can lower intelligence and increase aggression levels, incited the initial crime wave in the mid-20th century, most acutely affecting heavily trafficked cities like New York. A strong correlation was found demonstrating that violent crime rates in New York and other big cities began to fall after lead was removed from American gasoline in the 1970s. Gang violence In the 20th century, notorious New York-based mobsters Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, and Lucky Luciano made headlines. The century's later decades are more famous for Mafia prosecutions (and prosecutors like Rudolph Giuliani) than for the influence of the Five Families. Violent gangs such as the Black Spades and the Westies influenced crime in the 1970s. The Bloods, Crips and MS-13 gangs of Los Angeles arrived in the city in the 1980s, but gained notoriety when they appeared on Rikers Island in 1993 to fight off the already established Latin Kings gang. Chinese gangs were also prominent in Chinatown, Manhattan, notably Ghost Shadows and Flying Dragons. From the 1990s until their 2013 arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a sting operation, an Orthodox Jewish gang led by Mendel Epstein and Martin Wolmark kidnapped and tortured a number of Jewish men from Borough Park and Midwood, Brooklyn in troubled marriages to force them into granting religious divorces to their wives, some of whom Epstein charged up to $100,000 to commit the crimes. Subway crime and shoving attacks Crime on the New York City Subway reached a peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the city's subway having a crime rate higher than that of any other mass transit system in the world. During the 2000s, the subway had a lower crime rate, as crime started dropping in the 1990s. Since the 2010s however, crimes on the subway has been on an upward trend once again. Various approaches have been used to fight crime. A 2012 initiative by the MTA to prevent crime is to ban people who commit one in the subway system from entering it for a certain length of time. In the 1960s, mayor Robert Wagner ordered an increase in the Transit Police force from 1,219 to 3,100 officers. During the hours at which crimes most frequently occurred (between 8:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m.), the officers went on patrol in all stations and trains. In response, crime rates decreased, as extensively reported by the press. However, as a consequence