@
LZA I agree with you on Big Mouths, but the American Mafia is not dead, not at all. If you read websites and media articles devoted to coverage of La Cosa Nosta, it's apparent they are still active. Now days they are less violent, have more competition from other organized criminal gangs, and face greater pressure from law enforcement, so they are much less powerful than in the past. Modern technology has made it difficult to get away with murder, and crime families like Cosa Nostra don't need that risk.
The Italian families are different from modern gangs such as MS-13 or the Mexican mafia. The purpose of Italian organized crime is to make money, not to terrorize or battle rivals. Families are forced to lay low after a “hit", which interferes with earning, but DNA evidence is the primary deterrent. With every murder comes “heat", meaning local police and FBI investigations.
There is a rumor that a mafia associate had to take part in a murder in order to be considered for full membership, but this isn't true. Many Mafioso have been made without committing murder. As I stated earlier, making money, or “earning" is the very reason for the existence of Cosa Nostra. The quickest path to becoming a made man is making money for the family. The American Mafia still kill people off, but they do their best to make the murders look like suicide or ‘death by natural causes”. The famous mob “whacks” of the past drew way too much scrutiny, and forced the FBI to make a show of arresting a few people so that nobody would get suspicious that, God forbid, the FBI is in collusion with organized crime. In the 1970’s murder requires a gun and no witnesses… in the 21st century murder requires months of planning and preparation and even the most careful of Hitmen often get caught these days due to DNA evidence and the fact most major cities are gridded out with CCTV. The 2013 murder of Michael Meldish, truly high-profile whacking, resulted in the entire hierarchy of the Lucchese Family (the charming organization depicted in the movie Goodfellas) being indicted for murder and racketeering two years ago.
@
LZA OZ was a great show but unrealistic. In real life nobody in prison will ever mess with guy like Peter Schibetta. I have told you about my husband's friend a non-LCN Italian American who spent 11 years in federal prison from 2006 until 2017. One year in MDC Brooklyn, 3 years in Big Sandy, 3 years in Hazelton, 4 years in Fort Dix nj. My husband's friend says that in federal prisons Italian American mobsters are still respected and feared and other inmates prefer to be friend of mobsters. He says that Big Sandy did not have a large LCN population, so the mob guys he met were pretty low key, didn't look for trouble and were pretty much left alone but at Hazelton there was a larger LCN population with several lifers, and they were much more involved in prison politics. He says that in Hazelton mobsters protected him because he is Italian. He says that in Hazelton mobsters are the ones that offer protection to other people not the other way around. He says Fort Dix had all kinds of Italian American mobsters, wise guys, wanna-be's, and east coast type dudes. There are the New York guys, the New Jersey ones, and the Philly ones and they are running Fort Dix.
He says that it's always the weakest guys that get the worst treatment in prison and that If you're a well respected criminal on the outside, then chances are you'll be respected in prison. Mobsters are street guys, so other inmates aren't going to mess around with them . And definitely not if the mobster is a member of a powerful family. Peter Schibetta is Made Man member of a powerful family. In real life nobody in prison will ever mess with guy like Peter Schibetta. My husband's friend says that the targets in prison are the most vulnerable people, the mobsters especially the New York ones still have much power outside prison. Also my husband's friend says that Big Sandy did not have a large LCN population, so the mob guys he met were pretty low key but no one really messed with them and and that most inmates looked up to them like a kid looks up to a ball player and thinks "that's what I want to be" and that they were considered original gangsters by black inmates.
Also he says that blacks are extorting and bullying weak vulnerable unprotected white guys. My husband's friend says that from what he saw in the places he was locked up in black prisoners are all about that rape shit or the consensual sex shit in between the black population and that most prison rapes in the places he was locked up in were committed by black men on white men. He says that in Hazelton all the DC Blacks gang members have their sissies/prison wives that they kick it with. I am not saying that it's like that all over United States I'm strictly speaking from what my husband's friend saw in the places he was locked up in. Things could be different in other prisons. My husband's friend says that most white inmates tend to have an aloof attitude towards other white inmates. He says that Spanish, Asian, Native American and black inmates will help each other no matter what. Also my husband's friend says that in Big Sandy he was ashamed to be white that there most of the white inmates were just universally cunts. He says that Aryan Brotherhood weren't a big presence in Big Sandy, but they were bad enough to make you kind of wish your mother had been raped by black man.
OZ was a great show but unrealistic. I think the Schibetta thing wasn't great. Wise Guys are so called because they are smart, they plan things properly so they win and the right guys do the job. Why did they attack a powerful physically strong guy like Adebisi with no weapons? It's not the Mafia way of doing things. The PS goes after the Aryans on his own, you'd think he'd learnt his lesson. Adebisi dies several seasons later. At the end, the Homeboys got out of the drug game. Chucky survived to the final season and allied with the Latinos/gays hybrid gang to ran Oz. So the Italians won the war. In real life nobody in prison will ever mess with guy like Peter Schibetta. In the show from wise guy enforcer to PRAG never to rise again . I felt so bad for Peter Schibetta. Got annoyed when I saw him mouthing off to O'riley at the end, knew he was gonna get it for dumb rushed reasons. Also the way they wrote O'reilly made no sense at all. The evil eye, are you fucking kidding me, that is why you kill the son of the former don of the family. They should've let Peter Schibetta get at least one piece of revenge. At least kill Robson's bitch ass. Everyone in this series had their moment to shine except for Peter Schibetta. That kind of bothered me.Never make the same mistake twice. Peter even managed to do it even worse the second time. No brains what so ever. But it is not realistic. There's not one example of LCN mob guys being raped in prison; especially when you consider how many have done time. My friend says that most regular inmates typically show respect to Italian American mobster if not straight-up swing off the guy's balls. No one messed with the LCN guys as far as he saw. Even tho Peter Schibetta started as a privileged son of a mob boss who seemed spoiled and entitled and way over his head...he sort had a lot of substance and became likable. The way he has flashbacks and went through mental breakdowns was interesting. I feel like he could’ve become a major character or main character.
They really missed out on not working him into a better role after the rape and trauma he went through. He could’ve become like a rogue type of character who takes care of himself. Like a mix of Alvarez and Beecher (traumatized and insane but yet tough and moral). They should’ve made him more sympathetic and have morals and become sort of like a Omar (The Wire) character. But they made him completely insane and ready to kill anyone who Ryan loved instead of just going after the bullies themselves.
My husband's friend says that status means something in prison and Peter Schibetta had status and people knew it. You think someone’s going to rape a guy who they know is Made who they will get killed for? Sure it’s possible but status holds a lot of weight in prison. No Blood, Crip, Hispanic,Aryan gang member would even touch someone in La Cosa Nostra. They would be dead man walking. And their relatives on the outside? In real life the Mafia woulda whacked Adebisi for Schibetta after that shit he pulled anyway. They would never let disrespect like that go unpunished no matter what. I just think its unrealistic that the Mafia let Adebisi live after beating up Pancamo then raping the "Boss" who was also a former respected bosses son. The mob would never let such a disgraceful disrespectful thing go unpunished. Adebisi woulda got airholed. and Schibetta woulda definitely got disowned by his paizans. Oz is classic, very underrated compared to The Wire etc. But it is unrealistic. It was extremely disappointing to me that Ryan O Reilly never got a dose of his own medicine and nobody killed him. My favourites were Nino Schibetta,Peter Schibetta, Kareem Said, Dino Ortolani,Tobias Beecher, Miguel Alwarez, Enrique Morales and Augustus Hill.
@
LZA Killing off Dino Ortolani in the first frickin episode has to be the biggest mistake in this show's writing. He's an extremely colorful and volatile character to boot, but his rivalry with Ryan O'Reilly would put us viewers constantly on edge. So many missed story opportunities. Ryan O'Reilly has always had an angel sitting on his shoulder. The amount of luck he sails on is outrageous at times. Dino's rivalry might have balanced things quite a bit and wipe that cocky smirk off his face for once. Pancamo was the toughest is because out of all the drug trade leaders, he was the one who seemed like the biggest fighter. I mean, we never really saw Adebisi or Morales (or Redding, Hernandez, etc.) in a fair brawl. Not only that, but for the majority portion of the series, the Italians were in power, and it doesn't matter if Pancamo was gullible. The fact is - nobody dared to up and front mess with him if they weren't another leader. People were afraid to cross him, pure and simple. And he was still alive once the series ended. After he got stabbed by Robson, he just said, "Just give me a band-aid!". Pancamo was the toughest man in Oz.
(This post was last modified: 06-03-2019, 05:00 PM by
Stella 1977.)
