The City of Rochester in Western New York State has always been a large and vibrant community. Its early history is filled with examples of the immigrant experience, not the least of which were the hundreds of thousands of Southern Italians and Sicilians who flocked to the area upon first arriving in the United States from their Mediterranean homeland.
Since at least the very beginning of the 20th century, Rochester would play host to large blocks of Calabrian and Sicilian nationals who chose to settle there and start their new lives. Among these hard-working people were the so-called “malandrina,” or bad ones, who had also immigrated to the new land in search of riches and a way to better their lives.
Intermingled among the millions of hard-working Italian peasants who came to the “new land” were elements of Sicily’s dreaded Mafia, Calabria’s Societa’ Onorata, and the Camorra of Naples. These ancient criminal networks as well as other independent Italian criminals later formed La Mano Nera, better known as The Blackhand, which were early extortion gangs comprised of various Italian hoodlums that preyed on their communities.
There were also many hoodlums of other ethnicities who embedded themselves into the very fabric of the city and its suburbs as well, making the area their own. For well over a century, from at least 1900 up through the 2000s, these blended “Italian Mobs” worked separately and sometimes together to wreak havoc across Rochester.
For many years, law enforcement authorities believed that the City of Rochester was the sole dominion and under the ironclad control of the Stefano Magaddino Crime Family headquartered in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls section of Western New York State. Although that’s true, what’s also true is that Rochester has always had a very large and diverse criminal underworld that was never completely harnessed by any single criminal entity.
So, despite the strength and domination that the Buffalo Family enjoyed in many other cities and towns sprinkled throughout New York State and into Canada, the City of Rochester was always a bit different.
