Camorra in New York City

Camorra in New York
The Navy Street Gang, one of the Camorra groups in Brooklyn
Founding locationBrooklyn, New York City
Years active1885–1918
TerritoryBrooklyn and East Harlem
EthnicityNeapolitan American
Criminal activitiesVarious criminal rackets, mainly extortion, policy game, and wholesale fruit and vegetable markets.

The Brooklyn Camorra or New York Camorra (NY Camorra) was a loose grouping of early-20th-century organized crime gangs that formed among Italian immigrants originating in Naples and the surrounding Campania region living in Greater New York, particularly in Brooklyn.[1] In the early 20th century, the criminal underworld of New York City consisted largely of Italian Harlem-based Sicilians and groups of Neapolitans from Brooklyn, sometimes referred to as the Brooklyn Camorra, as Neapolitan organized crime is referred to as the Camorra.[1]

Although immigration from Naples and Campania to New York City was rather small compared to that from the rest of southern Italy and Sicily, criminal groups from that area would have a substantial impact on organized crime events in the 1910s. However, their recorded links to crime organisations in Italy were "weak to non-existent".[1]

  1. ^ a b c Critchley, The Origin of Organized Crime in America, p. 105