Organized criminals are increasingly active in Germany, with the mafia as well as biker and international gangs making headway in the country, according to a government report.
The annual report into organized crime, presented in Berlin on Wednesday by interior minister Thomas de Maizière, showed a 7.2 percent increase last year in the number of investigations into organized crime.
Vito Rizzuto was the Steve Jobs of organized crime: charismatic, visionary, and shrewd enough to run a billion-dollar enterprise with tentacles reaching from Montreal to New York, South America, and Europe.
Because of its location along the St. Lawrence river and proximity to US markets, Montreal has always been a major point of entry for drugs, guns, and basically whatever else you can fit into a shipping container.
And for the good part of three decades, Rizzuto had his hand in almost every racket in the city, heading a “consortium” of organized crime which included Colombian cartels, Irish gangs who controlled the city’s port, and Hells Angels who took care of distribution of drugs across Quebec and Ontario.
Rizzuto’s death in December 2013âfrom natural causesâhas left many speculating about his replacement and sources VICE spoke to hinted at a dramatic decline in the Sicilian Mafia’s power in Montreal and Canada since his passing.
With the rise of Haitian street gangs, the imminent release of numerous Hells Angels from prison, and rival Italian factions, there is no shortage of conspiracy theories surrounding Vito Rizzuto’s replacement.
Chief among those theories is that the Ontario-based Calabrian mafia, also known as the ‘Ndrangheta, is moving in and getting revenge after having been violently pushed out of the city by Vito’s father in the 1970s.
But this line of thinking is deeply flawed, said RCMP Staff Sergeant Chris Knight, because it assumes that Vito Rizzuto can even be replaced.
“No one’s got the credibility, no one’s got the clout, and certainly no one has the charisma that Vito Rizzuto hadâand I’ve met himâto make allies out of enemies. No one has that right now,” Knight told VICE.
Knight has been with the RCMP for 34 years and works with local, provincial, and international law enforcement to monitor organized crime in Quebec.
His squad has seen no sign of rival Italian gangs moving to replace the Rizzuto’s, as certain media and observers have speculated.
“We haven’t seen attempts or power moves from Hamilton or Toronto on establishments or persons here. And we haven’t received any information on the street to that effect either. It’s a myth. I’ve always heard these things about New York and Toronto controlling Montreal but nothing could be further from the truth.”
Antonio Nicaso agrees. He has authored 27 books about organized crimes and acted as a consultant for the government on these. In his most recent book Business or Blood he writes extensively about the final years of Rizzuto’s life and the implications of a post-Vito world.
“I don’t see anyone with the same vision as Vito Rizzuto. His mafia was the real one, not a cheap imitation,” Nicaso told VICE. “Rather than fighting over turf, they are now trying to create a balance of power where different organizations will work together.
So it’s a group of people rather than one person like Rizzuto who was a master mediator capable of striking alliances and reaping huge profits through criminal enterprises.”
What is certain, for both Knight and Nicaso, is that the Sicilian Mafia no longer wield the power they once did in Canada. All signs point to a decentralization and instabilityânot a replacement.
“Their monopoly or their stranglehold is not what it used to be. It’s greatly diminished. They have lost a lot of power and there have been a lot deaths in the family,” said Staff Sergeant. Knight.
“You’re going to get struggles for street corners like you see in New York. In New York, it’s basically whoever has the biggest gun or the most soldiers gets the street corner for the distribution of narcotics and other organized crime activities.”
In 2010, Vito Rizzuto’s father and his son, both named Nick, were gunned down within months of each other.
The murders took place during a period of intense fighting wherein rival Italian factions, namely New York’s Bonanno family tried to take advantage of the power vacuum created after Rizzuto’s imprisonment in Colorado.
He had been deported and was serving time for his involvement in the triple murder of Bonanno family captains in 1981.
FBI surveillance photo of Vito Rizzuto (in black) from 1981, the same year he was involved in a bloody triple murder immortalized in the film ‘Donnie Brasco.’
Earlier this month, Raynald Desjardins pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the murder of Sal “the Iron Worker” Montagna.
Desjardins was Rizzuto’s right-hand man during the golden years of his reign and, according to wiretaps, one of the only two non-Italians to be “made” in the Mafia.
Montagna was the acting head of New York’s Bonanno crime family who triedâand failedâto replace Rizzuto as the boss in Montreal. Obviously, their relationship soured and Desjardins’s car was showered with AK-47 fire north of Montreal in 2011.
Two months later, Montagna’s body was found floating in the Assomption River. Desjardins’s case is a salient reminder of just how complex and delicate the balance of power can be for organized crime in Montreal.
The city has seen a period of relative calm in recent months but that doesn’t mean that it’s stable or lasting. Based on the RCMP’s analysis, all signs point to splintering drug turf and increased instability.
“It’s very volatile on the street. Whereas ten years ago, if there’s one thing that Vito Rizzuto had it was the ability to gather people, negotiate truces, and make arrangements that everyone made money. With him being gone, it’s more volatile now.”
Ironically, this volatility is directly linked to the effective police work done by the RCMP who arrested almost 100 suspected mobsters in Project ColisĂŠe and pretty much every Hells Angels patch member during Operation Sharqc.
Obviously, these arrests did nothing to curb the demand for drugs and, according to sources who spoke with VICE, all of that demand was absorbed by notoriously unstable Haitian street gangs who are plagued with internal Bloods-Crips rivalries and have effectively replaced the Hells Angels on the street.
Sources also pointed to the fact that the notoriously racist Hells Angels will want their old drug turf back and will not be pleased with the fact that black gangs are now in control. There’s trouble a’brewing in la mĂŠtropole.
“The Hells Angels will definitely become more and more important, that goes without saying,” said Antonio Nicaso.
Knight agreed: “They’re going to want more territory and more cheap drugs and a monopoly over extortion or illegal gambling. There will be conflict for sure. It’s all about money and power. And the more players you have, the less you have to go around.”
Without Rizzuto’s unifying and stabilizing influence, the current period of relative calm is likely to be short-lived. And in order to survive in a post-Vito world, the Sicilian Mafia will have no choice but to rebrand.
Unlike stereotypes propagated in the media, the Mafia in Montreal isn’t all about guns, drugs, and prostitutesâit’s actually more boring than that.
The inquiry heard testimony from almost 200 witnesses and exposed a massive criminal conspiracy involving the mob, construction companies, unions, and high-ranking municipal employeesâa reminder that crime in Montreal was able to fester in an environment of political collusion.
“The Mafia is strong and powerful is because they were capable of infiltrating our society and our politicians. What they used to do with the gun, they now do with corruption, relationships, and contracts,” Antonio Nicaso said.
“They are not as strong and powerful anymore mainly because they are not able to replace Vito Rizzuto but without connections to those who hold the power and money, the Mafia would just be a bunch of hooligans.”
Scene: Bikers lay dead by their motorcycles in the parking lot of Twin Peaks Bar and Grill in Waco, Texas, just after midday on Sunday
One gang ‘ambushed the other’ at recruitment event hosted by Twin Peaks Bar and Grill in Waco, Texas
It started as a physical fight and escalated to involve chains, knives and guns
Diners and employees scrambled for shelter in the freezer as more than 100 rounds were fired
8 bikers died at the scene and a 9th in hospital, another 18 bikers were hospitalized, no civilians were injured
Police were monitoring the meeting outside but said owners refused to cooperate with them until shooting started
Twin Peaks insists they had ‘positive communication with the police’. The police said that was nonsense
Police surrounded the place and detained gunmen as fighting spilled out into the parking lot
The gangs’ allies were flocking from across the state to continue confrontation after it ended, police warned
A shootout between three rival biker gangs at a bar in Waco, Texas, on Sunday afternoon left at least nine gang members dead. Eighteen others were taken to the hospital with gunshot and stab wounds, the Associated Press reports.
Shoot out: What started as a physical fight shortly after midday in Twin Peak restaurant rapidly escalated to involve chains, clubs, knives and gunfire, police said. The fight spilled into the parking lot where a SWAT team shot dead at least one biker and surrounded the rest
Texas is an emerging battleground for outlaw motorcycle gangs, said Steve Cook, executive director of the Midwest Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association. Next month, Cook, who works in law enforcement in Kansas City and worked undercover in a motorcycle gang in the early 2000s, was supposed to travel to Waco to hold a conference for local police.
Waco historically hasn’t been a hot spot for gang rivalries, Cook said. In a 2013 national survey of law enforcement, Texas didn’t show up as an area of intense gang activity. But in an interview Sunday night, Cook said he knew something was coming:
“We were pretty certain that some kind of incident was on the horizon.”
Outlaw motorcycle gangs are a small slice of gang activity in the US
Motorcycle clubs have been accused of lawlessness since at least 1947, when a Fourth of July motorcycle race in Hollister, California, got national attention for drunkenness and disorder and became the inspiration for the 1953 Marlon Brando movie The Wild One.
A biker sits next to what appears to be a covered body after several people were killed during the shoot-out
An enduring pattern was set: motorcycle gangs were both a perceived larger-than-life menace and an object of media fascination. The Hell’s Angels were excoriated by the California attorney general in 1965 and infiltrated by gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara says the nine dead were members of the Bandidos or Cossacks gangs.
Violent motorcycle gangs call themselves the “1 percent” â a defiant reference to a (possibly apocryphal) statement from the American Motorcycle Association that 99 percent of motorcyclists are law-abiding.
There are hundreds of motorcycle gangs in the US, but the Department of Justice considers eight national groups to be a serious threat.
Police believe five gangs were involved in the shoot-out which has led to restaurants closing across the city
The gangs, which originated in the US but have spread abroad, are best known for trafficking in drugs and sometimes people.
But they’re a relatively small part of the American gang landscape. A 2013Â survey from the National Gang Intelligence Center found that about 2.5 percent of gang members nationwide are in outlaw motorcycle gangs.
All the same, police consider them to be more threatening than their small numbers might suggest. About 10 percent of jurisdictions said they considered the motorcycle gangs a serious threat.
(National Gang Intelligence Center) – OMG stands for Outlaw Motorcycle Gang.
Cook thinks that law enforcement should be more concerned.
“I think a lot of people just donât take these guys seriously,” he says. “They just look at them and say theyâre bikers and they ride motorcycles and theyâre tattooed and theyâre dirty, and thatâs the end of it.”
The recruitment event was hosted by the restaurant but despite police fears of conflict, management wouldn’t let officers in
But he calls them domestic terrorists.
“They can pretend like theyâre these fraternal organizations,” he said. “I canât tell you the last time the Kiwanis and the Shriners had a shootout at a public venue.”
Based on their leathers, it appears the Pirados, the Veterans (one sitting), and the Leathernecks (one standing, center) were involved
The Department of Justice portrays the gangs as the Mafia on motorcycles, saying they traffic in cocaine, methamphetamine, and prescription drugs: in Indianapolis in 2013, federal agents arrested 42 members of the Outlaws gang on charges that included drug trafficking, extortion, and money laundering.
Witnesses described the scene in the quiet commercial shopping strip as a war zone
Clashes occur when biker gangs fight over territory
A nine-year battle in Canada between rival gangs, known as the Quebec Biker Wars, left 160 people dead. In California in 2010, biker gangs fought over who would control a Starbucks in Santa Cruz, which led to gang members hitting each other with hammers in the parking lot.
Panic: Families scrambled and some hid in the freezer of the diner as more than 100 rounds were fired
Cook said Texas hasn’t historically been a hotspot for this kind of battle â at least, no more than anywhere else. But he said he’d seen signs that a confrontation was coming.
Texas, he said, has historically been controlled by the Bandidos, one of the largest outlaw motorcycle gangs in the US.
By late Sunday afternoon two groups of gunmen were sat unceremoniously on the tarmac at opposite ends of the parking lot
At least five motorcycle gangs comprising 150 members were meeting at the Twin Peaks bar and restaurant in Waco to discuss recruitment. Local officials haven’t yet said which gangs were involved in the shooting.
The Cossacks (pictured at the scene) and the Scimitars were working in alliance
The Cossacks, a local Texas gang, had been challenging the Bandidos’ dominance, including discussing a possible alliance with the Hell’s Angels, a rival of the Bandidos, Cook said.
The biggest provocation came when the Cossacks began wearing a Texas patch on their clothing â “basically a slap in the face to the Bandidos,” said Cook, who says he was an undercover investigator of the Bandidos and some of their support groups.
The Bandidos (file image)
“We knew the tensions with the Cossacks were as high as they’d ever been,” he said. “I donât think anybody could have forecasted it to the degree that it happened.”
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