Decline of the Mafia.

HEADLINE: The Mob in Decline - A Special Report
A Battered and Ailing Mafia Is Losing Its Grip on America

BYLINE: By SELWYN RAAB, Special to The New York Times

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

BODY:
Battered by aggressive investigators and weakened by incompetent leadership, most of America's traditional Mafia families appear to be fading out of existence, law-enforcement officials and independent experts say.

The Mafia remains potent in the New York City area, where officials say the mob is hard to uproot because it has five separate and large crime families, and in the suburbs of Chicago. But in most other areas, where prosecutors have to contend with only a single family, the legendary mob that once controlled -

entire labor unions, city governments and criminal enterprises has clearly lost its grip.

Officials say the convictions of top Mafia leaders and their hierarchies have dismantled thriving underworld organizations in Philadelphia, New Jersey, New England, New Orleans, Kansas City, Detroit, Milwaukee and St. Louis.

'The Geritol Gang':

In Los Angeles, investigators speak of the "Mickey Mouse Mafia" and say the mob is so enfeebled that illegal bookmakers refuse to pay it for the right to operate. In Cleveland and Denver, where Mafia gangs once flourished, officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation say each city is left with a lone mobster who was "made," or formally inducted in a secret ritual. And in New Jersey, Col. Justin Dintino, the State Police Superintendent, calls the Bruno-Scarfo group the "Geritol gang," so aged and ineffective does he find its leaders.

Many experts and officials say it is premature to write the Mafia's obituary, and they emphasize that its decline does not mean that organized crime has been banished: other groups are moving in to take the Mafia's place. In particular, Chinese international gangs called the Triads are making a strong bid to succeed the Mafia in the sophisticated crimes of large-scale gambling, loan sharking and labor racketeering.

But experts say the recent defeats of the Mafia will nevertheless mean real gains for the public, reducing the financial and social costs of rigged public contracts, of domination of labor unions like the teamsters and longshoremen, and of influence in the construction, trucking, trash-collection and garment-manufacturing industries.

Causes of Decline

While there is wide agreement that the Mafia is declining, there is much disagreement on the causes. Law-enforcement officials generally credit a long-term strategy adopted by the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the early 1980's: developing cases against the top leaders of organized-crime families and relying largely on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, as a courtroom tool.

By concentrating on enterprises rather than individuals, Federal prosecutors in the last five years have removed the high commands of families through the convictions and long prison sentences of almost 100 top Cosa Nostra leaders.

The chief architect of the RICO act, G. Robert Blakey, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, admits he was surprised by its impact. "It was sort of like George Kennan's containment policy of the Soviet Union," he said. "We tried it and by God it worked."

Impact of Changed Society

But two other experts, Peter A. Lupsha and Howard Abadinsky, say demographic changes, too, have helped undermine the Mafia. Mr. Lupsha, a political scientist at the University of New Mexico and who is a consultant on organized crime for Federal and state agencies, and Mr. Abadinsky, founder of the International Association for the Study of Organized Crime, a research organization, cite these factors:

*The dispersal of white populations away from urban neighborhoods. This diminished both the Mafia's political influence, which was strongest in Italian-American sections of big cities, and the surreptitious protection that organized-crime bosses often got from the local police and political machines.

*A new generation of Mafia leaders who took control after the convictions or deaths of previous bosses and capos, or captains, but who were less competent than their predecessors.

*The disintegration of traditional Mafia loyalties, with members breaking the code of silence to become informers against leaders.

*The emergence of rival crime groups controlled by Asians, Colombians, black Americans and the Sicilian Mafia, a powerful unit that operates independently of America's Mafia or Cosa Nostra. These new groups dominate drug trafficking and illegal gambling, especially in the inner cities.

A Multinational Trend
"The real trend in organized crime today is transnational with the ability to move drugs and money across borders," Mr. Lupsha said. "The old Italian-American organized crime groups were too content with what they had and too slow to think globally."

Outside of New York and Chicago, the Mafia is an anachronism, Mr. Abadinsky said, adding: "They changed like the rest of society. The younger ones are better educated than their elders, they have more opportunities in life and they know the mob is being pounded by the Feds."

Many experts say the American Mafia lacks the nerve and ability to compete with the new underworld rivals. Ronald Goldstock, the director of New York's Organized Crime Task Force, said a high-ranking Mafia defector had bitterly told him that his crew could no longer find reliable assassins in its own ranks and had to take outside contracts.

"The new drug gangs are wild groups, and the old-timers don't want any confrontations with them," said Ralph F. Salerno, a former New York detective who is a consultant to Congressional committees on organized crime. "Moreover, west of the Mississippi, there is nothing left of the Cosa Nostra to fight anybody."

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