Al Capone's Influence On Organized Crime

1719 Words7 Pages
Al Capone The prohibition era was the time of a lot of great mobsters in American history. Al Capone and Johnny Torrio were two of the most important gangsters to make an impact on organized crime in America. The most influential, however, was Al Capone. Al Capone had an influence on organized crime in the 1920’s by taking over Johnny Torrio’s gang, the St. Valentine’s Days Massacre, and by building a criminal empire in Chicago before dying of Syphilis. This symbolic crime figure began his days in Brooklyn, New York where he was born to poor Italian immigrants on January 17, 1899. His parents were Gabriel Capone and Teresa Raiola, who had come to America from the Naples region of Italy. “By age 10, young Al Capone had begun to exhibit a…show more content…
After Capone took over Torrio’s Chicago Operations, he worked out a set of partnerships to coordinate the various enterprises with four senior partners- Al Capone, his older brother Ralph, Jack Guzick, and Al’s cousin Frank Nitti. Capone had also achieved notoriety in part because of Chicago’s violent and persistent bootlegging wars. “Through it all, too, Capone and his growing network of associates expanded their business activities and political influence,” (World Book C-Ch 359). His gang dominated in prostitution, liquor, and gambling rackets. Capone interacted in Chicago society as a well-to-do businessman, which helped him gain a fabulously profitable bootleg monopoly and gained him the admiration of a large amount of people in the community, including members of the city government and the police. He also had a willingness to break the law, which helped his trade, and to protect his business interests, he would wage war on rival gangs or bribe public officials. Capone made sure he had everything in place to control his…show more content…
Looking back on it now, this period of Prohibition in full, ugly flower seems fantastically incredible. Capone himself was incredible, the creation of an evil dream’,” (Bergreen 19). Capone was so into organized crime that he became one of the most famous mobsters of his time. With the help of Johnny Torrio, Lucky Luciano, and others, the Italians in America would move into the system of organized crime that they would help refine, improve, and expand its scope nationwide. Al Capone is the one man most connected to Italian American crime in the 1920’s. “His story illuminates the surrounding issues of immigration and ethnicity, the corruption of both the government and its law enforcement agencies on the one hand, and the gangsters who thrived on bootleg alcohol sales, racketeering, prostitution, and gambling on the other,” (“Al Capone Background Information”). In the 1920’s, Al Capone built a criminal empire in Chicago, and also became the model for present-day organized crime operations (Garraty). Capone helped make organized crime what it is
Open Document