The assassination of Gambino Underboss gave the crowd something they did not want – attention

March 16, 2019, 08:25 GMT

By Jonathan Dienst and Corky Siemaszko

When it was learned that a Gambino gangster had been shot in front of his home in New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio reacted with surprise.

"We thought these days were over," he said when police opened an investigation into the fatal killing of Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali. "I guess old habits die hard."

But long-time mafia watchers say the mafia has not disappeared – it just operates with a low profile.

"The crowd is alive and well," NBC News New York official William Gale, deputy FBI officer in charge of the organized crime working group in New York, told NBC News. "They always carry out the same lucrative activities that they always have, such as illegal gambling, which turn into usurers, into extortion."

The difference, according to Gale, lies in the fact that popular families like the Gambinos are no longer run by celebrity headliners, like John Gotti, aka "Dapper Don," whose public figure has drawn attention to the world. attention of the forces of the order.

In addition, the crowd does not rub people as before, said Gale.

"We have not seen the same level of violence in a while, because violence is getting attention," said Gale. "I think they've learned that attention is not good for business."

In fact, said Gale, Cali's fatal shooting on Wednesday is the first murder of a high-ranking gangster since 1985 in front of Paul Castellano, the head of Gambino's crime family, in front of a steak house in Manhattan headed by Gotti .

This does not mean that gangsters have turned a new page.

Just this month, Anthony Pandrella, an alleged member of the Gambino family, was accused of firing on the head of an old man from Brooklyn, and then stealing it, according to the US Department of Justice.

Also this month, a career criminal named Napoleon "Nappy" Andrade, recently released from federal prison, was shot dead in front of a Rhode Island halfway house. Andrade had taken the time to steal a member of the Gambino family aged 78.

Cali, 53, was a sub-boss of the Gambino criminal family, two sources told NBC News.

The investigators suspect that Cali was reportedly taken to death by an armed man who deliberately backed down in the Cadillac SUV parked by the gangster with a van.

A surveillance video shows Cali emerging from his home in the Staten Island area and shaking hands with the van driver, told NBC News a source close to the investigation. Then the license plate of the truck falls and we can see the driver pick it up and throw it to the back. He then fires a weapon and starts firing.

Cali was hit by six of the 12 shots, said New York Police Detective Chief Dermot Shea.

The investigators did not arrest any suspects and Shea did not want to comment on a possible motive. But he said that Cali's past as a Gambino family was a "focal point of the investigation".

Translated: The situation of Cali could be the result of a collective dispute.

In New York, the mafia is still dominated by five families: Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese. And their tentacles extend well beyond the borders of the city.

"The five families still operate in a hierarchical structure," said Gale. "We are seeing their influence not only in the New York area, but also at the national and international levels."

Yet the five families are not as powerful as before, experts said.

Their leaders were paralyzed by a series of convictions and defections in the 1980s and 1990s, and they face increased competition from rival Albanian and Russian criminal organizations and drug cartels in Latin America.

"They are around but they are the shadow of their old self," said Ronald Goldstock, who for 13 years led the New York State Task Force on Organized Crime and then led the Commission. the waterfront of New York Harbor. "People continue to kill people, but when it comes to the industries they control, the unions they control, they are infinitely smaller."

According to reports, the Gambinos imported Muscle from Sicily because recruits of American origin are not up to par, but Gale said that the structures of these criminal organizations are still intact and that they offer a multitude of grassroots gangsters.

"We see young people joining the ranks of the mafia," said Gale. "When we condemn someone, there is always someone who is ready to take his place. There is a younger generation who is eager to fill these positions. "

But they are not really the cream of criminal criminals, said David Shapiro, a former FBI agent who now teaches at the John Jay Criminal Justice College.

"People are not part of the crowd because they are the Isaac Newton or Albert Einsteins of the criminal class," said Shapiro.

Still, Shapiro said it was not surprising that Cali could look for recruits in the old country, because the omitted – the legendary mafia code of silence – was no longer what he was.

"Loyalty is poor," he said. "Do you know the economics of the concert? Well, we have a concert mafia now. "

"There was always the assumption that there was command and control in the families of the crowd, like our American societies," he added. "But I do not think that applies that much. Today, business units are more fluid. The cells are smaller. There is not this loyalty to the boss and sub-boss that there was. If you can not support a crew, you will not get any.