Quote from: Oldschool on June 13, 2013, 03:57 pmBeing the boss or high up in a drug syndicate does makes you a dangerous person but to be a truly hard criminal you need to do your own dirty work. Far too much risk to have someone else know your secrets, what you have ordered people do, who you are, etc. For self preservation and longevity in the criminal world you will need to take it upon yourself to "fix" problems without another soul ever knowing you are connected. It can be quite easy if the problem is a junky, especially if they are a full junky who will inject drugs they found in their driveway in a bag on the floor. Or if you only want to talk to someone (in a firearm controlled country) who is screening calls and owes money etc what you do i wait until night time, turn of the power to the house in the meter box and wait. They will always come out, sometimes strait away, sometimes 15 minutes, but you will get to talk to them. Thankfully most true hardened criminals are inconspicuous, hold regular jobs and blend in with normal society. Most would never know they passed an old school killer in the shopping center the other day as he purchased his bread and milk. Only those that have been there will notice small "tells" like the faded swallow tattoo, work out knuckles, or the constant heightened situational awareness.The ability to do your own dirty work is a necessary skill - the leader of any group must be able to do any job he assigns or delegates to another person so he is not entirely reliant upon them to do it but rather sees it as a better way to do it if time is stretched. You definitely hit the nail on the head for the heightened sense of awareness though and is something I've seen these past few years. I can stand within inches watching a drug deal go by and they'd never notice I was onto them - now what if I was a cop? I think the awareness is part and parcel of being a higher ranking member or the boss as it isn't just the guy with the money or anything like that, but a whole spectrum of skills to help you get by; awareness, mental calculations, trend spotting, understanding of human nature, self discipline, decisiveness, in-check ego etc. Not many are cut out to reach the higher echelons and the ones caught and on TV are often the ones who didn't have those skills and caught a lucky break or became greedy, a big violation of the self-discipline principle. Anyone who can't haul their ass out of bed 7 days a week at 5am and work the whole day straight with no slacking simply isn't cut out to lead.