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, and video games.
Patrick Augustus Mervyn Manning was a Trinidadian and Tobagonian politician who was the fourth Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago; his terms ran from 17 December 1991 to 9 November 1995 and from 24 December 2001 to 26 May 2010. He was also Political Leader of the People's National Movement (PNM) from 1987 to 2010. A geologist by training, Manning served as Member of Parliament for the San Fernando East constituency from 1971 until 2015 when he was replaced by Randall Mitchell and was the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives. He was the Leader of the Opposition from 1986 to 1990 and again from 1995 to 2001.
The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation is one of the largest Hispanic and Latino street and prison gangs worldwide. The gang was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1954.
The Ñeta Association is the name of a gang that began in the Puerto Rico prison system and spread to the United States mainland. Although Puerto Rico has many small street gangs claiming its poorer neighborhoods, Ñetas is by far the largest and most dominant, controlling the illegal drug trade in the island's prison system.
The Almighty Vice Lord Nation is the second largest and one of the oldest street, and prison gangs in Chicago, Illinois. Its total membership is estimated to be between 30,000 and 35,000. It is also one of the founding members of the People Nation multi-gang alliance.
Avon Randolph Barksdale is a fictional character in the American television series The Wire, played by Wood Harris. Barksdale is one of the most powerful drug dealers in Baltimore, Maryland, and runs the Barksdale Organization. Stringer Bell, his second in command, insulates Barksdale from law enforcement and potential enemies. Working for Barksdale and Bell is a large organization of drug dealers and enforcers. Accepting nothing less than absolute power, Barksdale is shrewd and intuitive, although not as cerebral as Bell. Barksdale is partly based on a real-life gang leader who ran a drug dealing operation in West Baltimore. He is the primary antagonist for the first season.
Marlo Stanfield is a fictional character on the HBO television drama The Wire, played by actor Jamie Hector. Stanfield is a young, ambitious, intelligent and cold-blooded gangster and head of the eponymous Stanfield Organization in the Baltimore drug trade. Marlo's organization starts out small-time, competing with the larger Barksdale Organization, but rises to the top of the Baltimore drug trade fairly quickly. A repeated theme in Marlo's characterization is his demand for unconditional respect, which supersedes all other concerns. He frequently orders the deaths of those who disrespect him or undermine his name on the streets, however unwittingly, and is arguably the most ruthless and violent of the drug kingpins portrayed in The Wire. In 2016, Rolling Stone ranked him #2 of their "40 Greatest TV Villains of All Time".
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, African-American organized crime emerged following the large-scale migration of African Americans to major cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and later the West Coast. In many of these newly established communities and neighborhoods, criminal activities such as illegal gambling, speakeasies and bootlegging were seen in the post-World War I and Prohibition eras. Although the majority of these businesses were operated by African Americans, it is often unclear the extent to which these operations were run independently of the larger criminal organizations of the time.
Desmond Patrick "Dessy" Noonan was an English organised crime figure from Manchester, who acted as a political fixer for the Noonan crime family. He and his younger brother, Dominic Noonan, were suspected by police to be responsible for at least 25 unsolved murders during their 20-year reign over Manchester's underworld.
The Downtown Community Television Center or DCTV is a community media center located in Manhattan's Civic Center on Lafayette Street. It was founded in 1972 by spouses documentary film director Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno.
Street-level characters comprise a large part of the cast on the fictional HBO drama series The Wire. Characters in this section range from homeless drug addicts up to drug king-pins in charge of entire criminal empires.
Crime in Los Angeles has varied throughout time, reaching peaks between the 1970s and 1990s. Since the early 1990s, crime has declined significantly in Los Angeles as well as elsewhere in the United States.
Louis Ferrante is a former Gambino crime family mobster, who spent eight and a half years in prison, successfully appealed his conviction and became a bestselling true crime, business, and science writer. He hosts his own show, airing on Discovery International in 195 countries and was nominated for a Grierson Trust Award, which is considered the most prestigious documentary award in the United Kingdom, known as "the Oscars of the documentary world."
The American Mafia, commonly referred to in North America as the Italian-American Mafia, the Mafia, or the Mob, is a highly organized Italian-American criminal society and criminal organization. The organization is often referred to by its members as Cosa Nostra and by the American government as La Cosa Nostra (LCN). The organization's name is derived from the original Mafia or Cosa nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, with "American Mafia" originally referring simply to Mafia groups from Sicily operating in America, as the organization initially emerged as an American offshoot of the Sicilian Mafia. However, the organization gradually evolved into a separate entity partially independent of the original Mafia in Sicily, and it eventually encompassed or absorbed other Italian-American gangsters and Italian-American crime groups active in the United States and Canada that were not of Sicilian origin. In North America, it is often colloquially referred to as the Italian Mafia or Italian Mob, though these terms may also apply to the separate yet related Sicilian Mafia or other organized crime groups in Italy.
The Trinitarios is a Hispanic street gang founded by Dominicans in New York City, New York in 1993.
The Hidden Valley Kings are a neighborhood-based gang in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was formed in the late 1990s, as a branch of the Queen City Kings, which started in the Cedar Greene housing complex, east of Hidden Valley, near the streets of Craighead and North Tryon. The Queen City Kings were formed by a People Nation member who moved to Charlotte from Chicago in the mid 1990s. He initially established a People Nation faction in the Cedar Greene Apartment Complex but as a way to be inclusive of the growing Folk Nation influence within the growing Supreme King Queen Nation, an agreement was made by all parties involved to change the name of the gang to the Queen City Kings, which played on the nickname of the City of Charlotte, which people dub the "Queen City." The name, according to the Original Kings, was the gang's affirmation to the claiming of the city, stating: "The Queen City is our bitch, which makes us the Kings." Shortly thereafter, he was incarcerated on an unrelated offense. A Cedar Greene Apartments resident named "Korn," along with Korn's half-brother, was left in charge; Korn proved to be a very charismatic and dedicated leader, remaining loyal to the movement until his suicide, several years later. The Kings, which originally stood for Knowledgeable Islamic Nubian Gods, then renamed Krucial Islamic Nubian Gods, was meant to be a Charlotte, home-grown version of the Chicago gangs. The Kings were structured similar to the Los Angeles gangs, but instead of "Original Gangsta" (OG) or "Baby Gangsta" (BG) the Queen City Kings used "Original King" (OK) or "Baby King" (BK). The Kings color is black but the Hidden Valley Kings wear the color green for their neighborhood, the Hidden Valley neighborhood sign is green and Hidden Valley Elementary school colors are green. Just as the nations in Chicago had different branches, or "sets," the Queen City Kings had a number of small sets as well. These sets were actually small groups of members who lived in different Charlotte communities, who were dedicated to spreading the Kingz to each of these neighborhoods. Some of them were successful but many of them were unknown in their respective neighborhoods. Among the factions were the Wilmore Kings (WMK), Tuckaseegee Kings (TSK), Beatties Ford Kings (BFK), Derita King (DTK), Maple Run Kings (MRK), North Side Jamaican Kings (NJK), Westside Kings (WSK) the Creek Town Kings, The Cedar Greene Kings (CGK), the Woodview Kings (WVK), the Hidden Valley Kings (HVK) among others of these various sets, the Hidden Valley Kings became the most prominent.
Richard Cabral is an American actor, occasional producer and writer. He is best known for his roles on Mayans M.C. on FX, the ABC television series American Crime, which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination in 2015, and the Fox television series Lethal Weapon.
Alexa Clay is a writer, public speaker and researcher with a focus on subculture, informal economy, and new economic thinking. Clay is the co-author of The Misfit Economy, a book published by Simon & Schuster in 2015, that examines the role of creative thinking and ingenuity among society's "misfits". The Economist called the book "a paean to the quirkier members of society." The book was named a top business book to read by The Telegraph and the World Economic Forum. The Misfit Economy has also been reviewed by the Financial Times, Salon.com, the New Statesman, and the BBC. Clay has appeared in Dazed Digital, Vice, on public radio's Marketplace, The Takeaway, Australia's morning show Weekend Sunrise and the Laura Flanders Show. The Misfit Economy loosely inspired the NatGeo show Underworld Inc, for which Clay was a consulting producer.
The Metz Gang was a notorious drug ring founded by Glenn Metz and his brother Cordell "Jethro" Metz; both are currently serving life in prison. From 1985 to mid–1992, The Metz Gang distributed approximately 1,000 kilograms of cocaine in the New Orleans metropolitan area and, in furtherance of the conspiracy, committed murders, attempted murders, and other violent crimes. In 1993, Metz, his wife, and several of his henchmen were convicted and charged in a 22 count indictment with various charges arising from a narcotics conspiracy. In 2016, President Barack Obama commuted the life sentence of Danielle Metz, wife of Glenn Metz.
Chicago is considered the most gang-affiliated city in the United States, with a population ranging from 100,000 active members from 57 gangs to 70 gangs with more than 150,000 members. Gang warfare and retaliation is common in Chicago. Gangs were responsible for 61% of the homicides in Chicago in 2011.
