The Mexican Mafia define what is deviant from their organizational/ subcultural point of view by issuing out hits for those who disobey the moral values of the deadly gang. Also, the gang members that were told to commit the hits on other prison members or even some on the streets and chose to refuse were getting “whacked.” The Mafia never decided to kill any children because they claimed that was against what their gang stood for. It was dishonorable. Until, one gang member by the name of Jimmy “Character” Palma killed a mother and her two children. According to they autopsy Character meant to pull the trigger and the innocent children and was only supposed to do a hit on a mafia dropout. Rene “Boxer” Enriquez did not handle the situation
lightly. In the book, Boxer said, “If someone is a player and a woman is involved and they have to be whacked, so be it. We do that but not kids. It was just a horrific crime that goes down as a particularly black chapter in Mexican Mafia history. Someone was going to pay for what happened on Maxson Road.” Due to his deviant behavior to the Mexican Mafia, the wreckless behavior caused Character to hace four stab wounds to his chest and died in a prison in San Quentin. For those in the gang, hits were a regular in the prison and on the streets. During regular meetings, the gang members would vote on a hit on their own members even on accusations from violated their values. The meeting was for two members, Sleepy and Puppet, who tried to make a name for themselves instead of La Eme. In the Black Hand, Boxer said, “Sleepy was targeted because he was viewed as worthless, including failure to kill a witness in my murder case. And puppet was targeted because of his politicking against Chuco and threats to kill three other carnales.” The Mexican Mafia took over the LA street gangs and forced a tax for all to pay at a reasonable price. Most gangs paid their taxes to the Mafia, but other opposed. Those who opposed with their deviant behavior were quickly taxed at even higher price or the price of death. The members knew it was coming.
Thomas Reppetto’s book is a solid account of the events that took place between 1880 and 1995. The events are detailed and contain fact and evidence, he uses first hand knowledge, being a former chicago commander of detectives, Reppetto was well equipped to write this book. In American Mafia, and its rise to power, Reppetto shows the different parts of the mafia and their communication with the police and italian civilians. The book starts off showing the worst part of the mob, or mafia, and how bad they truly are. Using examples like how many people they’ve taken out and how they’d be one of the richest fortune 500 companies, ift was legal. The book also has how the police reacted to the crimes, in chapter one, they take you into the lives
The newscasters provide statistical evidence of new overflowing homicides and violent actions. The gang seems to be in retaliation for the method of eradication that the government claims to have. The way that the officials decided to handle it only caused the gang members to retaliate and created a hostile environment within the community. Since there were illegal immigrants involved it also diminished the reputation of hard-working people who continue to live in fear of prosecution in accordance with
Some kids have no other choice but to join the gangs at an early age. Lack of parent supervision has been shown to be linked with both boys and girls joining a gang. Even though most have men to prove they are the violent ones, not every gang member is shown to be violent. While the rest of Luis’s gang members treat women with disrespect, Luis seems to respect everyone no matter what gender they are. Being told his own mom the pain she had to go through influenced his ways of viewing and treating
The first chapter of Policing Gangs in America is entitled, “Studying the Police Response to Gangs.” The primary purpose of the chapter is to establish how police agencies; Inglewood, Las Vegas, Albuquerque and Phoenix in specific, respond to gang problems in their respective areas. This chapter served as an introduction, giving a brief history of gang-related policing, how the public and media see the gang problem, research studies done regarding gangs and the recent declaration to shift away from suppression-oriented strategies as a result of overly aggressive actions toward citizens. Examples of this misconduct are given in the forms of gang units from Las Vegas, Chicago and Houston.
CNN presents the documentary, Homicide in Hollenbeck, spotlighting gang activity in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Hollenbeck. This documentary explores the subculture of gangs existing within Hollenbeck from a several perspectives. The people documented include a mother who lost both of her sons to gang violence, a priest that has tried to help rehabilitate gang members, a police officer that has worked in Hollenbeck for five years in the gang unit, and a current gang member. For a conclusion, Homicide in Hollenbeck focuses on a juvenile exposed to gang life on the cusp of decided where they want their life to lead; gangs or freedom. Problems attributed to the high rate of gang activity and number of gangs in Hollenbeck are the high poverty rate, low employment rate, and broken families that make up the majority of Hollenbeck. The crime most discussed, as per the title of the documentary, is homicide The number of gang related homicides has risen even though the criminal behavior of gangs has ultimately decreased in the neighborhood. In order to fight the overwhelming gang presence, the police believe in increasing the amount of gun power on the streets and number of jailed gang members. The priest who runs Homeboy Industries stated that he feels most gang members are just young men who can’t get out of the gang life. With more funds and opportunities, he thinks the problem could be decreased. In the end, the documentary mentions that the FBI has formed a gang center where local law enforcement agencies can share information to gain more knowledge and to better fight the presence of gangs.
Our team presentation focused on three Latino gangs, MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha), the Mexican Mafia and the Los Surenos gang. My part of the presentation was to provide information on the type of crime these three gangs are known to commit. The crimes committed by the MS-13 gang are varied, violent, and take place all over the country. The FBI even put together a task force called the MS-13 National Gang Task Force in December of 2004 to try to put a stop to this gang’s activities. (www.fbi.gov). Los Surenos or Sur-13, originally based in Los Angeles, has also branched out from turf wars with rival gangs to “for profit”, violent crimes across the country. The Mexican Mafia has a similar story to tell as well in regards to gang crimes, which again range from respect crimes, and retaliatory violence to crimes for profit.
Tommy G Thompson in his article “Juvenile law needs to come in to ’90s” argues; “Children who rob and murder should be punished in accordance with the severity of their crimes, not the “tenderness” of their age. Youths who run with gangs, terrorizing their neighborhoods, are as frightening as adults; more so, in fact, because they are corrupted so early”. He also states; “gangs are able to use those youths to commit crimes, knowing the punishment won’t be as severe”. In agreement with Thompson, most juvenile delinquents are “run by” gang members and criminal master minds but instead of punishing these young people with adult prosecution and sentencing why don’t we capture the true perpetrators behind it all and clean up our streets from drug dealers and gang
The fifth commandment is Honor your Father and Mother. Gang members think that being in a gang is like being in a family. So, without any parental guidance there is no room for honor for anyone. They think that being in a gang is a family, but they have no idea what real family is and they deny that they ever had a chance to be in a real family.
Gangs have been a point of concern for states and societies around the world for centuries. Youth gangs are not exempt from that same categorization and have operated for the same amount of time worldwide. Over the last century however, a proliferation of youth gangs has been witnessed, especially among Hispanic youths immigrating into the United States. Researchers and scholars have offered multiple theories as to why youths, and Hispanics youths in particular integrate themselves into gang organizations. Three schools of thought arise when conducting gang integration research. Rational Economics Theory1 proposes that youths, and all individuals, join gangs for financial and material benefit. Cultural Deviance Theory considers youth gang members as exposed to a lower class subculture that rationalizes and even promotes crime, delinquency and gang membership, contrasting to the “normal” set of prescribed values and culture in more civilized society. Acculturation Theory argues that youths join gangs as a means to be acculturated by ethnically or compositionally similar peers, whether as a response to ethnic marginalization by members of the host country or inability to acculturate to their new home.
... Mafia, had helped criminals obstruct the justice system (10,13). It was claimed to be “impossible to get a jury of men courageous enough to try criminals” because of their power and ruthlessness (10,14). This prevented any violent criminals from being incarcerated and kept many of them on the streets to keep creating violence. Crime groups such as the Mafia run by Torrio controlled elections for their benefit, like in Cicero in April 1924, where gunman and mafia members stood outside election ballots to intimidate the voters (11,909). Criminals such as Dion O’banion, an Irish bootlegger, were treated as celebrities. When O’banion died in 1924, his funeral was attended by nearly 20,000 mourners (12,137). It was clear that due to the power and wealth that the illegal smuggling had given criminals, law and order was certainly at the mercy of organized crime (12,137).
From a sociological understanding, deviance is any behavior or physical appearance that is condemned from social standards because it defies social norms or social expectations. Sociological understanding of deviance is not always associated with a negative outcome, but can have positive effects for the individual or soceity. With the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks was seen deviant for sitting at the front of a bus and refusing to move when a white male came on board. This act of civil rights not only made a stance for improving African American rights, but also helped change social norms.. From an everyday understanding, deviance is any behavior or physical appearance that is seen with a bad or negative outlook. An example of an everyday understanding of deviant behavior can be seen as an individual having tattoos all over his or her body. Some individuals would consider tattoos covering someone’s entire body are bad or a negative appearance, even if the tattoos had significant meaning to that specific individual.
The mafia first developed in the 1600s, when these citizens did not want to cooperate with authorities. (Hoover) Hispanic and African American gangs started increasing in California in 1955-1965. (Hoover) The gangs in California, mainly operated in Compton and central Los Angeles. (Hoover) The ages of people in gangs ranged from fourteen, to twenty when they first started. In the 1970s, the ages increased to twelve, to twenty-four. (Hoover) Women in gangs did not do much. Mainly, they were just girlfriends of gang members. Sometimes, women would fight other women from different gangs. (Hoover)
The mafia plays a major role in the first Kick-Ass comic. The head of the Mafia is Johnny Genovese, also known as Johnny G., he is the father of Chris Genovese and has a lot of influence and money. As soon as he gets a hold of the fact that Hit-Girl and Big Daddy are killing his people he wants to see them dead, but he does not think that Kick-Ass could be a threat to him, as one of his men put it, “Kick-Ass couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag”(Kick-Ass, Chapter Four). After Hit-Girl kills Johnny G., some of the Mafia members change sides and want to help people instead of killing them, some former members, like Sal Bertolinni and his brother, even found Justice Forever as Colonel Stars and Lieutenant Stripes. However, most of the mafia
Drug related violence “has been exploding” and a pentagon report likens “the Aztec nation to the terrorist infested basket case Pakistan”-Time Magazine. The different drug cartels fighting between themselves has created problems for Mexico. According to both the NYDT and Time corruption is present “in all law enforcement agencies” and has been described as “endemic to Mexican politics”. Further to this NYDT has obtained information of gruesom...
Mafia. What does this word mean? The actual members of the Mafia aren’t even sure where the word first originated or what it really means. One of the theories as to where the word came from is from Sicily, where people would yell “ Morte alla Francia, Italia anela!” (Death to France, Italy groans!), therefore forming the acronym MAFIA. Others claim the word derived from the battle cry of rebels who slaughtered thousands of Frenchmen after a French soldier raped a Palermo woman on her wedding day. Their slogan echoed her mother’s cry, “Ma fia, Ma fia” (my daughter my daughter). There are other less “glamorous” stories as to where the word originally formed. The most likely reasoning says that it came from the Arabic word mahias, meaning bold man. The American Mafia has become infamous due to its leaders, its method of operation, and its impact on the economy through illegal means.