Original subtitles

Gangs rule their territories through ruthless enterprises, fear, and a strict code.

Deviate from this code, or challenge their power.

Retribution soon follows.

Especially for one of the most ferocious street gangs in Los Angeles, the Bloods.

From their start as defiant underdogs to becoming a powerful,

violent force in South Central,

here are three stories that establish the brutal reputation of the Bloods.

First, a turf war between the Bloods and their

archenemy takes over the city of Los Angeles.

By the time I was 16, I had already been to about 20 funerals.

Next, when two iconic rappers are assassinated,

the war between the Bloods and Crips goes national.

They see the BMW that Tupac is in.

Orlando Anderson simply leans out the window and begins to fire.

And last, a murder spree catapults the Bloods to the top of LA's Most Wanted list.

They were completely out of control.

These are the stories from inside Los Angeles' Bloods.

This is Gangland Chronicles.

1972, Los Angeles.

Known as the gang capital of America,

it's here where the Bloods become one of the world's

most violent and notorious street gangs.

But the Bloods wouldn't exist without another

well-known Los Angeles gang, the Crips.

The Crips were a dominant force that was taking over almost every area,

every neighborhood in 1971 and 72.

Using violence and intimidation,

the Crips forced smaller neighborhood gangs across the city to join them.

Crips were so powerful, and there were so many of them, a lot of people just said,

hey, if you can't beat them, join them.

But there are neighborhood gangs who are sick of the

Crips bulldozing their way through South Central.

They unite and become known as the Bloods.

The Bloods came together to form an alliance to fight against

the advancement and aggressiveness of the Crips.

Wearing red to differentiate themselves from the Crips who wear blue,

the Bloods Alliance is outnumbered three to one by the Crips.

Being outnumbered makes an individual know that there may be no help in sight.

You have to learn how to maneuver, manipulate a fight with three guys.

They may be outnumbered and outgunned,

but the Bloods are not content to be LA's criminal underdogs.

They became tougher, I think.

They were used to fighting. They were always prepared.

They seemed to be better organized and dedicated.

That includes trying to make more money than the Crips.

They knew how to diversify.

They would deal in drugs, stolen cars.

They would do extortion. And they attempt to be more violent than the Crips.

You want the gang to be feared.

And so you've gotta be able to have people willing

to go and shoot somebody in front of witnesses.

As the Blood's ranks grow,

it's only a matter of time before Los Angeles

is caught in the middle of a deadly war.

June 5th, 1972. Compton.

A party is in full swing when a crip gang member confronts

17-year-old Frederick Little Country Garrett,

a member of a gang that will soon join the Bloods.

Little Country, he was a known fighter in L.A.

Didn't care about the advancement of the Crips.

He would fight them.

He was good with his hands.

Details are sketchy, but Garrett is shot and killed by the Crip.

His death marks the first Crips murder against a rival gang member.

Three months later, the blood strike back.

The Bloods kill their first Crip, Thomas Ellis.

And the war between the Bloods and Crips officially begins.

That just turned everything around to where the homicide rate started going up.

Between 1972 and 1979, the hatred results in 450 casualties.

If one of the homeboys got shot, I had to make it my business,

because if you don't retaliate, then it's going to happen more often.

It was all about fighting Crips, and that was it.

But in 1982, everything changes with the introduction of a new street drug, crack.

And it will spark the deadliest era yet in the war between the Bloods and the Crips.

1982, Los Angeles.

A new drug floods the market,

and the feud between the Bloods and Crips reaches deadly heights.

The crack cocaine was the escalation point

where these wars became really out of hand.

A small rock could get you a lot more money than a vial of powdered cocaine.

And it was easier to control.

So they would cut these cocaine cookies up into little rocks and sell these rocks.

And it's highly addictive. I mean, really addictive.

They made more and more money. They were able to buy cocaine in larger quantities.

They were able to finance labs.

The escalation just went out of sight.

Crips and the Bloods went from hustling and selling dope and

making kibbles and bits to making millions of dollars.

And so put them in a position to buy a lot of high-powered weapons in

order to protect their territories from where they were hustling at.

It was so easy to use an assault rifle opposed to a .38, and you did more damage.

It was not unusual at all,

even within the small divisions of South Central Los Angeles,

to have multiple murders a night.

The local hospital there, named after Martin Luther King,

became known as Killer King because so many people

passed away in that particular hospital.

Between 1980 and 1989, there are over 3,000 gang-related murders in LA.

The level of violence and killing in Los Angeles became so intense and common

that it ranks up there with the casualties of Vietnam or of Korea.

In fact, the late 1980s to the early 1990s were

the most violent period in Los Angeles history.

I found dead bodies in the neighborhood.

I've seen people's brains blown out point blank.

I watched my best friend get cut in half with an AK-47.

By the time I was 16, I had already been to about 20 funerals.

The deadly war that's been dominating local news will soon make national

headlines when two of the world's most famous

rappers choose sides. 1991, Los Angeles.

Death Row Records catapults gangster rap up the Billboard charts.

Co-founder Suge Knight, a Compton native, hires his old friends from a blood group,

the Mob Piru, as the label's security detail.

My job was to fight, shut people up, and whatever it was,

whatever it takes to fix a situation.

Suge began to dress in red and identify himself

as being part of this gang organization.

And Death Row's biggest act, Tupac Shakur, gets in on the action.

You've got all of these blood gang members around Suge Knight, around the studio.

They have a certain influence on Tupac Shakur.

He's beginning to act more and more gangster.

He's about to get involved in the war between the Bloods and the Crips.

September 7th, 1996, Las Vegas.

After watching his friend Mike Tyson win his fight against Bruce Seldon,

Tupac steps into the lobby of the MGM Grand, surrounded by the Blood security team.

What they don't know is that a rival from the

Southside Compton Crips is in the crowd.

Orlando Anderson is known by law enforcement and by

his own group of friends as a very dangerous guy,

a guy who won't hesitate to pull a gun.

Tensions between the gangs are at a breaking point after Anderson had attempted

to steal a diamond-encrusted death row medallion back in Compton.

Suddenly, Tupac and his blood's bodyguards spot Anderson through the crowd.

Doesn't matter if you're in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, wherever.

If a crip sees the blood, there's always going to be tension.

And one small thing can spark it off.

What happens next changes the American rap industry forever.

September 7th, 1996, Las Vegas.

In the lobby of the MGM Grand,

Tupac Shakur and his Bloods bodyguards have spotted a rival crip, Orlando Anderson,

who's recently stolen a valuable necklace from the group.

Tupac, siding with the Bloods, sees an opportunity.

He runs over, he sucker punches Orlando Anderson.

The rest of the gang members start stomping this individual because

he was trying to impress the gang members around him.

Strutting out of the MGM, Tupac and his entourage head to a party.

But Orlando Anderson and his fellow Crips don't wait to act.

Orlando Anderson has just been attacked.

He doesn't really have a choice but to retaliate if

he wants to maintain his reputation within the gang.

The Southside Crips load into a vehicle and go hunting for Tupac.

We start hearing words that Southside Crips is coming to 662,

which is a club that we had in Las Vegas.

Down the street from the club, the Southside Crips spot their target.

They see the BMW that Tupac is in.

Orlando Anderson simply leans out the window and begins to fire.

Tupac is shot multiple times.

After six days in the hospital...

The 25-year-old rapper dies.

Tupac is dead because nobody stopped him.

If he didn't want to fit in or didn't try to fit in,

Tupac probably would still be here.

Tupac's murder is all over the news,

and the Bloods and Crips rivalry makes national headlines.

When police question Southside Crip Orlando Anderson, he denies any involvement.

No arrests are made in Tupac's murder,

and rumors start circulating that his biggest rival, Biggie Smalls,

aka the Notorious B.I.G., is involved.

Street rumors started that Biggie had hired the Crips

and that really Biggie was behind the murder of Tupac.

So the shooting started, if not that night, the very next night.

In the city of Compton, there was a war between the Crips and the Lions.

The violence spirals out of control.

The Bloods want payback for Tupac's murder and look for a high-profile target.

March 9, 1997. Los Angeles.

Biggie Smalls arrives in town with his record producer, Sean Puffy Combs.

Combs hires the Southside Crips,

the same group that is most likely responsible

for Tupac's death, to act as bodyguards.

Suge was affiliated with the Bloods. Their natural rivals were the Crips.

Puffy Combs decided, best thing I can do is affiliate myself with Crips so that

I have a layer of protection when I'm in Los Angeles to protect me from Suge.

And the Bloods see their opportunity for revenge when Biggie Smalls

leaves a party at the Peterson Automotive Museum.

Smalls is shot dead.

The individual that shot and killed Biggie Smalls,

he was a member of the Bloods in Compton, closely affiliated with Suge Knight.

So it's just tit for tat, tit for tat. It's just stereotypical gang retaliation.

Tupac and Biggie's assassinations make the Bloods and Crips feud famous.

But the Bloods find a new enemy coming after them

when their crime spree turns them into...

LA's Most Wanted.

August 4th, 2007.

Linwood, California.

On the border of Compton,

a young woman and her boyfriend are leaving a liquor store with some snacks.

The liquor store is a gang area. Ma Pairus are Bloods, and Palmonokes are Crips.

And they frequently feud over the territory.

As the young couple head to their car, they pass two Crips standing outside.

And all of a sudden, four vehicles drive by the liquor store.

And gunfire erupts, putting the couple in the crossfire of a turf war.

August 4, 2007, Linwood, California.

A young couple leaving a liquor store in Bloods and Crips'

disputed territory are caught in the middle of a drive-by.

A bullet hits the young woman, and she dies at the scene.

It's only the beginning of the Blood's deadly rampage.

Multiple shootings continued to occur.

Over a three-month period, there had been four shootings.

The drive-bys are a tactic to raise the gang's reputation.

They were completely out of control.

We really did have to stop it.

Let's start taking these individuals down.

The LA County Sheriff's Department launches Operation Kill in Court.

Using surveillance and wiretaps,

they hope not only to solve the liquor store homicide,

but also take down the Bloods.

Weeks into the operation, officers catch wind of a deadly plan.

There was one night when we were listening to the phones,

they planned to do a drive-by shooting at a nightclub in Orange County.

They were saying they had some AK-47 assault rifles that they

were going to use on Crips coming out of the nightclub.

But before the gang gets to the nightclub,

they're tipped off that police are in the area and abort the mission.

We were able to prevent a mass shooting.

If they would have been able to pull this off,

their reputation would have been huge in the gang world.

The Bloods' crimes are escalating,

but police still don't have enough to solve the

murder of the young victim at the liquor store.

Their intel points them to a gang associate named Maurice Bennett.

We don't believe that he's a full-fledged gang member,

but he certainly hangs out with them and participates in some of their activity.

So we think that Maurice might be a weak link.

To their surprise, Bennett breaks down and confesses

to his role in the drive-by shooting.

So Bennett identifies the other three gang members that were involved.

So we had to scramble.

We had to find them and arrest them before they knew that we knew.

Alex Graves, Robert Maxwell, and a juvenile are arrested.

Along with Bennett, they are charged with first-degree murder.

But the Sheriff's Department isn't done yet.

This investigation was twofold. We were going to solve the homicide,

but we were also going to dismantle the gang.

So now we put in to effect phase two.

July 8, 2008.

Compton.

Based on information from the wiretaps,

about 450 law enforcement officers conduct raids, seizing drugs and guns,

and arresting 16 gang members.

We disrupted that gang.

We were able to stop the violence that was going on.

While Operation Kill in Court is successful,

the Bloods continue to exist and still have a strong

presence in their birthplace, Los Angeles.

The Bloods changed Los Angeles for the worse.

I believe it started out to be protective and stop the

aggression of other people coming in our communities,

but it turned into lawlessness.

Currently, there are between 15,000 and 20,000 members across the United States.

The Blood's legacy is well established.

It's kind of tentacles that continue to go out and now plagues an entire nation.