How realistic was Furio's attack on the massage parlor in the Sopranos?

Cafe Society
1

Ok, one of those seemingly stupid questions but not that stupid if you give me a chance here.

On Sopranos season 2, Furio’s first mission for Tony is for him to shake down and terrorize this massage parlor because they weren’t giving back enough money.

I understand the Sopranos is fiction, but the mob does run a protection racket. I agree Furio would be sent in, but realistically, would he have fired a gun several times, including at the owner’s kneecap? It seems without the gunfire he made enough of an impact; that is, does the mob go that extreme for the punishment to set an example?

Is the protection racket that severe or did the TV series make the violence absurdly exaggerated on purpose? It seems that even crackheads and dope dealers would be cutting deals with cops to bust out the protection racket.

2

Jack Garcia, the FBI agent that infiltrated the Gambino family under capo Gregory DePalma, wrote a book called Making Jack Falcone - An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family. This book is neat because it details mob business in the 2000s. Most books out there seem to be about the mafia of the 1970s-90s.

Anyway, in the book he mentions several times that Greg DePalma(a very old school mob guy) would call him up in a rage, demanding that he go beat a guy with a baseball bat or shoot him in the knee caps. Jack always managed to stall or distract Greg with a story about how he couldn’t find the guy(s).

I think violence is usually not necessary. I even got the sense that a lot of the “extorted” businessmen actually wanted to give Greg DePalma money. I guess it made them feel like connected guys.