All language subtitles for Lords.of.the.Mafia.with.Robert.Stack.S01E10.City.Gangs.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

Gangs destroy communities

just like their bullets
destroyed people.

Child warriors,
communities under siege,

and the look at the origins

of one of America's most
notorious street gangs.

Well, you had your
leader of all leaders,

which was Raymond Washington.

Next on
"Lords of the Mafia."

Hey, Ray,
Ray, come here, yo.

August, 1979, a 29-year-old
man is called to a car

by someone he apparently knows.

Moments later, a shotgun
rips a hole in his chest,

and he left to die.

Had this crime occurred
even a few years earlier,

it would've merited
front page headlines.

But by 1979, gang-related
homicides are averaging

almost one murder
every 32 hours.

What the press apparently
did not realize at the time

was that the victim, Raymond
Lee Washington, was a founder

of the Notorious Street
gang called the Crips.

Once a handful of
teenagers dedicated

to protecting their
turf, by the 1990s,

Crips numbered in
the tens of thousands

and that expanded their
criminal influence

to wreak havoc throughout
the United States.

The story of the Crips
begins in the early 1940s

when the explosion
of wartime industry

triggered a major migration
of workers from the south.

By 1944, the Black population

of Los Angeles had
more than doubled.

Anti-minority covenants

and whites-only deed provisions
in place since the 1920s

kept Blacks from living outside

of carefully prescribed regions.

Overcrowding was severe.

The first public housing
projects erected in Watts

were in part an attempt
to alleviate the problem.

But as a population
continued to expand,

pressure mounted on
surrounding white communities

to change their practices.

That pressure often
erupted in violence.

Blacks who ventured
across the unmarked border

were often attacked
by teenage members

of a new gang called
the Spook Hunters,

one of a handful of white
gangs active at this time.

It was only natural for
LA's newest residents

to respond in kind.

It was into this environment

that a young Raymond
Lee Washington

and his family
arrived from Texas.

Born in 1953, Raymond soon
hooked up with the Avenues,

one of many gangs
active at the time.

In the '60s, we had like,
you know, the Slausons,

the Gladiators, the
Businessmans, the Rebel Routes.

And basically, you know, back
then it wasn't, you know,

not real violent, you know?

Greg Batman Davis
would eventually become

a founding member of the Crips

and is one of the few
still alive today.

For the first time
on television,

his exclusive interview
reveals a genesis

of the gang from its inception

and provides a
firsthand portrait of
the modern gang world.

Batman has long since retired

from the gang banger lifestyle,
but in the early 1960s,

he was a fledgling member
of the Businessman,

and engaged in the
battles of the day.

You might have a gang fight,
you might see bumper jacks,

sometimes you might see
chain, you might see a knife,

but it wasn't
basically, you know,

you getting a gun and
kill somebody, you know?

The fights during that
time period usually emerge

over something such
as a girlfriend.

Some of the Blacks that lived
in the East Side started

to break out of the
central Vernon ghetto

and move on the West Side,

which was considered a more
affluent area at that time.

You know, there was sort
of this economic disparity

between Blacks who were able

to move on the West Side
and Blacks that weren't.

So then you start
to see this conflict

expanding in numbers
and in turfs,

and I believe in 1960 there
were about six homicides,

which was considered a lot
during that time period.

Back then, they had like
zip guns and stuff like that.

But you know, at that time

I was kind of still
kind of young.

Didn't nobody wanna show
me how to make no zip gun.

So I had to figure it out.

I made a 38 zip gun.

I made a 410 zip gun.

Like I say, you know, back
then it wasn't too much,

you know, about
no gun, you know,

'cause everybody was
believing in fighting.

It soon became clear

the South Central
was in a decline.

The post-war economic
boom was over.

Factories closed or relocated.

And while a 1954 Supreme Court
ruling against segregation

had open schools and other
services to Black families,

the ruling had
unintended consequences.

After the the 1954
Supreme Court ruling,

the housing opened up,
schooling opened up,

so a lot of middle class,

people from in the inner
city were able to move out,

and with them, they took their
middle class organizations,

their middle class organizing
capacities and so on,

leaving in the inner city

those who are less capable
of doing those things,

and the gap has
been filled in part

by the emergence
of street gangs.

Dr. Malcolm Klein
has studied gang issues

for close to 40 years.

He recently retired
as a director

of the Social Science
Research Institute

at the University of
Southern California.

His book, "The
American Street Gang,"

challenges assumptions made
by media and law enforcement

about gangs and how
best to control them.

When I started in 1962,

there were about 50
cities across the country,

cities or suburbs
of large cities,

that had a gang
problem of some sort.

By 1970, that had doubled, by
1980 had a doubled it again.

And then in the mid
'80s and the '90s,

it just exploded there.

The most recent national survey

done by the National
Youth Gang Center

lists about 4,000 jurisdictions,

cities to small towns
and rural areas,

that have a gang problem.

That's just an enormous
explosion of this problem.

By 1965,

the seeds of that future
had already been planted.

On August 11th,
California Highway Patrol

arrested a South Central
motorist for drunk driving.

What started as a minor
skirmish exploded into six days

of full skill rebellion

that came to be known
as the Watts Riots.

There is no evidence to suggest

young Raymond participated
in the violence,

but it is almost certain
he witnessed the chaos.

We had our hands on some
of the major Black gangs

in the area at the time,

and they didn't get
involved in the Watts Riots

until the third day or
the third night in fact,

and by and large, their
involvement was going down

and watching the scene.

In the end,
four people were dead.

Another thousand
had been injured.

A special governor's commission

later identified major
causes for the rebellion

as including an absence of
job opportunities for Blacks

and a resentment of the Los
Angeles Police Department.

Then in his 15th
year of leadership

under Chief William Parker,

the commission echoed
both the Governor

and LA's District
Attorney at the time

in criticizing Parker's
strong arm approach

to law enforcement,

which many South Central
residents experienced firsthand.

In the early '60s, LAPD
was run by Chief Parker,

who was a tremendous
reformed chief.

He took what had been a
notoriously nationally,

notoriously corrupt department

and turned it around
extremely effectively.

But it distanced itself
from the community.

This was especially true in
South Central Los Angeles

and in East Los Angeles.

As a community
started to rebuild,

street gangs like the
Slausons and the Gladiators

all but disappeared.

For the next four years,

gang-related violence was
practically non-existent.

Shortly after the
Watts Rebellion in 1965,

there was a whole
bunch of organizations

and programs started
in Los Angeles

by the youth who used
to be in these clubs.

And one of them was the
Black Panther Party,

which was originally
founded in Oakland.

LA started a chapter under a
guy named Alprentice Carter,

also known as Bunche,

and he was a Slauson member,

a club that existed
in Los Angeles

from the '50s throughout
the early '60s.

So as he became the
president of this chapter,

it started to get a
lot of youths involved

in this new movement.

While most
of the US condemned

the Black Panther's
revolutionary agenda,

their message of community-based
independence struck a chord

with the residence
of South Central.

And even though they
were too young to join,

it is likely Raymond

and his cohorts absorbed
the Panthers rhetoric

through rallies and outreach
programs in the community.

The Black Panthers was pushing
brothers to go to school.

They was feeding
breakfast in the morning.

We was having
breakfast and stuff.

Like I told you, I
wanted to be a Panther,

but it wasn't going down.

My mother wouldn't
let me be one.

In late
November of 1968,

FBI director J Edgar
Hoover issued a memo

directing his agents
to exploit all avenues

of creating dissension
within the ranks

of the Black Panther Party.

Hoover's strategy involved
counterintelligence measures,

pitting the Panthers
against the US organization

and other Black power movement

under the leadership
of Ron Karenga,

creator of the
Kwanzaa celebration.

It is relatively
easy for the FBI

to flame the fires of rhetoric

by fabricating documents
and political cartoons

seemingly generated
by each side.

These covert efforts helped turn

an ongoing philosophical
debate into a deadly battle.

In January of
1969, Bunche Carter

and John Huggins were gunned
down on the UCLA campus,

allegedly by members
of the US organization.

Many years later,

a retired FBI agent
came forward with claims

that the Bureau had helped
plan the assassination.

The demise of the Black Panthers

in Los Angeles was said
to be yet another blow

to a generation
of Black teenagers

who'd witnessed many of their
role models assassinated

throughout the 1960s.

What I'm saying
in so many words,

they should have let
the Panthers went on

because it probably
would've never been

no Crips and no Bloods.

According
to Batman Davis,

15-year-old Raymond
Washington decided it was time

for his generation
to take a stand.

It was 10 guys, and you know,

basically everybody
lived in the community.

Remember the Panthers, man?

- Yeah
- They was strong, man.

Yeah, they was tight, man.

They protected the
community, man.

Look around you, man.

Who gonna protect ours?

But you and I, man, we
love our people man.

We love this community.

Somebody gotta protect it.

Look around you, man.

We the only ones, man.

We the only ones who care.

We should start
our own thing, man.

- Yeah, yeah.
- Baby Cribs.

- Yeah, Baby Crib.
- Baby Cribs.

Sound good, huh, man?
- Yeah, yeah.

Y'all down, man?

We wore a earring
in our left ear.

We wore ace deuce
hat, beige khakis,

suspenders dropped down,

a glove on the left hand,
black, and we had a cane.

That's how peoples
knew who we was.

Cribs weren't thinking
in terms of robberies

and homicides and fighting.

They were more protected
to the neighborhood.

Couldn't nobody come
through and snatch no purses,

break in no cars or
nothing like that,

'cause it was like
a community thing.

You know, the guys

in the neighborhood
protected that neighborhood.

According
to one source,

the name Crib became
Crip because of the
gang's unique walk,

the use of canes and the
distinctive way of standing

where the left foot turned out,

all of which led one resident
to describe them as crip,

short for crippled.

Reportedly, Raymond Washington
himself once claimed

that Crip referred to the
"Tales from the Crypt,"

a popular movie released
in the early '70s.

One fact everyone
seems to agree on

is that Raymond Lee
Washington was a soft spoken,

charismatic leader, intent
on building an empire.

Well, you had your
leader over all leaders,

which was Raymond Washington.

A lot of people you
can't whoop, okay?

You can't whoop him.

But you hear people saying,
"Oh, if he was here,

I'll do this to him
and that and that."

Hit him, hit him.

Yeah, let's go, hit him.

Hit him, Ray. Hit
him, Ray, yeah.

9 outta 10,

the guys that you hear say
that couldn't whip Raymond.

No way, 'cause Raymond
likes to fight.

Hit him.

Yeah, hit him, hit him, hit him.

Yeah!

He like to fighting,

and you know if you get into
something you can always say,

"Well, I'm going to
get Raymond," you know?

And when you say a person's name

that everybody don't heard,
that scares them out automatic.

It has been reported

that Washington spread the
word about his new gang

on the walls of South Central,

continuing a long
tradition of gang graffiti.

Chitty chitty bang bang,

that was something everybody
that was a Crip used to say,

you know, 'cause
I used to say it.

I used to, you know,
you say something

and you make, you
make little rhyme.

Chitty chitty bang bang,
nothing but Crips and things.

Crips don't die, Crips multiply.

Chitty chitty bang
bang, Black or white,

all the Crips
gonna ride tonight.

Three up, two downs, all
the Crips from underground.

We don't
jive, we don't joke,

we don't smoke, we don't
take, get land in court.

It was going to happen.

These were gang-spawning areas.

If Raymond Washington

and a few of his buddies
hadn't started up a Crip gang,

somebody else would've
started up a something gang.

A 59th Street gang, a Watergate
gang, a Democrat gang.

God knows what it
would've been called,

but there would've been
gangs in South Central.

By the time you
get to '71, '72,

they started turning their
energies more towards robberies

and stealing materials
and stealing things,

because they didn't
have any money.

The economics during
that time was depressing

for the youths.

You know, it's a whole
lot of stuff came into play

for us to go negative
against other peoples.

And I'm not going to say it
was all because of property.

I'm not gonna say that.

First homicides that a
crib member participated in

was the stealing of a leather
coat, which was initially

for trying to fashion
themselves after the Panthers.

March,
1972, Robert Bilau

and his friends were
leaving a concert

at the Hollywood Palladium
when a group of cribs demanded

that they hand over their
leather coats, Bilau refused.

And he fell down on the ground

and hit the back of
his head on the curb.

And he eventually died later
that day in the hospital.

News of
the criminal exploits

gave the Crips an
instant notoriety

that other delinquent
use found attractive.

There was power to
be found in numbers.

It was extremely popular.

In fact, having large numbers.

Raymond was able to
recruit a lot of people

to continue cripping in
different neighborhoods.

Like I said,
from the beginning

when we first started
wasn't but 10, okay?

It wasn't nothing but
the East Side Baby Cribs.

Then you had your
East Side Crips,

then came the West Side
and Compton Crips, okay?

At that time, things started
really changing, man.

By 1972, eight Crip
gangs were thriving

in Los Angeles County,

boasting a total membership
of approximately 200 members.

Even though these gangs
are only loosely affiliated

with Washington's
original Crip set,

their aggregate size and
influence was starting

to pose a threat to other gangs

also operating in the region.

A Brim, a guy named
Fred, was murdered.

They believed by Crip.

And then around 1972,
a group in Compton,

the Piru Boys, they
got into a conflict

with the Compton Crips,

and they had a meeting
on Piru Street,

and they organized
all these other clubs

and groups that weren't
Crips to get together

and say, you know,

what are we gonna do about
this growing Crip presence

and this domination
that they're trying

to do over the community?

And that's when they
decided to come up

with this new identity,

which eventually
emerged into the Bloods.

I'd say about the late part
of '72, early part of '73,

we started flying them rags.

The red was for the Bloods and
the blue was for the Crips.

The sergeant used to
work this unit was friendly

with one of the founders
of one of the Piru sets.

And when he asked him why,

he's looking for some deep,
dark, sociological reason,

and why they had
Blood, you know,

is it for shedding the
blood of your enemy

or bleeding for your gang or,

and he said, he
just looked at him,

shook his head, and said,

"Remember, we used to
have to buy our rags

at the liquor store,

and they only sold two
colors, red and blue,

and they already had blue."

And it could have
been just simply that.

Wesley
McBride is a sergeant

in the LA Sheriff's Department
Safe Streets Bureau.

He is also president

of the National Alliance of
Gang Investigators Associations

as well as his
California branch.

He has been following gang
trends for over 25 years.

People talk about, well,

they didn't get
violent until the '80s.

Well, I can tell you, I came
into this detail in 1972,

and it was violent then.

The difference is they had
junk guns in those days.

They didn't have
necessarily good guns,

sawed-off shotguns and 22s,

where now they all have
excellent weaponry,

new 9 millimeter or 380 tends
to be their favorite weapon.

And you put a lot of bullets
in the air with one of those.

Los Angeles boosts

the largest sheriff's
department in the nation.

Every day, gang enforcement
teams deploy into the field.

Their work and
unique combination

of enforcement and prevention.

Probably out of
every 100 houses,

99 of them are just families

trying to make a living
every single day.

And each house has, you
know, a couple little kids,

and it only takes one or
two houses on every block,

the kids that turn
into gang members

and end up becoming the ones

that end up terrorizing
the whole community.

We like, if you get a
youngster's gang banger,

it's most likely, you
know what I'm saying?

It's a inheritance in
here before he came.

There's intervention programs.

We try to refer kids to
community-based organizations.

You know, like little
league, church organizations.

We try to get in the family,

we get these kids
when they're young

and get them referred to maybe
some other type of program.

You know, we might keep
them out of the gangs,

but it's hard, you know,

they growing up in
these neighborhoods
and being around it,

it's almost glamorous to them.

What do
you think is gonna happen

if Carlo, the Crips came
through the neighborhood,

they're looking for
someone to shoot.

If you standing out,

you're looking like that,
what's gonna happen?

Probably shoot at him.

Probably shoot,
that's about it.

By 1973,
gangs were proliferating

at an alarming
rate fueled in part

by an increasingly
deadly rivalry

between the Crips
and the Bloods.

Between 1972 and 1979,

the number of gang-related
homicides rose from 55 to 276.

Washington himself was in prison

for much of this time period,

incarcerated for
second degree robbery.

Without central leadership,

the various Crip sets continued
to splinter and fragment.

These new sets often took names

identifying their
region of control.

Washington's original
East Side Crips

became the East Coast Crips,

with subgroups appending
specific street numbers

to their name.

If a set was large enough

to encompass several
blocks in a row,

they might take the name
Rolling 30s, for example,

to indicate control of every
street between 30th and 39th.

The other thing to
understand about Crips

for your viewers is that
there is no Crip gang.

There are lots of Crip gangs.

Some of them are
affiliated with each other

and feel an affinity.

Some of them don't
get along well at all.

And there are lots of Crip
against Crip violent activities.

When you get to
the late 1970s,

you start to see these rivalries
emerge within the Crips.

And these rivalries
are now, you know,

20 years old, and
they're still here today.

One of the biggest
Crip rivalries

in South LA is between
the Rolling '60s Crips

and the A Tray gangster Crips.

When
Raymond Washington

finally emerged from prison,

he found himself in a
world at war with itself.

Gone with the
traditional fist fights,

the new world valued
bullets over punches.

Homicide is much more common

amongst gang members
now than it used to be.

And 90 to 95%

of those homicides are
firearm-caused homicides.

I can go back and remember

one night me and
him got together,

and he didn't know I had a
little sawed-off shotgun.

And I say, "Raymond, I
got a shotgun like that,"

and I pulled it out my pants,

and I ain't never
seen him that angry.

What are you doing with that?

He was in the uproar.

He took the gun, threw
the gun to the sewer.

And I looked at him, I said,

"Man, why you throw my
gun down there, man?

What's wrong with you?"

We can fight.

I said, "But, you know,
things starting to change."

You know, guys are
starting using guns,

you know, to handle
they business now.

'cause a lot of guys
don't want to fight

or a lot of guys can't fight,
you know what I'm saying?

So after then, I would never
tell Raymond that I had a gun.

And I say, "Man,
Raymond, don't know."

In the old days, if two
of us beat up one of you,

you and your group could
or could not retaliate,

it was pretty much
an option for you.

But if two of us shoot
and kill one of yours,

the demand character of
that situation is such

that you are almost
bound and determined

somebody in your group to
try and repay that event

to fire back at some point,
maybe not successfully,

but the requirement to
do so is much greater

than it used to be.

So the homicide cycles
on itself, didn't
use to be the case.

If it was a way that we can
run it back to the beginning,

and if, like I said, if
Raymond was still here,

probably a whole lot of
this wouldn't be happening

the way it's happened because
a lot of guys ain't with that,

just straight killing
somebody, you know,

because of what he
got or what he said.

If I'm not mistaken,

he was trying to bring
everybody together

back up under the one umbrella,

and then we was gonna
talk to the Bloods.

Everything was
trying to go smooth,

and things went haywire
after he got killed.

Hey, Ray,
Ray, come here, yo.

I know how Raymond was.

He used to like always tell
us if somebody call us,

don't walk up on the car.

You know, make them get out.

Whoever they say they was,
Raymond say, "I know him."

And he walked up on the car,

and they say, when
he leaned on the car,

he said, "Y'all
ain't something."

From the way I feel, I
think somebody on the inside

of the organization
killed Raymond

because some of
the guys was there.

I don't know if it was
behind power, leadership.

I don't know what it was behind.

August, 1979, the
founder of the Crips laid dying

on the streets of Los Angeles,

a victim of the same violence
he had helped to inspire.

In the coming decade,

thousands of young men would
follow in his footsteps.

Cripping to me at its best

is when we was all
one big happy family.

At the worst is when
Crips start killing Crips

and killing innocent peoples.

Okay?

And, huh.

I don't know, man.

It's just, it's real sad.

It's just sad,

because something
that we put together,

supposed to be something

for just protect the
neighborhood went sour.

Kids growing up

in gang territory
understand violence.

They're also
familiar with death.

Why then do gangs continue
to attract young members?

Oversimplifying it a bit,

family is the number one cause.

They let this child
be a gang member.

Now sometimes their ability
to stop it is limited

because of their
education, their jobs.

Both working or no jobs, and
they're poverty stricken.

We found, you know, parents
helping the kids sell drugs,

you know, because it's
putting food on the table.

Stuff like that.

You know, it starts
out with the gang members

asking the little kid to,
you know, hold some dope

or maybe carry a gun for them
and do these little errands.

And you know, they
have to, you know,

I guess they earn their stripes,
as the more things they do,

and before you know it,
they're caught up in it.

Kids join gangs by
and large for identity,

for status, for reputation,

for a sense of protection
against other gangs.

And the crime is a
byproduct of a lot of that.

It's important, it's
a piece of the action.

Much more important is
hanging around together,

socializing, being
with each other.

You can get love
from the homies

because they gonna
look out for you.

You know, you ain't, a lot of
kids don't get love at home.

In the early 1980s,

a new influence arrived in
Los Angeles, crack cocaine.

We became aware of crack
cocaine in the early '80s,

just before the Olympics.

We didn't call it crack,
we called it rock.

The gang members,

the early stages weren't
selling it at all.

Then they got hired kind of
as bodyguards and lookouts

and stuff for the big-time
drug dealers are running it.

And slowly took over most

of that crack
cocaine operations,

at least street level
operations in the neighborhoods.

Each gang sort of had
a kingpin, to of them.

This person would
have the connections

to bringing the drugs
into the community.

He sells it to the
street level dealer

in ounces or half
ounces or kilos.

And what it really does is
suck young kids into the gang.

It's a great recruitment tool

because the dope dealers have
money, cars, guns, girls,

and the little dysfunctional kid

standing around on the
corner has none of that.

The assumption was by many
law enforcement officials,

both locally and in
the federal agencies,

that gangs were now in
charge of drug sales

in inner city America,

that they were turning into
drug distribution gangs.

Our research across the nation
suggests that maybe 8 to 10%

of all the street gangs
are of this specialty type,

drug gangs or burglary
gangs, robbery gangs,

auto theft gangs,
gangs that concentrate

on a particular form
of criminal activity.

Law enforcement in some
cases, media in many cases,

pick out the more
dramatic examples

of the drug-selling group

and say, aha, this is
what gangs have become.

They're wrong.

Some gangs have become that.

The majority have not.

Like Raymond
Washington before him,

Batman was in prison
while the world changed.

He emerged to find the crack
explosion already in progress.

That's when I was
introduced to the cocaine.

I didn't really
know what it was,

'cause at first, when I
first went to see my friend,

he like, "So what you
gonna do while you out?"

I said, "I'm just gonna
kick it like that."

He like, "You running
with the little homies,

get them to rock it up,
and they know what to do.

They know what to do.

You wanna make some money?"

And I'm like, "Man,
make some money?"

You know?

I'm like, "What is
this stuff here?"

I had to be a part of
what was going down,

and I seen something
really go haywire.

You been knowing a person
for about 20 years,

all of a sudden now y'all is
into it because of the drugs.

You know, now he want to kill
you or you want to kill him.

Either it's behind,
he want to jack you

or he want this neighborhood
or you want the neighborhood.

So everybody want
to be Scarface.

Crips killing Crips.

Crips killing Bloods,

Bloods killing Bloods,
Bloods killing Crips.

The thing just went haywire.

The drugs came in and had
everybody going crazy.

It's all negative, you know,
understand what I'm saying?

But for any man to get in a car

to go and drive by
and shoot somebody,

that's a coward's move.

Because the person that
you might be shooting at,

the bullet might not hit him.

The bullet might just miss,
go through somebody house,

kill a baby in the
bed or anything.

Drive-bys are are one of
those mythologies of gang life

where everybody seems
to think, again,

I'm afraid fed by the media,

that most gang
homicides are drive-bys.

They're not.

That drive-bys are always,
are almost always fatal.

They are not, most of
them do not yield death.

While no drive-by
statistics were collected

in the early '80s, by 1991,

they were occurring at an
average rate of four per day.

2,000 people were
shot in those attacks,

with less than 10% of
those shots proving fatal.

Despite the media's focus
on drive-by shootings,

the fact remains

that most of the nearly 800
gang-related homicides chartered

that year occurred in
some other fashion.

The symbolic nature

of a drive-by is what
captures our attention.

Throughout the 1980s,

images and symbols
characteristic

of modern gang
culture is solidified.

All gangs have hand signs.

By the time you get to know
what one of them's hand sign is,

it's changed to something else.

The very first gang sign
was done by the Slausons,

and they used to throw up
a V for Slauson Village.

And after they threw up the V,

all the other clubs adapted
their own hand signs.

Real general, if you throw
up a C, that means Crip.

And if you throw up a
B, a variety of ways,

you can throw up a
B, which means Blood.

Gang members will throw signs,

make a hand sign
at another gang,

and then he'll answer
back with his or gunfire.

Tattoos generally
depict the gang,

the person's nickname maybe,
and his philosophical bent,

whether he'd be a Crip or Blood.

A crip would have maybe BK
Blood Killer tattooed on him.

A Blood would have CK Crip
Killer tattooed on him.

Does that
mean you're a Crip killer?

You ever put any
work in for the gang

and shoot anybody
that you a cop to?

No, I'm not violent.

Before all
the kids get to play

at this little park right
here on the colorful slide

with all the markings.

There's a variety of
different writing conventions

going on in graffiti.

First and foremost,
the name of the gang.

It's about
advertising your gang.

And then there are
symbolic things going on,

such as arrows, which mean

that this neighborhood is
being claimed by that turf.

And you'll see
arrows pointing down.

There's also
representation of the dead,

sort of commemorating gang
members who've died in conflict,

tombstone-like symbols

with the names of members
written inside them.

And in fact, sometimes

they'll even tattoo those
same things on their bodies.

Alonzo found that
graffiti was a good indication

of a gang's territory,

as warring gangs tended
to deface the graffiti

of their rivals with
greatest frequency

at the boundaries
of their influence.

This wall marks the
line between the turf

of the Rolling 30s Crips
and the Rolling 20s Bloods.

Crip gangs will often
X-out the letters B and P,

representative of the
Piru or Blood sets.

This is true even when
they're writing the P

in their own name.

Blood sets respond in kind,
avoiding the letter C.

Every name possesses an
inflammatory counterpart.

The chicken in this example
is a derogatory representation

of the Kitchen Crips,

while the crying toast is
an antagonistic pun aimed

at the East Coast Crips.

Well, one of the old
sayings of it was that

it was the newspapers
of the streets.

We look and see if
two gangs haven't been

marking each other out,

and all of a sudden they're
marking each other out,

we don't know why, and that
there's a problem has developed

'cause that's a capital
offense within the gang world.

And I can't tell you
how many we found dead

at the scene of
something like that.

The fights and the disputes

and the conflicts are
never really over the turf,

it's just over the identity
of the other organization.

Gang identity
is a powerful force.

And loyalty is tested
in ways designed

to separate the homies
from the wannabes.

This process has given rise
to a unique turn of phrase.

If I tell you to put in work,

you should know already
what I'm talking about.

That means you putting
in work for the hood.

That means get your pistol

and go down there
and put in work.

That's how gang members
become celebrities

within the community by putting
in a certain amount of work.

And if it results in a homicide,

then you really put in work.

The issue of gang
cohesiveness is central

to my way of
thinking about gangs.

Once gangs have formed,

the question is why do
they maintain themselves?

Why do they keep going?

And there are several
reasons for that.

One is that their activities
hold the together.

That's why they joined
in the first place.

And they're held together
by their own very nature.

But also people start
responding to gangs.

The neighborhood starts turning
its back on those youngsters

and the youngsters
feel more alienated.

Police crackdowns may take place

giving the gangs something
to fight against,

a kind of common
enemy, if you will.

So that once the gang is formed,

then social responses
to the gang kick in

and reinforce the
very alienation

that brought those
youngsters into the gang

in the first place, reinforcing
their bonds to the group,

reinforcing gang cohesiveness.

That's a very hard
thing to avoid.

What I would do if I were
a police organization,

I had my druthers, would be
to put a great deal more money

into community development,

into prevention
efforts early on,

rather than trying
to handle the problem

of the 16, 17,
18-year-old gang member

who's already fully
committed to that group

and not likely to be affected
by your suppressive efforts.

If you put him away for
three or four or five years,

he's gonna come back,

and he's gonna come back
more hardened, more convinced

that nobody loves him, and
he's gonna respond to that.

Both the news and
entertainment media function

as agents of gang cohesion.

By focusing on violence,
it could be argued

that the media reward gangs
for their sensational behavior.

There was an attraction,

particularly in Hollywood
and the TV industry

of showing gang members
and making them bad guys.

But you know, the old
Clint Eastwood type of guy.

What is it? The anti-hero type.

And that's not them at all.

They're thugs.

We spread the word about
gangs through TV, through MTV,

through the print media,
through movies and so on.

There's not a kid in America,

probably an adolescent at least,

who doesn't know what a gang
member presumably looks like,

talks like, acts
like, dresses like,

what the tattoos are like.

So lots of kids across the
country sort of imitate that,

mimic it to see how it feels.

And for some of them
it feels pretty good.

It gives them something
they haven't had before.

Los Angeles was
exporting much more

than the gangster culture

associated with the
Crips and the Bloods.

As early as the mid 1980s,
law enforcement officials

in Seattle and Portland were
starting to see Crips sets

thriving in their jurisdictions.

Street gangs have infiltrated
deep into rural America,

bringing with them a host
of associated problems.

The first sign of us
seeing any Crips here

in the El Paso area was
basically back in '89.

And when they came and
relocated to El Paso, you know,

basically had a huge following
from many of our kids

because of the fact that
they were from California.

Families were
getting out of LA,

saying, we're going back home.

We didn't have gangs
when I was a kid.

I'll take you back there,
and get you out of the gang.

And what they did, in fact
was just transport cancer

from here to there because
they didn't make that decision

till the house had been
shot up a few times,

and we'd arrested the kid
a few times for gang stuff.

And so now when she moves,

he's hardcore, he's
not getting out.

And that was in just
about every case,

the reason for the
initial migration.

Then once he gets there,
sees that that new area,

this virgin turf, the police,
nobody knows about gangs,

then they set up, call
some homies back here

who go out and help 'em and
maybe set up a dope network

around the surrounding little
communities like an octopus.

And pretty soon there is a
link between there and here.

For several years,
Sergeant McBride has charted

where Crip and Blood gangs
have appeared across the US.

His map does not distinguish
between transplants,

imitators or drug selling
outposts of Los Angeles gangs.

For McBride, it is enough

that Raymond Washington's
original group

of 10 has become a
national problem.

By 1987, gang violence

in Los Angeles had reached
epidemic proportions

with homicides occurring
at an average rate

of more than one a day.

In February of 1988, however,

Raymond Washington's
legacy would break out

of his South Central birthplace

and onto television
screens around the world.

27-year-old Karen Toshima
was celebrating a promotion

in Westwood, a popular night
spot near the UCLA campus.

As she walked in a crowd
down Broxton Avenue,

a member of the Rolling
'60s Crips opened fire

on a nearby rival.

Karen was killed
in the crossfire.

The local press
played that up very big.

One of our local city
councilmen offered a reward

of $10,000 for information

leading to the capture
of the shooter.

Now, in that same year,
there had been hundreds

of other shootings,
killings by gangs,

and no reward had
been offered at all.

A city councilperson named
Robert Farrell, who said,

"Unfortunately, a
perception that a life lost

in South Los Angeles, in
East LA does not measure up

to a life lost in Westwood."

And that's the way a
lot of the residents

of South Los
Angeles were feeling

because they saw a
heightened police presence.

So as soon as a prominent

or mainstream person is
affected by gang activities,

then the rest of us react.

The end result
was a renewed effort

by law enforcement to
suppress gang activity.

Chief Darryl Gates
received additional funding

and manpower for
his crash program,

community resources
against street hoodlums.

There was a time

when the Los Angeles Police
Department was listening

to the outcomes of our research.

And Darrell Gates
put out an order

to all stations in the LAPD,

that was Chief
Gates at that time,

that in the handling of gangs,

they should be very
careful not to do anything

that would bring status
or identity to the gangs

because this would
increase their strengths.

When the gangs became notably
worse during the 1980s

when they became more
numerous, more violent,

LAPD, along with a lot of
other police departments,

forgot that message and
simply turned to crackdowns

doing more of what they
already knew how to do.

I ain't gonna just shoot
the whole police force down

'cause you got good
police, you got bad police.

But if I'm a Crip,

I get dropped off in
the Bloods neighborhood.

They get on the mic and
holler out, "We got a Crip,"

same thing they do with them.

They drop them off in
a Crip neighborhood

and holler out,
"We got a Blood!"

It's sad because why would you

bring somebody in
somebody else's community

knowing that this
was gonna happen?

LAPD operated at one point

something called
Operation Hammer,

which they feel badly about now,

but at the time it
was a very big thing.

A thousand officers sweep
into South Central Los Angeles

to pick up as many gang
members on a Friday,

on a Saturday night as
they could possibly do.

A war, if we're
going to fight a war,

must be sustained until
you achieve your objective.

Our objective is to get rid
of the little terrorists

that are creating
havoc on our streets.

We think because of
the show of force

that crime generally
will go down.

Those backfired essentially,

they didn't get many
legitimate arrests,

they didn't get many felony
convictions out of those,

but they sure angered
an awful lot of people,

and they alienated gang
members even further

than they were alienated
against the LAPD to begin with.

At the end of 1988, homicides
were at an all time high

and then it went up again
in 1989 the following year.

So the efforts to police gangs

and the police crimes
were a big failure.

The perceived enmity
between the LAPD

and the residents of South
Central came to a head

when a Simi Valley jury
acquitted the police officers

charged in the battery
of Rodney King.

No deal,
no justice, no peace!

Unlike 1965, however,

the 1992 uprising occurred
in an area now populated

by over 200 well-armed
street gangs.

'65 didn't settle anything.

So when the Rodney
King event took place,

it triggered off again

this remaining residual
anti-police feeling
in the community

and anti-authority
feeling in the community.

By the mid 1990s, the
Department of Justice estimated

that there were over 600,000
gang members nationwide.

A quarter of those were in
Los Angeles County alone,

and 33,000 of them were
affiliated with the Crips.

The message today to
the Bloods, the Crips,

to every criminal gang preying
on the innocent is clear.

We mean to put you
out of business,

to break the backs
of your organization,

to stop you from terrorizing
our neighborhoods

and our children, to put you
away for a very long time.

We have just begun the job,

and we do not intend to
stop until we have finished.

The violence of
LA's unrest helped trigger

a new wave of federal
resources and support.

Using conspiracy statutes
originally designed

to combat the mafia, the FBI
formed a special task force

to combat street gangs that
had reached the next level

of criminal enterprise.

One of their first targets
was a drug trafficking clique

within the Grape Street Crips.

Wayne Day was
probably the largest.

Somewhere along the line,

he was dubbed as the
godfather of Watts.

It is believed
Day expanded his operations

across state lines
when the LA market

for crack became
saturated and prices fell.

He regularly enlisted
younger gang members

to ferry narcotics across
the country on his behalf.

At the time, a kilogram
of cocaine was selling

for 14,000 in Los Angeles,

but could be sold
for 23 to 24,000

in Minneapolis or
Chicago or Cleveland.

In the end,

the Grape Street
investigation yielded

over 100 indictments nationwide

with 20 convictions
in Los Angeles alone.

Search warrant!

And while
the seizures of currency

and narcotics were significant,

more revealing was the fact

that when gang members were
threatened with prison,

their loyalty to the
group disappeared.

According to Benavidez,

every one of them was willing
to give up fellow gang members

in exchange for a
lighter sentence.

If you think gang
banging is the thing,

it's only two things
gonna come out of it,

is death and the penitentiary.

So you can have your choice
where you want to be.

After his
last trip to prison,

Greg Batman Davis
had had enough.

Inspired in part by
the memory of Raymond

and what the Crips
were originally
supposed to stand for,

Batman dedicated his life to
gang prevention and reform.

He has produced a video
recounting his experiences

in hopes that at-risk teenagers

might make better
choices for their lives.

His organization,
Save The Babies,

has teamed up with Reverend
Watkins Family Helpline

in an effort to raise support
for community-based bootcamp.

Get them kids from juvenile,

get them kids from them
broken homes, parents on dope,

or they just don't wanna pay
attention to their parents.

Put 'em in their bootcamp
about six months.

If you can't break 'em
down in six months,

then you ain't gonna
break 'em down.

The Los Angeles
Sheriff's Department

already runs bootcamps as part
of its intervention efforts.

Officials were so impressed
by the pilot program

that they're preparing to
try the concept countywide.

Next time their parents see
'em, it's gonna shock 'em,

because they gonna be
going back with that,

yes sir, no sir,
yes ma'am, no ma'am.

At the end of they six
months, them kids will say,

"I found somebody
that loved me,"

'cause they gonna
be told every day,

only reason why we're doing
this 'cause we love you.

Until the basic causes

of gang formation
can be dealt with,

gangs like Raymond Lee
Washington's Crips will continue

to proliferate and while
they may dress differently

or go by different names,

their negative effect on
communities will be the same.

I'm Robert Stack,
thanks for joining us.