Chicago Police Department
The Chicago Police Department is the law enforcement agency of the U. S. city of Chicago, under the jurisdiction of the City Council. It is the second-largest municipal police department in the United States, behind the New York City Police Department, it has 13,500 officers and over 1,925 other employees. Tracing its roots back to the year of 1835, the Chicago Police Department is one of the oldest modern police forces in the world; the United States Department of Justice has criticized the department for its poor training, lack of oversight and routine use of excessive force. The Superintendent of Police leads the Chicago Police Department. With the assistance of the First Deputy Superintendent, the Superintendent manages four bureaus, each commanded by a bureau chief; the mayor appointed former Bureau of Patrol Chief Eddie T. Johnson as Superintendent on March 28, 2016, he was preceded by Garry F. McCarthy, former director of the Newark, New Jersey, Police Department, as superintendent. McCarthy was the highest paid city employee with an annual salary of $260,004.
McCarthy resigned at the request of Mayor Emanuel on December 1, 2015 over the city's high murder rate and his department's handling of the shooting of Laquan McDonald. Prior to McCarthy's appointment, Jody P. Weis had served as superintendent of police since February 2008. At the time, Weis was the second Chicago police superintendent hired from outside of the city, he replaced Philip J. Cline, who retired on August 3, 2007. Weis' contract expired on March 1, 2011. Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed Terry Hillard, on an interim basis; the current First Deputy Superintendent is Anthony Riccio, appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. As of March 2019, the five bureaus of the department are: Bureau of Patrol: Bureau Chief Fred Waller Bureau of Detectives: Bureau Chief Melissa A. Staples Bureau of Organized Crime: Bureau Chief Noel Sanchez Bureau of Organizational Development: Bureau Chief Barbara West Bureau of Technical Services: Bureau Chief Jonathan H. LewinEach of these five bureau chiefs report directly to the First Deputy Superintendent of Police.
The Bureau of Internal Affairs, which falls under the Office of the Superintendent, is commanded by Bureau Chief Keith A. Calloway. There are 22 police districts, consolidated from 25 in 2012, each led by a commander who oversees his or her district. Commanders report to the three area deputy chiefs. In 1960, the municipal government created a five-member police board charged with nominating a superintendent to be the chief authority over police officers and adopting rules and regulations governing the police system, submitting budget requests to the city council, hearing and deciding disciplinary cases involving police officers. Criminologist O. W. Wilson was brought on as Superintendent of Police, served until 1967 when he retired. Investigative functions are under the Bureau of Detectives; the Bureau of Detectives is Headed by the Chief of Detectives. The Detective Division includes the three Area Detective Divisions; the Deputy Chief of the Special Investigations Unit oversees the Central Investigations Division, the Forensic Services Division which includes the Mobile Crime Lab of Forensic Investigators, ET-North and ET-South—which are the two Evidence Technician Units, the Youth Investigations Division.
The Counter terrorism and Intelligence Division includes the Deployment Operations Center Section, the Intelligence Section, the Airport Law Enforcement Section, the Public Transportation Section, the Bomb and Arson Section. The Organized Crime Division includes the Narcotics Section, Gang Investigations Section, Gang Enforcement Section, Vice Control Section, the Asset Forfeiture Unit; the Chief of Detectives heads the Detective Division. Two Deputy Chiefs assist the Chief of Detectives while one Deputy Chief assists the Chief of OCD; the city is covered by three Detective Division Areas, each led by a Commander. The Bureau of Patrol includes the twenty-two districts. Included in the Bureau of Patrol are the Special Functions Group, the Marine & Helicopter Units, Mounted Units, SWAT, the Traffic Section, Canine Units. Following the disbanding of the Special Operations Section in 2007 after much negative publicity and controversies, the Special Functions Group was formed to absorb the specialized units that were not associated with the controversial plain-clothes unit known informally as SOS.
A full-time SWAT team, organized in 2005, includes 70 members. The dignitary protection unit, based at O'Hare International Airport, is the only unit that uses two-wheeled motorcycles; the Mounted Unit maintains 32 gelded horses at the South Shore Cultural Center. The marine unit maintains nine boats. Chicago's five-pointed star-shaped badge changes to reflect the different ranks of officers; the stars of most Chicago Police officers are with broad points. Command ranks have gold-colored stars with sharp points. A ring surrounding the full-color city seal in the star's center changes color for each rank within these two classifications. Like most American police forces, the officer's rank is written in an arc above the center element; the Chicago Police Department's shoulder sleeve insignia, worn on the top of the left sleeve, is unusual in two regards. Its shape is octagonal instead of
Bugs Moran
Adelard Cunin, better known as George "Bugs" Moran, was a Chicago Prohibition-era gangster. He was incarcerated three times before his 21st birthday. Seven members of his gang were gunned down in a warehouse in the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of February 14, 1929 on the orders of his rival Al Capone. Moran was born Adelard Cunin to French immigrants Jules and Marie Diana Gobeil Cunin in Saint Paul, Minnesota, he attended Cretin High School, a private Catholic school in Saint Paul, but he joined a local juvenile gang and left school at age 18. He was caught robbing a store and was sent to the state juvenile correctional facility, was put in jail three times before he turned 21, he fled to Chicago where he was caught trying to rob a warehouse, taking part in a horse-stealing ring, taking part in robbery involving the death of a police officer, robbing a freight car, for which he received a variety of prison and jail sentences. Prohibition was established in 1920 with the enactment of the 18th Amendment, which banned the distribution of alcoholic beverages, resulting in bootlegging.
Among the involved gangs were Dean O'Banion and his Irish group, including Bugs Moran, who became known as the North Side Gang and Al Capone as the leader of the Italian mob on the South Side. These two rivals fought violently, resulting in what is known as "The Bootleg Battle of the Marne." The bootlegging operation of Hymie Weiss and Bugs Moran continued to pose a significant challenge to Capone's South Side Gang. Moran and Capone led a turf war with each other that cost them both. Moran's hatred of Capone was apparent to the public. Moran was disgusted, he would not increase profits himself by engaging in prostitution rings because of his Catholic religion. Torrio's gang killed Dean O'Banion, in an attempt to avenge him Bugs Moran and Earl "Hymie" Weiss made an attempt on Torrio's life, they went on to make a failed attempt on Al Capone's life at his headquarters, the Hawthorne Inn in Cicero, Illinois. More than one thousand shots were fired at the inn and at a nearby restaurant in their attempts to kill Capone.
In retaliation, Weiss's life was taken by Al Capone's gang, Bugs Moran became head man of the North Side Gang. Responding to Weiss's death, Moran tried to kill a member of Capone's gang, resulting in an attack from Capone, known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. On February 14, 1929, Capone tried to strike a decisive blow against Moran with the notorious Saint Valentine's Day Massacre; the day before, a tempting phone call to Moran told him that a truckload of whiskey had just arrived from Detroit and that he could have it at a bargain price. He ordered the whiskey to be delivered at 10:30 a.m. the next morning at the garage of the S. M. C. Cartage Company on North Clark Street, where he kept his bootlegging trucks. Two gunmen dressed as Chicago police officers and two others in plain clothes lined up seven of Moran's people against the wall in the warehouse and gunned them down. However, the main target of the "hit," Bugs Moran narrowly eluded death, as he had decided to sleep in that day. Had they known he was not there, they might have put off the attack until a different day.
Another North Sider, Al Weinshank, was misidentified as Moran by one of Capone's lookouts who signaled for the attack to begin. Responders were late to the scene due to the lack of reporting by neighbors, who thought that whatever had occurred had been taken care of when they saw the two "police officers" exit the area from which the gunshots were heard. Six of the men were killed and another was near death when police arrived on the scene; the seventh man, Frank Gusenberg, was taken to a hospital, where he refused to identify his killers following the gangster's code of silence, died. When Moran saw the carnage, he broke the gangster code. No one was convicted of the crime, Capone denied all involvement in the massacre. Capone was called to court, but claimed to be sick both times; the tactic worked, Capone never was convicted. Moran managed to keep control of his territory and what remained of his gang through the early 1930s, but the North Side gang never recovered its power or former place in Chicago's underworld as the chief rival to Capone's Italian mob.
Moran left the area, quitting the gang entirely—though not the criminal lifestyle, as he reverted to his earlier gangster ways of petty crime such as mail fraud and robbery. On April 30, 1939, Moran was convicted of conspiracy to cash $62,000 worth of American Express checks, he was freed on appeal. He was penniless by the 1940s, only 17 years after being one of the richest gangsters in Chicago. On July 6, 1946, he was arrested for his involvement in the robbery of a Dayton, Ohio tavern on June 28, 1945, he received a sentence of 20 years after being found guilty, he was tried for robbery once again after being released from prison 20 years later. Moran died of lung cancer a few months into his 10-year sentence at Leavenworth Prison in Kansas on February 25, 1957, at age 63. Boyle, William. "Valentine's Day Massacre." Salem Press EncyclopediaResearch Starters. Accessed March 22, 2015. EBSCOhost Britannica Online. "Moran, George." Britannica Online Accessed March 22, 2015. EBSCOhost. George "Bugs" Moran, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing left.
1957. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, whereabouts unknown. Accessed 22 Mar. 2015. Https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/95511458/ George "Bug" Moran, head-and-shoulder
Johnny Torrio
John Donato Torrio was an Italian-born American mobster who helped to build a criminal organization, the Chicago Outfit, in the 1920s. He put forth the idea of the National Crime Syndicate in the 1930s and became an unofficial adviser to the Genovese crime family, he gained several nicknames but was known as "The Fox" for his cunning and finesse. Considered one of the most influential personalities in American organized crime, Torrio impressed authorities and chroniclers for his business acumen and diplomatic skills; the US Treasury official Elmer Irey considered him "the biggest gangster in America" and wrote, "He was the smartest and, I dare say, the best of all the hoodlums.'Best' referring to talent, not morals." Virgil W. Peterson of the Chicago Crime Commission stated that his "talents as an organizational genius were respected by the major gang bosses in the New York City area." Crime journalist Herbert Asbury affirmed: "As an organizer and administrator of underworld affairs Johnny Torrio is unsurpassed in the annals of American crime.
Torrio was born in Irsina, Basilicata, in Southern Italy, to Tommaso and Maria Carluccio from Altamura, Apulia. When he was two his father, a railway employee, died in a work accident, Torrio shortly after emigrated to New York City with his widowed mother in December 1884, she remarried. His first jobs were as a bouncer in Manhattan. While he was a teenager, he became its leader. Torrio's business sense caught the eye of the leader of the infamous Five Points Gang. Torrio's gang ran legitimate businesses, but its main concern was the numbers game, supplemented by incomes from bookmaking, loan sharking, hijacking and opium trafficking. Al Capone, who worked at Kelly's club, looked to him as his mentor. Torrio, in turn admired Kelly, who knew much about organized crime culture. Capone had belonged to the Bowery Boys and the Brooklyn Rippers. Torrio hired Capone to bartend at the Harvard Inn, a bar in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn owned by Torrio's business associate, Francesco Ioele. Torrio was the nephew of Victoria Moresco, the wife and business partner of "Big Jim" Colosimo, who had become the owner of more than 100 brothels in Chicago.
According to Laurence Bergreen, "Torrio is described as Colosimo’s nephew, but in the absence of any evidence to confirm the relationship, it is more their kinship was spiritual rather than familial." Colosimo invited Torrio to Chicago to deal with extortion demands from the Black Hand. Torrio stayed on. In 1919, Frankie Yale contacted Torrio and requested for him to take Capone to Chicago, as Capone had gotten into trouble, nearly getting beaten to death by a member of a rival operation, the Irish White Hand Gang of the Brooklyn dockyards, Yale's great rivals in Brooklyn, they were hunting for a scar-faced man and so Yale sent Capone to Chicago to lie low for a year. Capone, never returned to New York, becoming a bouncer at one of Torrio's Chicago brothels and soon became manager of The Four Deuces, one of Torrio's operations. In 1920, Prohibition went into effect, making all manufacture, purchase, or sale of alcoholic beverages illegal. Torrio realized the immense profits bootlegging could bring and urged "Big Jim" Colosimo to enter the business.
Colosimo, refused, fearing that expansion into other rackets would only draw more attention from the police and rival gangs. During the same period, Colosimo divorced Victoria, Torrio's aunt, married Dale Winter, an actress and singer. Winter convinced Colosimo to settle down, dress more conservatively, stay out of the news. At that point, Torrio realized that Colosimo was a serious impediment to the mob's potential fortunes. With the approval of Colosimo's allies, the Genna brothers and Aiello, Torrio invited Frankie Yale to come to Chicago and assassinate Colosimo; the murder took place on May 1920, in the main foyer of Colosimo's Cafe. No one was prosecuted. Torrio took over the deceased Colosimo's vast criminal kingdom and started to venture into bootlegging; as the 1920s progressed and Capone presided over the expansion of the Chicago Outfit as it raked in millions from gambling and now bootlegging. The Outfit soon came to control the Loop, as well as much of the South Side. However, it was intent on seizing the profitable Gold Coast territory, which drew the ire of the powerful North Side Gang led by Dean O'Banion.
The Outfit and the North Side Gang began a fragile alliance, but tension between O'Banion and the Gennas over territorial rights mounted. The Gennas wanted to kill O'Banion. Tensions boiled over when O'Banion cheated Torrio out of $500,000 in a brewery acquisition deal and caused Torrio's arrest. Torrio ordered O'Banion killed. On November 10, 1924, O'Banion was murdered in his North Side flower shop by Yale, John Sc
Hymie Weiss
Henry Earl J. Wojciechowski known as Hymie Weiss, was an American mob boss who became a leader of the Prohibition-era North Side Gang and a bitter rival of Al Capone, he was known as'the only man Al Capone feared'. Born Henry Earl J. Wojciechowski in present-day Poland, he grew up on the North Side of Chicago with his Polish-American family, he was nicknamed "Hymie" and "Hymie the Pole" in his career. He was Catholic, despite the "Jewish-sounding" moniker; as a teenager, Weiss became a petty criminal. After he upset a fragrance shelf during a botched burglary as a youth, police dubbed him'The Perfume Burglar', he befriended an Irish-American teen named Dean O'Banion. With Weiss and George "Bugs" Moran, O'Banion established the North Side Gang, a criminal organization that controlled bootlegging and other illicit activities in the northern part of Chicago; when Wojciewski's brother Fred was questioned about him in 1926, he replied, "I've seen him once in twenty years...that was when he shot me, six years ago."
When photographers tried to snap his picture, Wojciechowski would glare at them and say in a low voice, "You take a picture of me and I'll kill you."On one occasion, Wojciechowski chased away at gunpoint a deputy U. S. Marshal who came to arrest a friend for violation of the Mann Act at a party he was attending; the marshal returned with reinforcements, arrested the friend, confiscated a cache of alcohol and weapons. After the raid, Wojciechowski filed a lawsuit to recover silk shirts and socks that he claimed the marshals had stolen. Jury selection for a murder trial of Joe Saltis, with whom Wojciechowski sought an alliance, began on October 11, 1926 and Wojciechowski and four of his men were sighted there. With him that day were his bodyguard Sam Pellar, gangster Paddy Murray, attorney William W. O'Brien, Benjamin Jacobs. At 4:00 o'clock that afternoon and his men left for their State Street headquarters, Schofield’s Flowers; the quintet rounded the corner to cross State. As they did, two gunmen hidden in a nearby rooming house opened fire with a submachine gun and shotgun.
Wojciechowski and Murray were fatally wounded by this first burst. William O'Brien staggered into a nearby stairwell. At the initial sound of gunfire, a panicked Sam Pellar drew his.38 and instinctively fired a shot in the general direction of shooters. Pellar and Jacobs, both wounded, staggered back the way. Bullets followed them the whole way and some chipped the cornerstone of the Holy Name Cathedral directly across the street. Wojciechowski is buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, the same place as Al Capone and Dean O'Banion. Weiss and other Prohibition-era mobsters served as the basis for many gangster films of the 1930s. James Cagney, for example, based his character on both Weiss and Chicago gangland figure Dean O'Banion in the 1931 film The Public Enemy. Asbury, Herbert. Gem of the Prairie: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986. 353-58. Keefe, Rose. Guns and Roses: The Untold Story of Dean O'Banion, Chicago's Big Shot before Al Capone.
Cumberland House, 336 pgs, ISBN 1-58182-378-9 Hymie Weiss at Find a Grave Earl "Hymie" Weiss HymieWeiss.com
Al Capone
Alphonse Gabriel Capone, sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit. His seven-year reign as crime boss ended when he was 33. Capone was born to Italian immigrants, he was a Five Points Gang member. In his early twenties, he moved to Chicago and became a bodyguard and trusted factotum for Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate that illegally supplied alcohol—the forerunner of the Outfit—and was politically protected through the Unione Siciliana. A conflict with the North Side Gang was instrumental in Capone's fall. Torrio went into retirement after North Side gunmen killed him, handing control to Capone. Capone expanded the bootlegging business through violent means, but his mutually profitable relationships with mayor William Hale Thompson and the city's police meant he seemed safe from law enforcement. Capone reveled in attention, such as the cheers from spectators when he appeared at ball games.
He made donations to various charities and was viewed by many as "modern-day Robin Hood". However, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, in which seven gang rivals were murdered in broad daylight, damaged Chicago's and Capone's image, leading influential citizens to demand government action and newspapers to dub Capone "Public Enemy No. 1". The federal authorities prosecuted him in 1931 for tax evasion. During a publicized case, the judge admitted as evidence Capone's admissions of his income and unpaid taxes during prior negotiations to pay the government taxes he owed, he was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. After conviction, he replaced his defense team with experts in tax law, his grounds for appeal were strengthened by a Supreme Court ruling, but his appeal failed. Capone showed signs of neurosyphilis early in his sentence and became debilitated before being released after eight years of incarceration. On January 25, 1947, Capone died of cardiac arrest after suffering a stroke. Al Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 17, 1899.
His parents were Teresa Capone. His father was a barber and his mother was a seamstress, both born in Angri, a town in the Province of Salerno. Gabriele and Teresa had nine children: Alphonse "Al" Capone. Ralph and Frank worked with him in his criminal empire. Frank did so until his death on April 1, 1924. Ralph ran the bottling companies early on, was the front man for the Chicago Outfit for some time until he was imprisoned for tax evasion in 1932; the Capone family immigrated to the United States, after first moving to nearby Fiume in Austria-Hungary in 1893. From that port city they traveled on a ship to the U. S. where they settled in the Navy Yard section of downtown Brooklyn. Gabriele Capone worked at a nearby barber shop at 29 Park Avenue; when Al was 11, the Capone family moved to 38 Garfield Place in Brooklyn. Capone showed promise as a student, but had trouble with the rules at his strict parochial Catholic school, his schooling ended at the age of 14, after he was expelled for hitting a female teacher in the face.
He worked at odd jobs including a candy store and a bowling alley. During this time, Capone was influenced by gangster Johnny Torrio, whom he came to regard as a mentor. Capone became involved with small-time gangs that included the Junior Forty Thieves and the Bowery Boys, he joined the Brooklyn Rippers, the powerful Five Points Gang based in Lower Manhattan. During this time, he was employed and mentored by fellow racketeer Frankie Yale, a bartender in a Coney Island dance hall and saloon called the Harvard Inn. Capone inadvertently insulted a woman while working the door at a Brooklyn night club and was slashed by her brother Frank Gallucio; the wounds led to the nickname "Scarface". When he was photographed, he hid the scarred left side of his face, saying that the injuries were war wounds, he was called "Snorky" by a term for a sharp dresser. Capone married Mae Josephine Coughlin at age 19 on December 30, 1918, she was Irish Catholic and earlier that month had given birth to their son Albert Francis "Sonny" Capone.
Capone was under the age of 21, his parents had to consent in writing to the marriage. By all accounts, the two had a happy marriage despite his gang life. At about 20 years of age, Capone left New York for Chicago at the invitation of Johnny Torrio, imported by crime boss James "Big Jim" Colosimo as an enforcer. Capone began in Chicago as a bouncer in a brothel. Timely use of Salvarsan could have cured the infection, but he never sought treatment. In 1923, he purchased a small house at 7244 South Prairie Avenue in the Park Manor neighborhood on the city's south side for US$5,500. In the early years of the decade, his name began appearing in newspaper sports pages where he was described as a boxing promoter. Torrio took over Colosimo's crime empire after Colosimo's murder on May 11, 1920, in which
Contract killing
Contract killing is a form of murder in which one party hires another party to kill a target individual or group of people. It involves an illegal agreement between two or more parties in which one party agrees to kill the target in exchange for some form of payment, monetary or otherwise. Either party may be group, or an organization. In the United States, the crime is punishable by 15 years to life in a state penitentiary. Contract killing has been associated with organized crime, government conspiracies, vendettas. For example, in the United States, the gang Murder, Inc. committed hundreds of murders on behalf of the National Crime Syndicate during the 1930s and 1940s. Contract killing provides the hiring party with the advantage of not having to commit the actual killing, making it more difficult for law enforcement to connect said party with the murder; the likelihood that authorities will establish that party's guilt for the committed crime due to lack of forensic evidence linked to the contracting party, makes the case more difficult to attribute to the hiring party.
A study by the Australian Institute of Criminology of 162 attempted or actual contract murders in Australia between 1989 and 2002 indicated that the most common reason for murder-for-hire was insurance policies payouts. The study found that the average payment for a "hit" was $15,000 with variation from $5,000 up to $30,000 and that the most used weapons were firearms. Contract killings accounted for 2% of murders in Australia during that time period. Contract killings make up a similar percentage of all killings elsewhere. For example, they made up about 5% of all murders in Scotland from 1993 to 2002. Glennon Engleman, American dentist who moonlighted as a hitman Christopher Dale Flannery, reputed Australian hitman Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, an underboss Charles Harrelson, American hitman, father of actor Woody Harrelson Richard Kuklinski, American contract killer, claims to have murdered over 200 men Marinko Magda, Serbian hitman convicted for 11 murders, including a Hungarian family Alexander Solonik, Russian hitman, known for carrying a firearm in each hand, who killed more than 30 Russian mafia bosses Benjamin Siegel, a Jewish hitman who headed the Bugs and Meyer Mob and was a hitman for Murder, Inc..
He was paid by his brother. Grady Stiles, freak show performer whose family hired a hitman to kill him because of his abusiveness Harry Greenberg, a Mafia associate of Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Siegel, he was killed by Siegel, Whitey Krakower, Albert Tannenbaum, Frankie Carbo in 1939. Joe Masseria, a Mafia boss murdered by Siegel, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis in 1931 Salvatore Maranzano, a Castellammarese Mafia boss and rival to Masseria in the Castellammarese War, killed by Siegel and several other men in 1931 Benjamin Siegel, Las Vegas mob boss and Flamingo Hotel owner, killed by unknown assailants in 1947 Dan Markel, an attorney and legal academic murdered in Tallahassee, Florida in 2014 Nicole Doucet Ryan attempted to hire an undercover Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer to kill her husband. After ruling that she could not use the defense of duress, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered she could not be retried. Tim Lambesis, former vocalist of heavy metal bands As I Lay Dying, Austrian Death Machine and Pyrithion, who attempted to hire someone to murder his wife through a contact at his gym.
The alleged "hitman" turned out to be a police officer masquerading as a hitman. Silas Jayne, Chicago-area stable owner, was convicted in 1973 of hiring hitmen to murder his half-brother George. Mike Danton, former NHL player, hired an undercover federal agent to kill his sports agent. Italian crime boss John Gotti hired hitmen to murder Paul Castellano outside of Sparks Steak House. Wanda Holloway: The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom is based on Holloway's hiring a hitman to kill the mother of a girl competing with her daughter at cheerleading. Lawrence Horn, record producer whose hiring of a hitman led to the case Rice v. Paladin Press Charlotte Karin Lindström, Swedish waitress/model who attempted to hire a hitman to kill persons testifying against her boyfriend in a drug trial in Australia. Pamela Smart of Derry, New Hampshire, who made national headlines in 1991 for hiring teenage lover Billy Flynn and his friends to murder her husband Gregory Smart.
Wallace Souza, Brazilian television presenter, accused of hiring hitmen to murder at least five people in 2009 to increase his programme's ratings. Ruthann Aron, convicted of hiring a hitman to kill her husband and a lawyer who had won a fraud case against her. Charles "Lucky" Luciano, American Mafia and Luciano crime family boss. Ordered Siegel, Genovese, Buchalter and Krakower to murder Mustache Petes Joe Masseria and Sal Maranzano in 1931, stool pigeon Harry Greenberg in 1939; the Commission, American Mafia ruling body that ordered Siegel's murder in 1947. Jennifer Pan, Canadian woman who hired three men to stage a home invasion in order to eliminate her par
Drive-by shooting
A drive-by shooting is a type of assault that involves the perpetrator firing a weapon from within a motor vehicle and fleeing. Drive-by shootings allow the perpetrator to strike their target and flee the scene before law enforcement is able to respond; the invention of drive by shooting is attributed to Nestor Makhno, commander of the Revolutionary Insurrection Army of Ukraine at the beginning of the 20th century. He combined horse and carriage with a machine gun in order to assault targets and get away before they could properly react. Motorcycle ride-by killings were a common form of murder used by drug lord Griselda Blanco during her years controlling the Miami cocaine trade routes in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Blanco herself died by this method after having been shot twice in the head by a motorcyclist in a drive-by shooting in Medellín, Colombia. Drive-by shootings are included in the Ku Klux Klan's modus operandi; such shootings are associated with gang violence in urban areas of the United States but occur in other contexts and other countries.
The tactic is called a "drive-by". The primary motivations for a gang-involved drive-by include intimidation and assassination of rival street gang members. Numerous hip hop artists have been targeted in drive-bys. I. G. Big L, Smoke Dawg, Mac Dre. In 2015, Jorja Leap, an UCLA anthropologist studying gang culture, pointed out how drive-by shooting tactics are being replaced by the "walk-up shooting" method, because murders have become more targeted and while driving there's low accuracy in aiming. In Italy the circulation of firearms is low, just over a million civilians own a firearm license, so face-to-face shooting or threats with firearms are rare. Drive-by shooting is common in professional criminal context as the statistical incidence says that all assaults with firearms are carried out with a running car or moped—this kind of vehicle is used for reasons of better mobility in the narrow city districts; as a matter of fact from the 1970s into the 21st century, the Camorra have been known for performing drive-by shootings during clan or gang wars, or to execute targeted murders.
One of the most striking episodes of drive-by shooting and terrorism, in Italy, was the 2018 Macerata attack, conducted against 6 African people by an Italian far-right member, Luca Traini, using an Alfa Romeo 147 which however failed and caused no deaths. In the first decade of the 21st century, drive-by shootings were used by militants in Iraq, including the assassinations of Waldemar Milewicz and Hatem Kamil. Cantabrian circle Caracole Shoot-and-scoot Hit and run BBC article on 17 November shooting Database of Iraqi civilian casualties
