as they have the money and influence to stave off basically every other worry and fear your average human has.

Yeah, but if the politicians personal fears were the concern, they'd be going after sniper rifles instead of "assault weapons". I'm not sure if a politician has ever been assassinated by an "assault weapon". Pistols are concealable, sniper rifles let you do it from a mile away, but an "assault weapon" is generally the worst of both worlds.

So far the only sniper rifle ban attempt was against a specific anti-material tank rifle, on the basis that it could penetrate the shielding on a nuclear reactor.

And given how few murders are actually committed by "assault weapons" I think it's more about sensationalism. The idea that any maniac could whip one out and kill a few dozen people before anyone could even react scares voters into reacting, and the occasional demonstration even more so. Thus I suspect concern is neither personal safety nor public safety, but only the desire for more votes.

Hasn't that law been overturned recently?

No, they tried to amend it, but it failed.

The closest to such was an amendment to the rules of war allowing the detainment of "enemy combatants" in areas of open conflict. That was back in 2010, or 2011, I'd need to look it up to be more precise.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act#Recent_legislative_events

This. The development of investigation techniques, widening power/capability of Federal LEO agencies, and the institution of the RICO act led to organized crime's down fall. Note that while prohibition can certainly be considered a golden age for organized crime syndicates were still very active through the 70's and early 80's.

Also I guess I'll add technology played a big factor. In the 30's syndicate members had access to weapons that LEO didn't necessarily have in force. This significantly evened the playing field so to speak in terms of confrontation. As LE investigations techniques grew, so did the technology they used. Wire/phone taps became more prevalent and eventually a necessity in such investigations.

But Sweden is the rape capital of the western world
By a massive margin

>definition of rape in Sweden has become more open to encompass the idea of allowing a woman who regrets drunkenly hooking up to call it "rape"
>suddenly rape statistics explode
Really _ you _

States were broke, and the Federal Govt. was powerless on a local level.

You talk like organized crime is dead. It's still alive and well in the US. Modern criminal groups still engage in a lot of the old trades, but they're not nearly as powerful as they were back in the day.

Organized crime is eternal, but LEO trims the grass every decade or so, as it should be.

>but they're not nearly as powerful as they were back in the day.

Yes, that's the point. So long as there are ways to make money illegally, then there will be organizations that step in for their cut. There's quite a difference in the political, economic, and direct power that prohibition era gangsters had compared to those today.

Everything in is merely my attempt at explaining why that happened. It could be argued that, at one point, organized crime was actually more influential than the LE agencies that tried to dismantle them. That is not at all the case today.

wow

I didn't realize /k/ existed in the mid-90s

Because of an intentionally very weak, decentralised state.

Johnny Torrio, father of the modern gangster

>Who is the most effective American gangster of all time
Honestly? United Fruit, U.S. Steel or General Motors. Your gangsters were lucky to operate in multiple cities. My gangsters operated on every continent.