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The Bronx is the northernmost borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New York City borough of Queens, across the East River. The Bronx, the only New York City borough not primarily located on an island, has a land area of 42 square miles (109 km2) and a population of 1,472,654 at the 2020 census. Of the five boroughs, it has the fourth-largest area, fourth-highest population, and third-highest population density.
A gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Most gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from mob and the suffix -ster. Gangs provide a level of organization and resources that support much larger and more complex criminal transactions than an individual criminal could achieve. Gangsters have been active for many years in countries around the world. Gangsters are the subject of many novels, films, television series, and video games.
Benjamin "Yellow Benjy" Melendez was best known for brokering the gang truce in the Bronx and Harlem in 1971. At that time, he was President of the Ghetto Brothers, a mainly ethnically Puerto Rican South Bronx gang, and lead vocalist of a musical group also known as the Ghetto Brothers.
The Bronx Community College of the City University of New York (BCC) is a public community college in the Bronx, New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system.
Rouben Zachary Mamoulian was an Armenian-American film and theater director.
Theodore Roosevelt High School, originally Roosevelt High School, the third public high school to open in the Bronx, New York, operated from 1918 until its permanent closure in 2006. Shutting down incrementally since 2002, this large high school, initially enrolling about 4 000 students, yearly dwindled, newly sharing its 1928 building with new, small public high schools—all pooling students for major, extracurricular activities like athletics and JROTC—a reorganization renaming the building Theodore Roosevelt Educational Campus, still open after the historic, namesake high school ceased in 2006. At its November 1918 opening, Roosevelt High School operated in the building of school PS 31.
The Rudaj Organization was an Albanian mafia gang in the New York City metro area, named for the man accused of being its kingpin, Alex Rudaj of Yorktown, New York. The Rudaj Organization, called "The Corporation" by its members, was started in 1990s in The Bronx and spread to Westchester county and Queens. Prosecutors say the Albanian gang was headed by Alex Rudaj and an Albanian Italian man named Nardino Colotti who both had ties to the late Gambino soldier Phil "Skinny" Loscalzo.
The Hoe Avenue peace meeting was an important gathering of gangs that took place in the Bronx, New York City, on December 8, 1971. It was called to propose a general truce and an unprecedented inter-gang alliance. The impetus for the meeting was the murder of "Black Benjie", a peace keeper of the Ghetto Brothers. While no lasting peace was ever established, a subsequent negotiation established a procedure for dealing with conflicts to avoid street warfare. The meeting is notable as one of the first attempts by street organizations to broker a truce between groups of different ethnic backgrounds.
David Nathaniel Spergel is an American theoretical astrophysicist and the Emeritus Charles A. Young Professor of Astronomy on the Class of 1897 Foundation at Princeton University. Since 2021, he has been the President of the Simons Foundation. He is known for his work on the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) project. In 2022, Spergel accepted the chair of NASA's UAP independent study team.
City Streets is a 1931 American Pre-Code romantic melodrama directed by Rouben Mamoulian from a story by Dashiell Hammett and stars Gary Cooper, Sylvia Sidney and Paul Lukas.
The East Harlem Purple Gang was a gang and organized crime group in New York City consisting of Italian-American hit-men and heroin dealers who were semi-independent from the Italian-American Mafia and, according to federal prosecutors, dominated heroin distribution in East Harlem, Italian Harlem, and the Bronx during the 1970s and early 1980s. Though mostly independent of the Mafia and not an official Mafia crew, the gang was originally affiliated with and worked with the Lucchese crime family and later with the Bonanno crime family and Genovese crime family. It developed its "closest ties" with the Genovese family, and its remnants or former members became part of the Genovese family's 116th Street Crew.
Approximately 1.4 million people in the United States were part of gangs as of 2011, and more than 33,000 gangs were active in the country. These include national street gangs, local street gangs, prison gangs, outlaw motorcycle clubs, and ethnic and organized crime gangs.
Clive Campbell, better known by his stage name DJ Kool Herc, is a Jamaican American DJ who is credited with being one of the founders of hip hop music in the Bronx, New York City, in 1973. Nicknamed the Father of Hip-Hop, Campbell began playing hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown. Campbell began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record which emphasized the drum beat—the "break"—and switch from one break to another. Using the same two-turntable set-up of disco DJs, he used two copies of the same record to elongate the break. This breakbeat DJing, using funky drum solos, formed the basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers helped lead to the syncopated, rhythmically spoken accompaniment now known as rapping.
The Gay Desperado is a 1936 American musical-comedy film starring Ida Lupino, Leo Carrillo, and Nino Martini and directed by Rouben Mamoulian, produced by Mary Pickford and Jesse Lasky and originally released by United Artists. The film is a spoof of the Hollywood gangster genre.
Gang colors include clothing, accessories, or tattoos of a specific color or colors that represent an affiliation to a specific gang or gang branch.
White Fence is a predominantly Mexican American street gang in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles.
The Tanglewood Boys was an Italian-American recruitment gang or "farm team" for the American Mafia, specifically the Lucchese crime family. The gang frequently operated from the Tanglewood Shopping Center in Yonkers, New York.
Greater Harlem, in the northern section of the New York City borough of Manhattan, has historically had high poverty and crime rates. Crime in Harlem is primarily related to illicit activities such as theft, robbery, drug trafficking and prostitution. Criminal organizations such as street gangs are responsible for a significant portion of crime, particularly violent crime. The leading cause of death among young black males in Harlem is homicide. According to a survey published in 2013 by Union Settlement Association, residents of East Harlem perceive crime as their biggest single concern. Greater Harlem has one of the highest violent crime rates in New York City despite significant declines from historic highs.
A Sixth Family is a crime family or criminal organization, usually an Italian-American or Italian-Canadian crime group, that has become powerful or notable enough to rise to a level comparable to that of the Five Families of the New York City Italian-American Mafia. A criminal organization deemed a "Sixth Family" may rival the Five Families or, alternatively, may work closely enough with the Five Families that it appears to be a peer or near coequal of the families.
References
- Spergel, Irving A. (1995). The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-195-35786-8.
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