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 the infamous set within the biggest

and most ruthless street gang in Los Angeles,

the Rollin' 60s Neighborhood Crips.

Here are three stories that track how the Rollin' 60s go

from terrorizing one neighborhood to all of Los Angeles.

First, their brutality is established on their

local turf with a cold-blooded contract hit.

It was a daybreak, quadruple, home invasion homicide.

Then, their violent reputation spreads across the

city with the death of an innocent bystander,

turning the game into the LAPD's public enemy number one.

It woke up not only the community, but law enforcement.

Finally, the Roland 60s attract the attention of the FBI when an OG becomes the

most prolific bank robber in history by training kids to do his dirty work.

The Crips convinced these youngsters to go into the banks and do the robbing.

These are the stories from the Roland 60s neighborhood crypts.

This is Gangland Chronicles. 1971.

South Central Los Angeles.

The area is undergoing massive upheaval.

The Black Panther movement has disbanded.

Police brutality and racism run rampant.

To survive, young men begin forming neighborhood gangs.

Many folks, they formed these gangs because it meant a family.

It meant people who would back you up.

Two neighborhood gang leaders, Raymond Washington

and Stanley Tukey Williams, decide to join forces.

They call themselves the Crips.

Raymond Washington, he was about building and

expanding this crip movement throughout LA.

Washington and Williams' mission is to roll up all the surrounding

gangs into the Crips and dominate South Central and beyond.

They would go to different communities, and they would tell the communities,

you're going to join the Crips.

They were looked at as bullies.

They were looked at as an imposing force.

By 1978, Washington and Williams have absorbed

45 neighborhood gangs under the Crips banner.

And the most dangerous set within the Crips call themselves...

The Rollin' 60s would stand out above the rest, right,

because they were more violent and more about the gangster type of lifestyle.

The Rollin' 60s territory expands, and by 2004,

there's an estimated 1,600 members on the street.

They're involved in organized crime.

They're involved in drug trafficking, firearms trafficking, homicides, kidnappings,

extortions. They do everything.

When I was covering gangs at that time for the LA Times,

400 hardcore members had been arrested over 3,500 times.

And in the summer of 1984,

the Roland 60's ruthless reputation spreads throughout all of South Central.

August 31st, 1984.

Watts.

Roland 60s Crips' Tyquan Cox, Darren Williams,

and Horace Burns are getting ready to do a hit job for a local nightclub owner.

There had been a shooting in there, and a young woman on her birthday was shot.

She had a lawsuit against the bar for a couple of million dollars.

And he then hired the Rolling Sixties to kill her to make the lawsuit go away.

$50,000 for a murder for hire is a lot of money in the mid-'80s.

That's probably at least $200,000 or $300,000 today.

Eighteen-year-old Cox, known on the street as Lil' Fee,

has a rep as a ruthless enforcer.

You end up getting killed messing with that person.

He's involved in all the violence that's happening,

all the crime that's happening in that community.

At daybreak, Cox and his crew pull up outside a small, well-tended house.

Cox orders burns to keep the engine running.

Cox has a .30 caliber M1 carbine.

What happens next is a brutal mass murder that shocks

South Central and puts the gang on the map.

August 31st, 1984. Watts.

Roland Sixties Crips, Tyquan Cox,

and Darren Williams enter a house to carry out a contract hit.

She is shot multiple times in the head.

Then, Cox and Williams enter a bedroom where a young woman sits up in bed.

She is shot.

Also in the room are two young boys and they are shot while still in their sleep.

Once on the scene, LAPD officers are shocked by the quadruple murder.

The four victims are members of Kermit Alexander's family,

his mother, his sister, and two of his nephews.

And Kermit Alexander is a legend.

Kermit Alexander is a retired NFL player.

The Alexander family lives down the street from

the young woman the club owner wanted killed.

The rolling 60s that morning in that van simply went to the wrong address.

It was a daybreak, quadruple, home invasion homicide with the wrong thing.

A month goes by, and it appears Cox and his

crew might get away with this heinous crime.

Until the LAPD raid a stash house in Roland's 60s territory.

During the raid, they actually found the gun that was used in that murder.

LAPD questioned 17-year-old James Kennedy about the murder weapon.

Kennedy holds to the gangster's code until the police turn the screws.

The police say, OK, you're going to be on the hook for quadruple

murder and the death penalty unless you decide you want to talk.

He says, no, it wasn't mine.

It was Tyquan Cox and Moncarving.

Police arrest and charge Tyquan Cox with four counts of first-degree murder.

By 1985, Darren Williams and Horace Burns are also in custody.

Burns is convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Cox and Williams are found guilty and sent to death row.

But for the rolling 60s, this brutal and mistaken

hit only serves to grow their street cred.

There's the idea that being a little bit wild, a little bit berserk,

isn't always a bad thing because it keeps people wary of you.

It keeps people scared of you.

The Roland 60s are known for killings in South Central.

But when they expand outside of their home turf,

they become public enemy number one.

1988, Los Angeles.

The city is in the midst of a crack cocaine epidemic.

Crack cocaine changed everything about the gang world

here in LA because it was access to quick money.

The Roland 60s are banking so much, they earn a new nickname, the Rich Roland 60s.

We're talking millions of dollars.

They were dealing with the Colombian cartels directly in 1980s.

With profit margins so high,

the Roland 60s are venturing into new territories to look for more buyers.

And so are many of their rivals.

January 30th, 1988, Westwood Village.

It's a busy Saturday night in the fashionable neighborhood, home to UCLA.

It was a place that everyone liked to go and see movies or shop or eat.

Roland's 60s Darrell Collins and his homeboys are walking down the street

when they spot a crew of their rivals from the Mansfield Hustler Crips.

Crips fight Crips.

The different sets are constantly fighting amongst themselves.

The two sets trade insults, and after a Mansfield

hustler makes a move, Collins pulls out a gun.

January 30th, 1988, Westwood Village.

The standoff between Roland's 60s gangbanger Darrell Collins and

a rival crip is escalating in this well-to-do neighborhood.

Collins pulls out a gun and opens fire.

He fires two shots, neither of which hit the intended target.

Terrified pedestrians run for cover.

Darrell Collins ditches his weapon and vanishes into the crowd.

On the sidewalk lies 27-year-old graphic artist Karen Tashima.

She got caught in the crossfire.

She took a bullet in the head and died on the scene there.

This is way out of gang territory and completely unexpected.

It got a lot of media attention and woke up

not only the community, but law enforcement.

One week after the shooting, LAPD arrests and charges Darrell Collins.

At trial, he is found guilty and sentenced to 27 years in prison.

But that's not the end of it.

The shooting death of a bystander outside of gang territory

triggers the LAPD to launch a war on gangs.

The police response was intense.

City Council, two weeks later, approved the hiring of 150 more police officers.

And that was the era of what the LAPD called Operation Hammer,

Operation Hammer is a large-scale attempt to crack down on all gangs in Los Angeles.

With the use of sweeping raids,

more than 50,000 people are arrested by the time it's disbanded in 1990.

Operation Hammer was the idea that we're going to

have a kind of zero tolerance on gang activities.

And so while gang crime did go down as a result of this,

it also brought up a lot of questions about civil liberties and how much do you want

the police to be able to question people when they're not committing a crime.

So it started a real kind of balancing act as far as that.

Operation Hammer forces the Roland 60s to curb the violence,

but it doesn't stop them from looking for new ways to score.

And the gang goes from LAPD target to the FBI's most wanted.

1992, Los Angeles.

The city is considered the bank robbery capital of the United States.

The number of bank robberies they committed in 1992

translated to one bank robbery every 42 minutes.

The Roland 60s are one of the first to entice crack addicts

to commit bank robberies in return for drugs.

The old-fashioned way of robbing a bank is with a note.

It's a very quiet encounter,

and that person passing the note typically wants

to get out of the bank as quickly as possible.

Suddenly, in 1991, violent takeover robberies become the standard.

A takeover robbery, they come in blasting.

And intimidate people and scare people.

So a lot more violent, a lot more dangerous.

But then, the rolling 60s add a new twist.

August 14, 1992.

Downey, California.

Without warning, the employees and customers in a small bank branch are blindsided.

Kids, some as young as 13, barge into a Wells Fargo in a takeover-style robbery.

Brandishing semi-automatic weapons, two of the youths empty the cash drawers,

while a third terrorizes the people in the bank.

It was terrifying, it was violent,

and it left people in a position where they felt, we're overwhelmed.

But someone trips the silent alarm,

and before the youths can get away with over $55,000, the police arrive.

So the police have these three kids surrounded at the bank.

The juvenile bank robbers have no intention of giving up peacefully.

They smash a window in an attempt to get away.

August 14th, 1992.

Downey, California.

After storming the bank and terrorizing the people inside,

three adolescent bank robbers shatter a window to escape.

But the police have them surrounded.

These kids come flying out through the broken glass, guns blazing.

The cops chase two of them down and take them into custody.

The third bandit makes a run for it, and a police officer goes after him.

He gets cornered.

And so he turns around and shoot at the police, and police shoots back.

The 15-year-old is fatally shot.

When the FBI interviews the two boys in custody...

They admit they're working for an OG who goes by the name of Casper.

But when pressed to make an official statement, they refuse.

With nothing leading the feds to him,

Casper remains a ghost and continues masterminding

hundreds of takeover robberies with other kids.

He never walked in the banks himself.

Then he paid them either in drugs or a little bit

of money and kept the proceeds for himself.

Some wanted to be in the gang, some wanted money,

but all like disadvantaged and vulnerable kids.

Casper leaves no physical evidence, no prints, no witnesses,

and no surveillance footage to tie him to any crime.

And he had a real knack for choosing stolen cars,

the right stolen cars for the right job as getaway vehicles.

The FBI connects Casper's cruise to 90 violent robberies

in the LA area with a total take of $1 million.

Over two million today.

And because of the baby bandits, bank jobs are turning into vicious indoor muggings.

The FBI creates a task force of 50 agents to

end the reign of terror and find Casper.

But he continues to prove elusive.

Casper was using all sorts of evasive techniques.

He was switching addresses. He was placing his assets in other people's names.

He was apparently an expert behind the wheel for

shaking the police if anyone was chasing him.

But then the FBI get a tip from an informant.

May 28, 1993.

The FBI tracks Casper to a house in rolling 60s turf.

His identity is officially revealed as Robert Sheldon Brown,

a member of the gang since he was 14 years old.

This guy's only 23. This guy was a one-man crime spree.

Facing multiple indictments that could send him to prison for 285 years,

Brown decides to plead guilty and gets 30 years.

He remains the most prolific bank robber in U.S. history,

with over 175 heists to his name.

After Casper was sentenced, bank robberies in L.A. plummet.

They were down 50% two years later.

Today, the Rollin' 60s remain the largest and

most notorious crypt set in Los Angeles, with over 6,000 members.

The Rollin' 60s really captured the imagination because they were extreme.

We're in it for money, but we're also in it for rep,

and we're also in it to show that we are bad, that we are in control.

So Rolling 60 Crips have destroyed Los Angeles.

And they continue to grow.

You know, other groups have gone away, but the Rolling Sixties continue to flourish.