Violent Crime is on the Rise in America Today

Today, it's hard to turn on the TV or radio without hearing about a recent violent crime that has occurred somewhere in the nation. The headlines from coast to coast warn of the potential for assault, rape, murder, and other violent acts. As a result, today most families are aware of this growing threat. On the other hand, far too many people believe that crimes only happen to "other people," and therefore never take steps to protect their safety or prepare for the possibility of being attacked. Just how common are violent crimes in America today?

The four major categories of violent crime are murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. In addition, there are dozens of other crimes that may turn violent, such as a home invasion or a carjacking. In fact, violent crime is often defined as any crime that utilizes violence or a threat of violence, whether the intention of the act is the violence itself or the perpetration of some other crime.

Every year, there are nearly 1,400,000 serious crimes reported around the country. Aggravated assault tops the list at a staggering 62 percent of all reported violent crimes. While it is believed that the rate of assault has declined over the past few years, it still accounts for nearly 850,000 crimes every year, in nearly every city across the country and in rural areas too. You can never be sure that such a crime will not happen to you or to your family or friends, even if you live in an area that you consider safe.

After aggravated assaults, robberies account for the next highest numbers of violent crimes. At nearly 30 percent of all violent crimes committed within the United States, over 400,000 robberies occur in the U.S. each year. Robbery is defined as the taking of personal property by the use of violence or the threat of violence. In addition to attacks on the street with an aim of robbery, there are also carjackings, business break-ins, and home invasions as well as other property crimes that may turn violent.

Rape and sexual assault accounts for over 94,000 reported crimes each year. Approximately 6 of every 100 women currently living the United States will become a victim of rape or sexual assault during her lifetime. Sexual assault is the only category of violent crime in which females are the primary victims. For all other types of violent crimes, men fall victim more often than women. Your appearance, no longer how confident or "tough looking" you are, is not enough to keep you safe from a violent attack.

Murder accounts for about one percent of all reported violent crimes. Although statistically small, this means about 15,000 murders each year. This high number is enough to strike fear into anyone, giving you more than enough reason to purchase pepper spray, home security alarms, and other devices to keep you and your family safe from this and other violent crimes. If you do find yourself in a situation that is potentially violent, wouldn't you want to be able to protect yourself and the ones you love from harm?

Did you like this article? Bryan Hough is President of UBackOff.com a leading company in the Self Defense industry providing state of the art Pepper Spray products at wholesale prices. For hundreds more informative articles on how to protect yourself see UBackOff.com. Also see our pepper spray blog @ http://www.PepperSprayForSelfDefense.com. Contact @ ubackoff_sales@ubackoff.com or 317-254-1760.

Crime Clock of Index Crimes in Texas

What is an index crime and how often do they take place in Texas? In this article I will identify what index crimes are and how often they take place in Texas. The statistics are really going to blow your mind and give you some perspective on the importance of personal security and self defense.

In Texas crime rates vary from city to city like any other state across America; I've decided to break down the crimes in a time estimate to make it easy to understand how often they take place.

What is an Index Crime?

Index crimes include murder, rape, burglary, aggravated assault, robbery, and motor vehicle theft; they are called index crimes do to their seriousness and frequency of occurrence. Murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery all fall under violent crimes, while motor vehicle theft, burglary and larceny fall under property crimes. The index crime stats are used to indicate what the crime levels are in specific areas across the country from cities and counties to states and an overall national outlook. Index crimes may have more or less individual categories depending on each areas own make up; for instance in Texas the above list are all considered index crimes but Michigan's list also includes arson. Check your local state to identify what the crime rates are in your area. You can find that information at your local state bureau of investigation.

How often do they take place in Texas?

Time estimates from least occurring to most occurring for violent crimes and property crimes. Violent crimes; a murder occurs every 6 hours and 23 minutes, rape once an hour, robbery once every 14 minutes, and aggravated assault every 7 minutes. Property crimes; a motor vehicle theft takes place every 6 minutes, a burglary every 2 minutes, and a larceny every 48 seconds. If you combined all these figures together an index crime takes place every 29 seconds. Can you imagine what the national wide what that is? These numbers are staggering at best and should be taken seriously.

Conclusion:

With numbers like these there is serious need to implement personal security and self defense strategies immediately to protect you and your loved ones from becoming a statistic. There are many products and training courses on the market today that will help and guide you in this endeavor. Remember the best time to learn your lesson about personal security and self defense is before something happens.

Adam Sisterhen is the president of Your Personal Security Store and author of personal security and self defense articles. He is a proud advocate and a firm believer in personal security and self defense products that help protect you, your family and your loved ones.

To find the products talked about in this article and a wealth of information check these links below.

For quality personal security and self defense products visit http://www.yourpersonalsecuritystore.com

For insights into products and personal security and self defense visit http://www.yourpersonalsecuritystore.blogspot.com

Regards, Adam Sisterhen

True Crime Books

True crime books are all true stories of actual crimes. Some of the crimes are either highly publicized as in the case of Caysee Anthony and some of the crimes are only publicized via books. These writers are a special breed of people who use their talent to bring the stories to their readers with intensive information usually on the backgrounds and childhoods of the main characters in the story, details of the crime itself, the investigation and how the perpetrator was caught, the actual court case and other relevant details pertaining to each true story.

Seasoned readers of true crimes have over time established their likes and dislikes of what they prefer to read about in detail. Some prefer a lengthy and detailed investigation while some would prefer the court case to be more detailed. Female crime readers usually prefer more emphasis on the background and childhoods of the main characters so that they can engage in the psychological profile rather.

Reading true crime books and eventually finding out which writers offer the preferred writing style can go a long way to choosing books which you know you will enjoy. A further classification in the choice of a crime book would be to choose as per crime genre. Some popular genres are serial killers, spousal murder and to a lesser extent, mostly favored by male crime readers, is opportunistic murders. There are many more crime genres to choose from as you can imagine from the true crime stories publicized by media outlets such as television news networks and the internet.

For the reader who is thinking of venturing, for the first time, into the world of true crime books, I would suggest reading up on reviews on a few of these crime books. The internet can be great as a tool for finding out which books to read. As you proceed along you will also develop your own likes and dislikes and further guarantee that every book which you decide to read will be enjoyable and possibly start a lifetime passion for reading true crime.

True Crime Book Reviews offers a spot on the web for only true crime books and reviews on them.Further all readers are offered an opportunity to receive a free book to start them off on their journey into reading and loving these books.Choices can be made via true crime genres or by selecting a favorite true crime writer.The reviews will indicate what the true crime writer has decided to emphasize on,be it the background,investigation or court case,or perhaps details on the actual crime.
http://truecrimebookreviews.blogspot.com

Proposed Federal Law Would Be a Hate Crime Against America

"We're not going to win this case, but that's okay. Once we get 'hate crime' laws on the books, we're going to go after the Scouts and all the other bigots."

This was a remark made in the gallery by the Clinton White House liaison for "gay" issues during U.S. Supreme Court hearings on the Boy Scouts case in 2000. She had whispered it to the Rev. Rob Schenck, whom she mistakenly thought was one of those liberal clerics who think God is still making up His mind about sexual morality.  

The point is that the proposed federal "hate crime" law before the Senate is less about righting wrongs than it is about elevating sexual preferences - all of them - to civil rights status so they can be used as a battering ram against people with traditional values.  

"Hate crime" laws ensure unequal justice. They empower some groups of victims at the expense of others. A grandma using an ATM machine should have as much protection under the law as a man walking out of a "gay" bar. But under the proposed federal "hate crimes" law, an assailant of a man perceived as homosexual would face greater penalties than grandma's mugger.  

Today (Thursday, June 25), the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 909), which passed the House on April 29 in a largely partisan vote of 249 to 175, with 10 abstentions.  

Named after the Wyoming college student beaten to death in 1998 and whose killers received the maximum in a state without a hate crimes law, S. 909 is not only unnecessary but poses an acute threat to constitutional civil rights. It's a massive federal power grab over state criminal law, giving the attorney general's office the power to intervene into a "hate crime" case whenever they feel it is necessary.  

It would add "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to a list of specially protected classes such as race, ethnicity, sex and religion.  If this bill passes, the Congress of the United States will be officially creating a new civil rights category based on sexual confusion. Like "sexual orientation," "gender identity" is infinitely flexible, and includes transvestitism (cross-dressing) and transsexualism (believing that one is in the wrong sex's body and sometimes surgically changing one's sex organs).  

In the House version, an effort to amend the bill to exclude "pedophilia" was defeated in committee along party lines. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) even read a partial list of paraphilias from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, including pedophilia, and declared that "all of these philias and fetishes and isms that were put forward - need not live in fear because of who they are."  

This is why some of the bill's opponents call it the "Pedophile Protection Act."  

Here's how the law would work in practice: It would add penalties on top of those levied for criminal convictions, based on the perpetrators' perceived beliefs or the victims' group identification. In order to prove that the defendant holds particular beliefs, his or her speech, writing, reading materials and organizational memberships would become key evidence.  "Have you now, or have you ever been involved with a homophobic organization (like, say, Catholic Charities)?"  

Two paragraphs were inserted to mollify such concerns:  

(3) CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected speech, expressive conduct or activities (regardless of whether compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief), including the exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment and peaceful picketing or demonstration. The Constitution does not protect speech, conduct or activities consisting of planning for, conspiring to commit, or committing an act of violence.  

(4) "FREE EXPRESSION- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual's expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely upon an individual's membership in a group advocating or espousing such beliefs."  

But American Civil Rights Union (ACRU) attorney John Armor notes, "This is a head fake for citizens who don't understand freedom of speech protections."  

Ken Klukowski, an ACRU senior legal analyst, explains, "Paragraph (3) is only a statement of the obvious, so it has no legal effect. No statute can abridge constitutionally-protected speech. If any speech is burdened, and the speaker files suit, then the process and the result is the same regardless of whether there is any paragraph such as (3). The court then looks to the speech in question, the nature of the burden on that speech, and what protection the First Amendment extends to that particular speech. The court does not look to language such as (3) in deciding the case. If the burden in the specific case is unconstitutional, then it's impermissible whether the statute acknowledges the fact or not. So (3) is just there to help pass the bill by giving people a talking point to say 'this law does nothing to violate anyone's free speech rights.' It makes no difference in court whatsoever."  

The bill also would create a federal slush fund for hate crime prevention programs at the state and local levels, including school programs that equate traditional morality with "bigotry." The Justice Department's "hate crime" section relies on material from groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which lumps legitimate conservative and Christian organizations with "hate groups."  

Besides its threats to basic freedoms, the law is unnecessary. America is not awash in an epidemic of hate crimes, which constitute a microscopic portion of the more than 11 million crimes reported in the United States annually. In the latest crime report released in October 2008 by the U.S. Justice Department for 2007, nearly 80 percent of the 7,624 incidents of "hate crimes" listed in "crimes against persons" involved "intimidation" (47.4 percent) or "simple assault" (31.1 percent), which could involve nothing more than words.  

The proposed federal hate crime law, like all hate crime laws, politicizes crime, leading to pressure on police and prosecutors to devote more of their limited resources to certain victims at the expense of others. For example, homosexual activist groups descended on Wyoming and created a media circus around the Matthew Shepard case, costing the state heavily for public relations. Meanwhile, the story of Kristin Lamb, an eight-year-old girl who a month before Shepard's death was killed in Wyoming and her body thrown into a landfill, received virtually no news coverage or concerns about a possible "hate crime."   Hate crime laws lay the groundwork for assaults on freedom of speech and freedom of religion. In Canada, Great Britain and Sweden, clergy have been investigated and arrested for advocating traditional morality.  

"Hate crime" laws are already being used to silence people in the United States. A pastor in New York's Staten Island saw two billboards with a Bible verse on them taken down in 2000 under pressure from city officials, who cited "hate crime" rhetoric.  

In Philadelphia, 11 Christians were arrested and jailed overnight for singing and preaching in a public park at a homosexual street festival in 2004. Five of them were bound over and charged with five felonies and three misdemeanors, totaling a possible 47 years in jail. These charges, based on Pennsylvania's "hate crimes" law, hung over them for months until a judge finally dismissed them.  

Freedom-loving Americans deplore any violence against innocent victims (including homosexuals), but strongly oppose "hate crime" laws as unjust and dangerous.   All people deserve impartial justice under the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law. The proposed federal hate crime law imperils that cherished right on many levels.

Robert Knight is Senior Writer and Washington D.C. Correspondent for Coral Ridge Ministries. A widely quoted journalist, commentator, and editor, Mr. Knight's latest book, Fighting for America's Soul, is available from Coral Ridge Ministries.

Time to Declare Hate Crimes Laws Unconstitutional

Well, the "big" case of "Fat Nick" Minucci was finally decided. Guilty of hate crimes and assault charges, he was sentenced to 15 years in jail by a judge who could have given him 25 years. Minucci is the 20-year-old from Howard Beach, New York convicted of attacking a young black man looking to rob cars in the predominantly white neighborhood. In New York, this was headline news.

All the usual suspects were there like "Reverend" Al Sharpton( yeah, the term is used lightly here) and all the assorted "civil-wrongs" players. But even a guy like Sharpton knows a place like New York is easy territory for a conviction against a white man in a "racial" case. It has become as predictable as the sun coming up. Years of hyping up some crimes and totally downplaying others( the majority) have led to a "crackdown" on the safe, politically incorrect case and a shrug at the more common and usually more violent ones without the racial/religious hype. Yelling out anti-black slurs, anti-gay slurs or anti-Semitic slurs accompanied by even the slightest of action can get someone thrown in jail for longer than someone brutally beating down another person of any race or religion but saying very little. This is where we are at and it is happening all over.

Some will say this is no big deal since it is just so wrong and damaging to do something along racial and religious lines. First, it is punishing someone based on a thought which is scary and secondly( and most importantly) it is becoming very obvious "hate crimes laws" are an outrageous lie and huge violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Simply put: white males are the target in too many cases. This is certainly true in diverse cities all throughout this nation.

Despite all the hype surrounding hate crimes- it makes up less than one percent of all crimes- the leveling of the charges are often political. In Minucci's case, some type of confrontation occurred and the word "nigger" was used. He chased after the young blacks and caught up to one and proceeded to hit him in the head with a baseball bat. Not nice stuff, indeed. Little was given to his story of an attempted chain-snatching of a friend. He received the usual tongue-lashing by a judge in the case whom could have sentenced him to a fascist-like 25 years in prison. He received 15 and could be out in about 12.

Meantime, a little after this case occurred, a young white man named Thomas Whitney got into some sort of argument with several Muslim men near a nightclub in Manhattan. Yelling "white mother!@#$," they proceeded to beat him and killed him. They then robbed him. All were eventually caught and charged with robbery and murder. No hate crimes. Police mentioned something about race not being the main motive. And that was that. No pressure groups. No politicians. No media. Nothing. That is the norm in countless cases.

And New York is far from being the only city like this. When white tourists were being murdered in Miami wandering into majority black neighborhoods, race was hardly mentioned. The savage murder of three-year-old Stephanie Kuhen in Los Angeles where a driver named Tim Stone made a "wrong turn" in a gang-riddled, non-white area. The animals in the area proceeded to run up on the car, block it in, and started shooting. Mr. Stone was shot in the back. The child was killed and her two-year-old brother, Joe, was shot in the foot. Arrests were made with race becoming a rare mention. Imagine the other way around? The examples for any city are too numerous to list here.

Most condemning are the government statistics. The National Crime Victimization Survey and the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports are the standard used to observe crime trends. Of the roughly 770,000 interracial crimes observed in the most recent study, a whopping 85% were black-on-white. Also shown was the fact more crime is committed on whites by blacks than the "vaunted" black-on-black crime newspapers, politicians and academia speak about because it is safe to do so.

Why is this mentioned? Because anyone with a brain would know some, if not many, of these crimes had a racial component to it but were simply brushed away. A serial rapist targeting women of a certain race will usually receive no hate crime violations. A murder where money was stolen suddenly becomes a "murder-robbery" like the unfortunate Mr. Whitney from New York and it ends there. The rare white-on-black or white-on-Asian rape, murder or assault starts out as an assumption race was part of it and an epithet thrown in becomes grounds for a hate crimes charge. The other way around the use of race must be overwhelming.

Challenges to the constitutionality of hate crimes laws have been made in the past and defeated. However, the challenges were regarding the vague nature of the law. Also, challenges occurred years ago. Increasing data and a challenge based on a failure to protect citizens on an equal basis should be the direction here.

While saying something to hurt someone's feelings based on the very make-up of a person is nasty and low, it should not lead to increased penalties if accompanied by action. Why not simply punish the action itself? This is particularly true with something that can become so political. Because if words become the basis for a prison sentence even the most ardent defenders of hate crimes laws may wind up the victim to it.

Robert Carberry is a writer from New York

Legalizing Crime

The state has a monopoly on behaviour usually deemed criminal. It murders, kidnaps, and locks up people. Sovereignty has come to be identified with the unbridled - and exclusive - exercise of violence. The emergence of modern international law has narrowed the field of permissible conduct. A sovereign can no longer commit genocide or ethnic cleansing with impunity, for instance.

Many acts - such as the waging of aggressive war, the mistreatment of minorities, the suppression of the freedom of association - hitherto sovereign privilege, have thankfully been criminalized. Many politicians, hitherto immune to international prosecution, are no longer so. Consider Yugoslavia's Milosevic and Chile's Pinochet.

But, the irony is that a similar trend of criminalization - within national legal systems - allows governments to oppress their citizenry to an extent previously unknown. Hitherto civil torts, permissible acts, and common behaviour patterns are routinely criminalized by legislators and regulators. Precious few are decriminalized.

Consider, for instance, the criminalization in the Economic Espionage Act (1996) of the misappropriation of trade secrets and the criminalization of the violation of copyrights in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (2000) - both in the USA. These used to be civil torts. They still are in many countries. Drug use, common behaviour in England only 50 years ago - is now criminal. The list goes on.

Criminal laws pertaining to property have malignantly proliferated and pervaded every economic and private interaction. The result is a bewildering multitude of laws, regulations statutes, and acts.

The average Babylonian could have memorizes and assimilated the Hammurabic code 37 centuries ago - it was short, simple, and intuitively just.

English criminal law - partly applicable in many of its former colonies, such as India, Pakistan, Canada, and Australia - is a mishmash of overlapping and contradictory statutes - some of these hundreds of years old - and court decisions, collectively known as "case law".

Despite the publishing of a Model Penal Code in 1962 by the American Law Institute, the criminal provisions of various states within the USA often conflict. The typical American can't hope to get acquainted with even a negligible fraction of his country's fiendishly complex and hopelessly brobdignagian criminal code. Such inevitable ignorance breeds criminal behaviour - sometimes inadvertently - and transforms many upright citizens into delinquents.

In the land of the free - the USA - close to 2 million adults are behind bars and another 4.5 million are on probation, most of them on drug charges. The costs of criminalization - both financial and social - are mind boggling. According to "The Economist", America's prison system cost it $54 billion a year - disregarding the price tag of law enforcement, the judiciary, lost product, and rehabilitation.

What constitutes a crime? A clear and consistent definition has yet to transpire.

There are five types of criminal behaviour: crimes against oneself, or "victimless crimes" (such as suicide, abortion, and the consumption of drugs), crimes against others (such as murder or mugging), crimes among consenting adults (such as incest, and in certain countries, homosexuality and euthanasia), crimes against collectives (such as treason, genocide, or ethnic cleansing), and crimes against the international community and world order (such as executing prisoners of war). The last two categories often overlap.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica provides this definition of a crime: "The intentional commission of an act usually deemed socially harmful or dangerous and specifically defined, prohibited, and punishable under the criminal law."

But who decides what is socially harmful? What about acts committed unintentionally (known as "strict liability offences" in the parlance)? How can we establish intention - "mens rea", or the "guilty mind" - beyond a reasonable doubt?

A much tighter definition would be: "The commission of an act punishable under the criminal law." A crime is what the law - state law, kinship law, religious law, or any other widely accepted law - says is a crime. Legal systems and texts often conflict.

Murderous blood feuds are legitimate according to the 15th century "Qanoon", still applicable in large parts of Albania. Killing one's infant daughters and old relatives is socially condoned - though illegal - in India, China, Alaska, and parts of Africa. Genocide may have been legally sanctioned in Germany and Rwanda - but is strictly forbidden under international law.

Laws being the outcomes of compromises and power plays, there is only a tenuous connection between justice and morality. Some "crimes" are categorical imperatives. Helping the Jews in Nazi Germany was a criminal act - yet a highly moral one.

The ethical nature of some crimes depends on circumstances, timing, and cultural context. Murder is a vile deed - but assassinating Saddam Hussein may be morally commendable. Killing an embryo is a crime in some countries - but not so killing a fetus. A "status offence" is not a criminal act if committed by an adult. Mutilating the body of a live baby is heinous - but this is the essence of Jewish circumcision. In some societies, criminal guilt is collective. All Americans are held blameworthy by the Arab street for the choices and actions of their leaders. All Jews are accomplices in the "crimes" of the "Zionists".

In all societies, crime is a growth industry. Millions of professionals - judges, police officers, criminologists, psychologists, journalists, publishers, prosecutors, lawyers, social workers, probation officers, wardens, sociologists, non-governmental-organizations, weapons manufacturers, laboratory technicians, graphologists, and private detectives - derive their livelihood, parasitically, from crime. They often perpetuate models of punishment and retribution that lead to recidivism rather than to to the reintegration of criminals in society and their rehabilitation.

Organized in vocal interest groups and lobbies, they harp on the insecurities and phobias of the alienated urbanites. They consume ever growing budgets and rejoice with every new behaviour criminalized by exasperated lawmakers. In the majority of countries, the justice system is a dismal failure and law enforcement agencies are part of the problem, not its solution.

The sad truth is that many types of crime are considered by people to be normative and common behaviours and, thus, go unreported. Victim surveys and self-report studies conducted by criminologists reveal that most crimes go unreported. The protracted fad of criminalization has rendered criminal many perfectly acceptable and recurring behaviours and acts. Homosexuality, abortion, gambling, prostitution, pornography, and suicide have all been criminal offences at one time or another.

But the quintessential example of over-criminalization is drug abuse.

There is scant medical evidence that soft drugs such as cannabis or MDMA ("Ecstasy") - and even cocaine - have an irreversible effect on brain chemistry or functioning. Last month an almighty row erupted in Britain when Jon Cole, an addiction researcher at Liverpool University, claimed, to quote "The Economist" quoting the "Psychologist", that:

"Experimental evidence suggesting a link between Ecstasy use and problems such as nerve damage and brain impairment is flawed ... using this ill-substantiated cause-and-effect to tell the 'chemical generation' that they are brain damaged when they are not creates public health problems of its own."

Moreover, it is commonly accepted that alcohol abuse and nicotine abuse can be at least as harmful as the abuse of marijuana, for instance. Yet, though somewhat curbed, alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking are legal. In contrast, users of cocaine - only a century ago recommended by doctors as tranquilizer - face life in jail in many countries, death in others. Almost everywhere pot smokers are confronted with prison terms.

The "war on drugs" - one of the most expensive and protracted in history - has failed abysmally. Drugs are more abundant and cheaper than ever. The social costs have been staggering: the emergence of violent crime where none existed before, the destabilization of drug-producing countries, the collusion of drug traffickers with terrorists, and the death of millions - law enforcement agents, criminals, and users.

Few doubt that legalizing most drugs would have a beneficial effect. Crime empires would crumble overnight, users would be assured of the quality of the products they consume, and the addicted few would not be incarcerated or stigmatized - but rather treated and rehabilitated.

That soft, largely harmless, drugs continue to be illicit is the outcome of compounded political and economic pressures by lobby and interest groups of manufacturers of legal drugs, law enforcement agencies, the judicial system, and the aforementioned long list of those who benefit from the status quo.

Only a popular movement can lead to the decriminalization of the more innocuous drugs. But such a crusade should be part of a larger campaign to reverse the overall tide of criminalization. Many "crimes" should revert to their erstwhile status as civil torts. Others should be wiped off the statute books altogether. Hundreds of thousands should be pardoned and allowed to reintegrate in society, unencumbered by a past of transgressions against an inane and inflationary penal code.

This, admittedly, will reduce the leverage the state has today against its citizens and its ability to intrude on their lives, preferences, privacy, and leisure. Bureaucrats and politicians may find this abhorrent. Freedom loving people should rejoice.

About The Author

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, and Suite101 .

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

palma@unet.com.mk

Organized Crime In Detroit: Forgotten But Not Gone

By James Buccellato and Scott M. Burnstein

DETROIT (WWJ) – The Detroit mafia lives in the shadows. It always has, now, more than ever.

“They don’t chase the news cameras like in other cities and a lot of them have been very adept of veiling themselves in legitimacy,” said former federal prosecutor and organized crime task force member Keith Corbett, of the area’s ruling mob powers. “In relative terms, it’s been a recipe for success, in that most of them have avoided long, if any, prison sentences and, for the most part, very few people have any idea who they are.”

That hasn’t exactly been the case for other organized crime families around the country.

Notorious Boston Irish mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger was apprehended earlier this week in California, arrested for 19 gangland-related homicides after 16 years on the run from the law. Bulger, the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s character in the Oscar-winning film “The Departed,” ran the Boston underworld for over two decades and had for years been No. 2 on the FBI’s famed Most Wanted List, behind only Osama Bin Laden.

The Philadelphia mob made headlines last month when federal investigators arrested reputed godfather Joseph “Uncle Joe” Ligambi. Philly’s alleged No. 1 gangster and a dozen of his suspected underlings were all charged in a 50-count racketeering indictment involving gambling and loan-sharking.

Interestingly, the Ligambi arrest comes on the heels of one of the largest mob busts in American history when in January the U.S. Justice Department rounded up over 100 suspected East Coast organized crime members, many of them alleged to be high-ranking mafia leaders, on charges including murder, gambling, loan-sharking, extortion and narcotics trafficking.

Top Chicago Mafioso Michael “Fat Mike” Sarno and a number of his associates were convicted on federal racketeering charges stemming from a mob-ran video poker operation late last December.

Four major busts in six months and all of the investigations involve customary mafia locales: New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Providence and Newark.

One of the traditional mob hotbeds absent from the recent slew of arrests and convictions was Detroit, a longstanding picture of stability and efficiency in an underworld landscape littered with defectors, dissidents and dim-bulb thugs.

Those who remember stories about the infamous Purple Gang from the city’s bloody Prohibition era or the everlasting hubbub regarding the mysterious disappearance of labor boss Jimmy Hoffa may wonder if organized crime still exists in the Motor City.

Indeed, many would probably be surprised to find out that Detroit’s mafia is still alive, well and racketeering in 2011.

Few would suggest that the local crime family has the manpower or criminal reach it once had, but it nevertheless continues to function – and when compared to other mob syndicates across the country, at a fairly high level.

As recently as 2006, FBI agents in Detroit arrested more than a dozen individuals under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) charging them with bookmaking, money laundering and extortion. Though federal authorities did not officially link the case to the mob, sources in local law enforcement confirm that the indictment’s alleged ringleaders, Peter Tocco of Troy and Jack V. Giacalone of West Bloomfield, as well as several of their co-defendants are affiliated with the area’s mafia family.

Tocco, 62 and referred to on federal surveillance tapes by such monikers as “Blackie” and “Specs,” pled guilty to the charges and served a two-year prison sentence before being released last year. Giacalone, 60, went to trial and was acquitted. Sources peg Giacalone, known by nicknames like, “Jackie the Kid” and “Jackie the Bathrobe,” as someone being groomed to be a future don.

People around Detroit with even a vague familiarity of local mob affairs are most likely aware of the names Tocco and Giacalone, longstanding staples in newspaper headlines from the area’s underworld dating back nearly a century.

Peter Tocco’s grandfather was William “Black Bill” Tocco, the Detroit mafia’s founding father, establishing the crime syndicate in 1931 after winning a violent street war for gangland supremacy in the city in the aftermath of Prohibition. His uncle is Giacomo “Black Jack” Tocco, Black Bill’s eldest son and the city’s current mob boss, in power since the 1970s.

Jackie Giacalone is the son of retired mob underboss Vito “Billy Jack” Giacalone, 87 and the nephew of former Detroit mafia street boss, Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone, who died of cancer in 2001.

During the 1950s and 60s, Congressional committees named Black Bill Tocco and both Giacalone brothers as being top echelon mob leaders in the Motor City.

The following decade the Giacalone brothers gained national infamy, having their names echoed on television newscasts from coast to coast after they became central figures in the Hoffa case.

All three mobsters were linked closely to legendary godfather Joe Zerilli, Detroit’s undisputed “boss of bosses” for over four decades and a highly-respected mob dignitary that was one of the few non-New York bosses granted a seat on the notorious “Commission,” a nationwide mafia board of directors. He was brother-in-laws with Black Bill Tocco, having come over together from Sicily in 1910.

The Detroit don’s only son, Anthony “Tony Z” Zerilli, was initially tagged as his father’s replacement, however following Tony Z’s imprisonment in 1973 on charges of skimming millions of dollars from a Las Vegas hotel and casino, the aging mob chieftain demoted his offspring in favor of his nephew Jack Tocco. Both the younger Tocco and Zerilli received college business degrees from the University of Detroit-Mercy in 1949, around the same time, according to Congressional testimony, they “made their bones” and were inducted into the mafia.

When Joe Zerilli passed away from natural causes in 1977, Tocco took control of the crime family, naming his first-cousin Tony Z his second-in-charge as a measure of good faith. The pair of mob princes ran the local mafia in tandem uninterrupted until 1996 when they were arrested in a widespread RICO indictment, titled, Operation Gametax, charging virtually the entire syndicate administration with bookmaking, loansharking and extortion.

Tocco was convicted in 1998, Zerilli in 2002 and after each conviction, federal law enforcement described the situation in hyperbolic terms, claiming to have “driven a stake through the heart” of the Detroit mafia.

This proved hardly true. Although a majority of the mobsters arrested in the bust were convicted, most of them received relatively light sentences. Curiously, Tocco, who was found to be the kingpin of the continuing criminal enterprise in the case, served barely two years behind bars.

With so many sons, nephews and cousins employed in the “family business,” the mob’s rackets more or less continued with little to no interruption. In a measure to ensure loyalty, Joe Zerilli had planned it that way, making it a requirement as early as the 1930s that his soldiers married other soldiers’ daughters, sisters, nieces and cousins.

The strategy has paid dividends since unlike most of the country’s mob families in the past three decades that have been torn apart at the seams from within, overwhelmed by informers or “rats,” as they’re called in underworld circles, the Detroit mob has been virtually free of turncoats.

“Almost everyone important in the crime family is related by blood or marriage in some way to almost everyone else of any significance and this makes the organization extremely difficult to penetrate,” retired Detroit FBI agent Mike Carone notes. “For an outsider, whether in law enforcement or not, to get real close to these guys is practically impossible.”

Nove Tocco, Joe Zerilli’s grandson, became the only member of the crime family to ever testify against the syndicate in open court when he began working for the feds in 2000, two years after he was convicted in the Gametax case. He debriefed for the federal authorities and testified at his cousin Jack Tocco’s sentencing hearing in exchange for a sentence reduction.

The FBI in Detroit asserts that upon Tocco’s release from federal prison in 2002, he re-assumed his position as boss and continues to head the crime family to this day at the ripe old age of 84.

Detroit’s mafia faction has also avoided the internecine warfare that has plagued other national mafia groups, as a general rule, being free of renegades, a phenomenon most experts credit to the syndicate’s intermarriage edict and its longstanding policy of only utilizing violence as a method of last resort.

“It’s a lot harder to get the motivation to start a war if the guys you’re going to be shooting at and trying to kill are your own family,” Carone said. “That’s not to say the mafia around her doesn’t murder people, but that it’s probably a little less frequent when compared to other big city mobs.”

The last round of known or possible-related mob murders took place between 1998 and 2002, a timeline some sources in law enforcement tie to the fallout from the convictions and subsequent prison sentences of city mafia royalty, like Jack Tocco and Tony Zerilli.

The mini hit parade started in 1998 in the months after a slew of convictions in the Gametax case when a former mob associate under the direction of the Giacalone brothers wound up dead in Great Britain after he had turned informant for the government.

Three years later in 2001, there was the murder of strip club operator, John “John John” Jarjosa, Jr.,34, whose father was convicted mob associate John “J.J.” Jarjosa, Sr., away serving a prison sentence related to the Gametax bust at the time of his son’s death. Jarjosa, Jr, was gunned down at the corner of 8 Mile and Evergreen in broad daylight, his black Corvette boxed in as he took fire from two gun-wielding assailants in a turn-around lane.

In 2002, a young reputed mob enforcer, Gerard “Gerry the Blade” Bianchette, 31, was shotgunned to death at a Macomb County construction site in the months surrounding the conviction of Tony Zerilli.

Though all three murders remains unsolved, law enforcement describe each as a professional hit, most likely rooted in gangland conflict.
Just last month, a pair of reputed mobbed-up brothers, the Sicilian-born, Giuseppe and Girolamo D’anna, owners of the Tiramisu Italian restaurant in Shelby Township, were indicted on assault to commit murder, extortion and witness intimidation charges. Authorities allege the brothers stormed into a competing Italian restaurant across the street for Tiramisu, severely beat its owner with an aluminum baseball bat and threatened to kill him and his entire family if he went to the police. According to confidential sources, the D’anna brothers are connected to the local mafia family and have alleged ties to mob activity back in their native Sicily.

A federal point shaving bust alleged to be headed by Gary Manzi and Mitchell “Steady Eddie” Karam, two reputed Detroit mob associates of Chaldean descent, made headlines in 2009. Karam, long linked to the crime family and a one-time close friend of deceased reputed mob power, Jack “Fat Jackie” Lucido, and Mazi, a local convenient store owner, are accused of paying players on both the University of Toledo football and basketball teams to alter outcomes of games so they could win close to a half a million dollars in wagers.

At its peak in the 1960s, the mafia in the Motor City was estimated to have roughly 100 fully-inducted members. Currently, it’s probably closer to between 40 and 50. The number had dropped to around 30-35 at the time of the Gametax trial, but reports indicate the family has since increased its ranks with at least two initiation ceremonies being held in the last eight years.

Most people might not know the mob still exists in Detroit, yet the organization doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

“To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of their demise have been much overstated,” Corbett said. “The current leaders, guys like Jack Tocco, may be on the way out due to age, but there is a younger generation coming up behind them ready, willing and able to take the reins. From its inception, this organization was built for the long haul and it will continue to sustain. I don’t think we’ll be talking about the eradication of the mafia in Detroit for quite a while.”

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James Buccellato, PhD. James is a political scientist. Currently he is researching the history of social banditry in America.

Scott M. Burnstein is a local author and crime expert, who has been featured on the History Channel’s hit show, “Gangland” and whose first book, “Motor City Mafia – A Century of Organized Crime in the City of Detroit,” was a regional best-seller. His writing has appeared in both the Detroit Free Press and the Oakland Press

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