The Sunday Chicago Sun-Times has an article about the decline of the Chicago mob. No story about the mob would be complete without mentioning Al Capone, and this is no exception. (As a Chicagoan, I’m still amazed by Capone’s lasting fame. Visiting college students from Egypt, India, and China all knew they were coming to study in Al Capone’s town.) The gist of the story is that the mob is a lot smaller than it was during the Capone years. In real dollars, Capone’s mob did about 10 times as much business.
The article also mentions the most recent scandal in the suburb of Cicero. An allegedly mob-connected insurance company allegedly ripped the town off for $12 million with the alleged help of Town President Betty Loren-Maltese. (All those “allegedly”s are in there because the jury is still deliberating as I write this.) The article doesn’t have room to mention previous Cicero scandals, such as Loren-Maltese’s husband and predecessor as Town President, who went to jail on other mob-related charges. Nor is there room to mention the police scandals that so depleted the Cicero police force’s manpower that the state police had to take over law enforcement for a while. They don’t mention all the strip clubs and brothels that flourished there before being cleaned up in the 90’s. They don’t even have room to mention that Cicero has been like this since Al Capone first took over the town.
As an indication of how slow business has been for the Chicago mob, consider that the last suspected mob hit was way back in 1999, when Ronald Jarrett was killed outside his home in the Bridgeport neighborhood. There was also the Anthony Chiaramonti hit in 2001, but technically that was outside the city limits, so it probably shouldn’t count…