The Long Island Mob – In this multi-part series, learn the who’s who and what’s what of the mafia’s expansion onto Long Island, New York.
Today, nearly three million people reside in Nassau and Suffolk counties which together comprise the Long Island region of what is considered part of the greater New York metropolitan area. The first heavy surge of development and move out to Long Island from the inner city began a few years after WWII. The mass migration to the suburbs started in earnest by the early to mid-1950s. All during the 1960s through the 1980s period, both counties grew exponentially in both residential home development and population as well as light and heavy industry required to service those new residents.
In their leisure time, many of these new suburban residents wanted to be entertained and, for many people, a base enjoyment has always been wagering something of value on a hunch, a challenge, or a bet in one form or another. But in order for someone to place a wager, there has to be somebody on the other side of the table to accept that wager. Soon, people were searching out their local neighborhood for a bookie, a numbers runner, a local card game, maybe a friendly little dice game (floating, of course), football parlay sheets, a one-armed bandit at a local candy store, or any number of other games of chance.
And just as millions of former New York City residents of every stripe flocked out to the Island during those years, so, too, did many guys from the inner city who made their living as professional gamblers. In those early years, many were bookmakers who specialized exclusively in accepting only horse bets. Others were strictly sports bookmakers who only handled wagers on college and professional sports teams while other bookmakers handled both. It was only natural they brought their gambling acumen out to the Island with them. With the legalization of off-track betting in the early 1970s, the previously highly lucrative but illegal horse-betting business slowly died out.
Nowadays, it’s a rare occurrence for a bettor to follow horse racing at all. By and large, the vast majority of all wagering bets with bookmakers is on the wide variety of sports games and exotic wagering bets they offer, baseball, basketball, football, soccer, boxing, etc.
There were other gamblers who concentrated only on the policy racket or ‘numbers’ game. This was a hugely popular and lucrative racket for many decades before the New York State government passed legislation in Albany legalizing the sale of Lotto tickets. Then, slowly but surely, NYS introduced many other lottery variations that gaming officials could dream up such as Pick-6, Powerball, Mega Millions, a variety of scratch-offs, etc.
And just like all illicit gambling that went on daily throughout New York City during that era, out on Long Island the gambling rackets were also wide open and available in nearly every little town and hamlet across both counties. Bookmaking became rampant, while the policy game was largely confined and limited to the few poorer black neighborhoods that dotted the Island. Numbers was always a poor man’s game because a bettor could literally wager as little as a nickel, dime, or quarter if that’s all he had to bet. Subsequently, policy numbers and lotteries were not as prevalent in the suburbs as they were back in the inner city.
Button Guys has decided to take a good look at the underworld landscape and illegal gambling rackets that became active on Long Island during the 1960s through 1980s timeline. This exposé documents nearly thirty years of what was what, and who was who in the underworld landscape of Long Island. Bar none…The most in-depth investigative exposé ever written about Cosa Nostra’s expansion onto Long Island.
