Jeff Cohen
Appearances
Crook County
7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone
Es gab ein wichtiges Problem in Chicago, wo das Outfit die Polizei-Departement infiltriert hat. Sie hatten Operatoren bis hin zu einem Mann, der in einem Fall als Chef der Detektivs fuhr, der seinen eigenen Rang für Steuern verwendete. Ich meine, sie hatten große, große Korruption-Probleme, die mit organisierten Krimi zu tun hatten. Sie konnten also mehr oder weniger mit Unabhängigkeit arbeiten.
Crook County
7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone
Und es kam so schlecht in Crook County, dass es einen Kriminalverfassungsgericht gab, der einen Mördergesetze auf einen Mann verurteilt hatte, der im Outfit war. Es ging also so weit, dass viele Leute nicht dachten, dass es zu erreichen kommen würde.
Crook County
3 | Coming Clean
Yeah, as crazy as that sounds, it is actually true that most of the time drugs was not their business. For a variety of reasons, I guess. I think it was more difficult for them to control, I think is one of the elements that was typically a problem. You had large amounts of money moving between people that they couldn't necessarily keep their fingers on.
Crook County
3 | Coming Clean
It was also a real area of heat back, especially in the 80s, when you had sort of the war on drugs. It just was not a clean business for them. It wasn't something that they could run tightly, make sure stayed under the radar. They could get reliable money out of it. It was none of those things. It could go sideways in a minute. You had major federal heat on it all the time.
Crook County
3 | Coming Clean
And it was just more trouble than it was worth, I think, a lot of times for them, even though it was big, big money. But whorehouses, chop shops, any kind of illegal business that's along that line definitely would have been within the outfits purview at that time. Whorehouses especially, anything related to sex and vice, they typically had a piece of it across the Chicago area.
Crook County
6 | Fire In The Sky
The Chicago outfit had, especially in the 70s and 80s still, almost like a corporate type of structure where you had a singular boss. You had almost like a board of directors, guys who were close to him who would go and make some of the key decisions. And then underneath them, you would have people at the capo level or people running individual street crews.
Crook County
6 | Fire In The Sky
And then under them, you might have lieutenants who were kind of like their bosses on the street. You would direct groups of six, seven, eight, ten made guys who are really in the organization. And then beneath them, they might have all sorts of different associates and operators who were... a part of the organization, but not plugged into that level.
Crook County
6 | Fire In The Sky
But they would still do the bidding of crew members or especially a street crew boss. So you had this kind of corporate hierarchical structure, pyramid type structure. And so when you have a conspiracy case that kind of chops the head off the snake, the organization tends to sputter and scatter.
Crook County
6 | Fire In The Sky
The whole way that the outfit operated, which was to try to be in the shadows, nobody really knows what's going on, kind of directing things behind the scenes, that started to become impossible when surveillance got so much better. Their sort of traditional structure just kind of became impossible to run without bringing major, major heat. And so it just kind of, it crumbled into looser groups.
Crook County
6 | Fire In The Sky
Chicago in the 70s and the 80s, you're still dealing with the leftover organization of basically the Capone era at that time. It was still very kind of a top-down organization. You still had major bosses. You had the Tony Ocardo characters who were running the outfit. And it was that leftover organization, the organization that came out of Prohibition and was able to gain a foothold in Chicago by
Crook County
6 | Fire In The Sky
um having tentacles that went into government that went into the police department and went into unions that allowed them to sort of operate with impunity and they they weren't afraid of law enforcement because a lot of times they had a good enough control of law enforcement that they didn't really need to be fearful of that
Crook County
6 | Fire In The Sky
And so that let them expand into basically almost all manner of life in Chicago. There were certain neighborhoods where you couldn't even open up a hot dog stand without getting some kind of permission and or street loan from somebody who would then have a piece of that business going forward. So you had money moving through the city
Crook County
6 | Fire In The Sky
at all levels that they controlled through legitimate businesses and definitely through illegitimate ones.
Crook County
6 | Fire In The Sky
I have a couple of friends who, as you know, everybody in Chicago kind of knows somebody who knows somebody kind of thing where there were these two sons and their dad was a Chicago police officer. And also basically like the sub boss of Comiskey park. So all the concessions going in and out of Comiskey, um, they controlled it and they would skim it. And, um,
Crook County
6 | Fire In The Sky
Take money out of the ballpark and blah, blah, blah. So they allow some of that to happen for the reason that you said, I think in episode one, where somebody who has value, who's going someplace, they allow them to kind of do that because they think it's something that they can use in the future. So when I heard you tell that story, I was like, yeah, that's kind of a thing.