The wire v the sopranos

Sport Hurling Dream Team
21

Too powerful.

22

The mob infiltrated the justice and political systems and union movements in a way that the gangs from the hood would have no ability to do E.g getting JFK elected

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And then shot

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24

:roll_eyes:

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Iā€™ll let ye know when Iā€™ve watched them.

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@BruidheanChaorthainn low level street gangs usually consume themselves and are concerned with relatively small areas of turf.

The Mafia had a much bigger over arching structure and infiltrated nearly every facet of power in America. There was a motivation/necessity to take them down.

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27

Couple of reasons.

There was and is a culture of not cooperating, remember in season one when there was a small example of trying to ā€˜turnā€™ a low level dealer threatening the jail time from a trumped up charge, but he took the years instead. The only true informant, bubbles, volunteered as payback after his sidekick Johnny got beaten.

Also, similar to the mob, witnesses werenā€™t safe, William Gant was shot even though Dā€™angelo walked. That message was clearly sent. But these arenā€™t big mob breaking RICO cases, there is little money and power to protect these witnesses as the series showed. This is known and another reason not to co-operate and turn.

But the main reason I think is the lack of trust in the police from the black community. They arenā€™t relied on so you have to protect yourself, by in this case not being seen as a co-operator. This is very different to mafia families who while they disliked police didnā€™t have a divide from them, they bribed them often, unthinkable in poor black communities where the more likely interaction would be police mistreating you by say breaking fingers and ā€˜seizingā€™ money or shooting or assaulting them while drunk.

A part of this need for total self reliance is maintaining your street reputation, these are poor drug dealers who never leave Baltimore in their entire lives. They canā€™t envision moving off to Arizona or whatever if things get hairy. All they have is where they are from and they know they will always live and be known there. So they canā€™t be known as a snitch.

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