The Los Angeles crime family is an Italian American criminal organization based in California, as part of the American Mafia (or Cosa Nostra). Since its inception in the early 1900s, it has spread throughout Southern California. Like most Mafia families in the United States, the L.A. crime family gained power bootlegging during the Prohibition Era. The L.A. family reached its peak in the 1940s and early 1950s under Jack Dragna, who was on The Commission, although the L.A. family was never bigger than the New York or Chicago families. Since his death the crime family has been on a gradual decline, with the Chicago Outfit representing them on The Commission.
In the late 1970s, Aladena "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno became the second member in American Mafia history to testify against the Mafia. In 1981 a biography of Fratianno was published, The Last Mafioso by Ovid Demaris, which along with his court testimonies is the source for a lot of information on the history of the family. Since the 1980s, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO Act) became a highly effective law in convicting mobsters and shrinking the American Mafia. Like all families in the United States, the L.A. Mafia only holds a fraction of its former power.
The current family is small compared to other families and is involved in fraud, extortion, loan sharking, illegal gambling, drug trafficking, and legitimate businesses. Although not having to share power with other Mafia families like New York's Five Families, never having a strong Italian-American population in the region leaves the family to contend with the many street gangs in the "Gang Capital of America". The Los Angeles crime family is the last Mafia family left in the state of California.
Read more about Los Angeles Crime Family: Origins and Predecessors, History, Current Position and Leadership
Famous quotes containing the words los angeles, los, angeles, crime and/or family:
“Local television shows do not, in general, supply make-up artists. The exception to this is Los Angeles, an unusually generous city in this regard, since they also provide this service for radio appearances.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
“If Los Angeles has been called “the capital of crackpots” and “the metropolis of isms,” the native Angeleno can not fairly attribute all of the city’s idiosyncrasies to the newcomer—at least not so long as he consults the crystal ball for guidance in his business dealings and his wife goes shopping downtown in beach pajamas.”
—For the State of California, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms. No people exists whose morality is not daily infringed upon. We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social organization, as they are understood, logically imply it.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)
“A “super person” is one who expects to manage a career, home, and family with complete ease, expecting to maintain a perfect job, a perfect marriage, a perfect house, and perfect control of the children.”
—Joyce Portner (late 20th century)