Since its creation in 1968, the Commission has monitored the activities of organized crime in order to assist law enforcement agencies and to fulfill a statutory obligation to inform the public. Many of the Commission’s own investigations, public hearings and reports over the years have exposed incursions by organized crime into specific areas of government and commerce, and those confidential probes are continuing. But it is important to provide an up-to-date context within which such investigations are conducted. The Commission last issued a comprehensive overview of this kind more than a dozen years ago in its Annual Report for 1989. Since then, much has occurred.

The Commission determined that it was vital to undertake a thorough assessment of the changing nature and threat of organized crime as we enter the 21st Century. Twenty-six witnesses assisted this process significantly during a two-day public hearing on April 29 and 30, 2003. Meanwhile, the Commission has continuously monitored and investigated the gamut of organized criminal activity in order to develop a comprehensive  understanding of its menace. This evaluation has led the Commission to the conclusion that society’s methods of controlling organized crime must change drastically if it aspires to wage a winnable war against drugs, to deter terrorism from within and without, and to thwart entrenched and emerging organized criminal enterprises.

Traditional elements of organized crime – the Mafia, La Cosa Nostra and other groups that came to dominate the underworld for much of the past century – have been joined by a chaotic, often violent array of criminal entities, adult gangs and drug-dealing syndicates that operate under new and different rules. In many cases, their members mingle with and prey upon those with similar ethnic, national and linguistic backgrounds, too new to the country to be understood or reached by a significant number of law enforcers. Longstanding traditional mob moneymakers, including narcotics trafficking, gambling, prostitution, loan-sharking, and labor racketeering, have over the last decade been augmented by multi-million-dollar financial frauds, money-laundering schemes, identity-theft rackets, and other sophisticated criminal activities that employ the latest electronic and computer gadgetry to subvert legitimate commerce. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of important investigative tools long utilized by law enforcement to combat organized crime has come under threat by the dark side of high technology.

This document presents a status report and threat assessment on the full spectrum of traditional and non-traditional organized crime in New Jersey. Each type of criminal enterprise is evaluated on the basis of its social and economic impacts, durability of leadership, resilience to law enforcement onslaughts, sophistication of operations, profitability of criminal activities, relationships with other groups, and outlook for the future. All of this material reveals a number of overriding trends that came into focus  during the Commission’s preparation of this overview. Those key trends include the following:

• PROLIFERATION OF HIGHLY STRUCTURED “SUPER GANGS”
  The changing face of organized crime is exemplified by the rise of a vast network of heavily armed drug-trafficking gangs sustained by a lucrative underground economy. Led by adults and served to a considerable extent by juveniles, these gangs – Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings and others – have exploded in recent years to command a widening turf that extends beyond New Jersey’s cities and into its suburban communities. Their presence ensures that illegal drugs, guns and other societal threats that were once the domain of traditional organized crime have gained a new and menacing lease in the hands of ultra-violent groups whose scope and activity pose an enormous challenge to law enforcement.


• THE “OLD” MOB IS REBUILDING
  Commission surveillances, together with information gathered from state and federal law enforcement agencies, have confirmed that elements of La Cosa Nostra are assiduously engaged in efforts to reclaim at least a share of the underworld empire they dominated until its dismantling by prosecutions and infighting during the 1980s and 1990s. Rebuilding activity is under way by all of the top LCN groups – the so-called “seven families” – in the New York-New Jersey-Philadelphia region: the Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese, Bonanno, Colombo, DeCavalcante and Bruno organizations.

   To varying degrees, each group continues to recruit members and associates, and a new generation of leaders has emerged. In recent years, these groups also have displayed a new behavioral twist that has become a topic of concern in the law enforcement community. Traditionally close-knit, self-involved and insular in nature, they have demonstrated an increased willingness to share personnel and other resources in the pursuit of common criminal goals.



• DEMAND IS FLOURISHING FOR ORGANIZED CRIME’S GOODS AND SERVICES
  The scope of public participation in a range of unlawful activities, including drug abuse, prostitution, pornography and illegal gambling has expanded over the past decade, providing organized crime with lucrative sources of revenue with which to continue to finance other criminal activities. On the drug front, demand for heroin and methamphetamine has begun to overtake that for cocaine in some areas in recent years. Ecstasy and LSD are widely available, along with other so- called “club drugs,” such as PCP, ketamine and rohypnol. Meanwhile, sports betting and video poker have become established, far-flung enterprises, generating millions in illicit profits and bankrolling efforts by organized crime groups to buy protection through payoffs and kickbacks to corrupt police and government officials.


• NON-TRADITIONAL GROUPS HAVE BECOME ENTRENCHED
  Little more than a decade has passed since the Commission recorded the emergence of organized crime groups operating well beyond the scope of the LCN, the Sicilian Mafia and other long-established segments of the underworld. Today, these disparate groups, migrating post-Cold War from the former Soviet Union, Asia and Africa, and from a raft of Caribbean and Latin American countries, including Mexico, Columbia, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, have grown to become prominent players in their own right. With disturbing transnational components, they substantially impede our ability to cope with the socioeconomic impact of organized crime upon our quality of life. They present law enforcement investigators with a host of difficult obstacles that must be overcome, including a penchant for violent, unpredictable behavior. Run by organizational hierarchies far different from those of traditional organized crime, they present an array of linguistic and cultural barriers. At the same time, these groups have demonstrated a willingness to forge temporary working alliances with elements of the LCN in order to achieve various criminal objectives.

  A disturbing aspect of these non-traditional groups is their distinctive predatory nature. They have the wherewithal and willingness to usurp and disrupt communities through intimidation and outright force, often focusing on victims of like ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Decades ago, when the Mafia was building the foundation of its criminal empire in America, entire neighborhoods lived in thrall of an extortionate enterprise known as the “Black Hand.” Today, similar phenomena afflict many communities, taking the form of home invasions, business shakedowns and the involuntary servitude of smuggled human beings. We are experiencing the emergence of an underclass of totally  subservient and dominated residents, whose fear of deportation or wariness of authorities makes them submit to intimidating criminals.



• THE CRIMES ARE MORE SOPHISTICATED
  While gambling, drug dealing, prostitution, loan-sharking, extortion and other such strong-arm activities remain the foundation criminal activities of the underworld, the collective face of organized crime is adapting. Innovative segments of new and old criminal groups have increasingly adopted sophisticated schemes that twist legitimate businesses into enterprises making money illegally. Carefully contrived and highly lucrative frauds, for example, have been mounted from within the health-care and telecommunications industries – as exemplified by a recent (February 2004) federal racketeering indictment charging members and associates of the Gambino LCN organization with bilking consumers out of more than $200 million in bogus telephone billings. Moreover, organized criminals bent on manipulating stock markets have infiltrated Wall Street brokerage firms. And, as both a world financial center and a mecca for gamblers visiting Atlantic City’s casinos, the region also remains an integral transshipment point in the international money-laundering circuit.


• THE MOB HAS ENTERED THE COMPUTER AGE
  A primary reason for its heightened sophistication is that organized crime’s arsenal of tools and weaponry now includes a wide array of high-tech gear that has helped the underworld streamline its operations and evade detection. Law  enforcement officials are particularly concerned about the utility of remote electronic surveillance devices that, over the years, have become a staple in investigative and prosecutorial efforts to neutralize the mob. The available technology now is such that devices designed to monitor telephone and computer communications can easily be defeated by cheap, easy-to-obtain encoding and encryption mechanisms that scramble digital signals.

Just as the nature of the threat posed by organized crime is undergoing drastic change, so must the response by law enforcement and society at-large also evolve. Thus, the exposition and assessment of these important trends provides the basis for a detailed series of recommendations, outlined at the conclusion of this report, in which the Commission calls for a range of strategic and tactical measures to improve the response system.