Feb 16 2007
Insights Into The Mafia With Donnie Brasco
Bulletin: What organized crime group is most powerful today?
JP: The most powerful and fearsome are the Russians and the Albanians. The Colombians are just drugs. The Russians and Albanians are into everything from stocks to drugs and they are ruthless. The American Mafia won’t walk into a restaurant and kill anyone, but the target. The Russians will kill everyone in the restaurant. The American Mafia kill people they are involved with, not innocent bystanders.
Bulletin: Can the government ever fully eliminate organized crime or just contain it?
JP:?You can’t eliminate it because everyone is an individual and someone will always not to work. You have to stay on it so the octopus won’t grow more tentacles. You will never completely eliminate crime.
Bulletin: What is the biggest misconception about the mafia for most Americans?
JP: The romanticizing of it! I never heard a wise guy speak like Marlon Brando in the “Godfather.” I think it stayed on top for so long because of the public fascination. They think these guys are walking around in $3,000 suits in big corporate suites. These guys are thugs and thieves who think it is okay to steal from honest people.
Bulletin: Why do stars admire these guys so much?
JP: A lot of these guys grew up with them in the neighborhoods. On one hand you understand because they grew up with them, so that is most of it. It’s a sense of loyalty from the neighborhoods. It doesn’t lend to good to the public image.
Bulletin: What television show really betrays the mafia?
JP:?”The Sopranos!” There is a lot of reality to this show. It shows these guys as they are. They hang around in the back of a strip club. They don’t show them in palatial office space. It shows the bickering between guys. It shows the illegal activities. It shows they are murderers and kill each other. Another thing it shows the family side. Now if they found a wise guy was going to a psychiatrist they would have whacked him right there.
