When this troper's mother lived in an east-coast city with a large Italian population, it was widely known that the Mafia was also present. There were certain neighborhoods that had no crime, period. They weren't the neighborhoods where the suspected mob bosses lived ... they were the neighborhoods where the ''parents'' of the suspected mob bosses lived.

This troper and my wife were moving to New York City, and we were spending several months with her family while I searched for a job (she already had one, but it didn't bring in enough to get an apartment). I was having difficulty parking in a tight space when two young men came up, talked me in, and offered to watch our stuff while we unloaded. This saved us a great deal of time, since it meant that we didn't have to lock up or leave one of us with the car at all times. My mother-in-law thanked them, which I took as a sign they were trustworthy, and I gratefully accepted. Later on, when I asked who the young men had been, she casually answered: "Oh, they're just the local drug dealers."