Where the boyz are.(gang activity in Los Angeles metropolitan area)
A lazy urban sociologist hoping to observe the panoply of L.A. gang culture would be wise to visit Universal City Walk: On weekends, members of 30 to 40 gangs can be seen cruising the faux boulevards and shoplifting in the faux boutiques.
Why is City Walk so popular with bangers? Perched on the hill between the Valley and L.A., it's almost equidistant from Pomona (notorious gang territory) and Venice/Palms (notorious gang territory) and an easy freeway drive from most of South-Central. And because so many crews congregate there, no one gang can hope to claim it as home turf. It is, in effect, a gang demilitarized zone.
There are, of course, other reasons behind City Walk's unique appeal: It's free (except for parking), and the proliferation of gangsters makes it a pleasant and convenient place to buy -- or sell -- drugs. They also come for the same things "civilians" do: the concerts, the food, the abundant opportunity to pick up girls. This last attraction, however, is a regular source of friction between bangers, according to one probation officer familiar with the area, and has led to numerous knife fights. A favorite spot for "jumping" rivals is the parking structure, but the privacy this affords denies a combatant the chance to get "credit," to declare publicly -- by either shouts or hand signs -- his gang affiliation. And if you don't get credit for stabbing someone, why bother? That's why gangsters tend to congregate and fight near the theaters, the central fountain and the Hard Rock Cafe.
The weekly migration has not gone unnoticed. On any given night, the LAPD, the sheriffs department (which maintains a substation at City Walk), probation gang suppression units and City Walk's own security force are out patrolling and conducting curfew sweeps. And for the most part, they've managed to keep a lid on things. There have been a few all-out gang-versus-gang knife fights, but an uneasy peace is usually maintained.
In fact, the biggest problem is not killings but petty crimes like shoplifting and loitering. (There is also plenty of "tagging," but City Walk's platoon of maintenance workers scrapes off graffiti before the paint dries.) The restaurant hit hardest by the petty-crime wave is Gladstone's, where gang members like to, literally, eat and run -- skipping out on the check, demonstrating that even gang life has its prosaic side.
Local law-enforcement agencies report that gang membership has soared in the last few years. "No neighborhood is safe anymore," says Sgt. Wes McBride, a nationally recognized gang expert with the L.A. County Sheriffs Department. "No one's truly immune." He says the safest communities are Beverly Hills, San Marino and Brentwood; everyone else is just fooling himself if he thinks he's out of harm's way.
How many "boyz" are there? It's hard to say, since gangs rarely cooperate with the U.S. Census. The sheriffs department estimates that the county is home to 150,000 gangbangers in more than 1,300 gangs. Among ethnic gangs, the breakdown is Hispanic, 667 gangs; black, 386; and Asian, 151. White motorcycle and skinhead gangs (14) have been pushed into rural nether regions such as the Antelope Valley.
While our gangs are flourishing, they're also evolving. Though you're unlikely to spot nascent gangbangers shopping for Day-Runners and fax machines, they're rapidly adopting the free-market capitalist's credo. These days, they're all business, and the old rules -- and feuds -- no longer apply: Bloods and Crips work together, blacks and Hispanics share drug territories. "Business is business," explains one gang member doing commerce with a hated rival.
Today's L.A. gang members defy categorization. While most are in it for the relatively easy money, a few get in just to pick up girls or act tough. Some are strictly shooters, like the designated hitter on a baseball team. There are the bank robbers, the strong-arm robbers and the ones who steal beer from 7-Eleven every weekend on "beer runs."
Against this backdrop of a bull market in gangbanging is the inexplicable drop in homicides. After a steady, decade-long increase that topped out in 1995 with 807 gang-related fatalities, gang homicides dropped by nearly 200 countywide in 1996 and remained low in 1997. Those who work with hard-core gang members to stop the killing say the reduction can be linked to the various peace treaties cobbled together since the L.A. riots. Statisticians have a more sober take: They point out that a decrease in drive-bys correlates with an increase in the number of jobs available in L.A.'s urban areas. So maybe Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty wasn't such a harebrained idea after all.
The following maps are based on information provided by gang experts from parole, probation, police and sheriffs departments and former and current gang members. They are, by necessity, incomplete. Instead of redrawing the entire Thomas Bros. map, we focused on a few hot spots. Nor did we try to catalog every gang -- some do not have clearly defined turf, others are too smart or amorphous to get a fix on.
One final caveat: Don't expect either the LAPD or the sheriff's department to confirm any of the boundaries delineated here. Both agencies refused to share gang intelligence, saying it was secret information handed out on a "need to know" basis -- and the residents of Los Angeles don't need to know. A sergeant in the LAPD media department explains that detailed information about gang turf is "bad for business and bad for tourism."
If you ever take a late-afternoon stroll within a six-block radius of the Civic Center, you may notice that the area is populated by an unusually active bunch of whistlers. They're not happy; they're working. Lookouts for the local gangs' drug dealers use a variety of whistles to signal one another about an unsafe contact, an approaching black-and-white or an undercover officer who's been spotted nearby. And like the opening bell on Wall Street, a whistle can indicate that the "market" is open, that it's safe to start selling again.
Many gangs view downtown as the Grand Central Market for drug sales. One female gang member strolls her beat like a circus barker, saying to strangers, "What do you need? I got what you want." Two safe areas for "civilians": the Civic Center and Olvera Street, which are heavily patrolled by police and private security.
Areas to avoid MacArthur Park, which is claimed by three gangs -- Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street, both powerhouses, and the smaller, scrappier Crazy Riders. The park is a legendary drug bazaar and is routinely the subject of city council debate and LAPD stings. Sandwiched between the two main gangs, Crazy Riders approached Mara Salvatrucha last summer, asking for a peace treaty in exchange for protection against 18th Street. Mara Salvatrucha agreed, but demanded that Crazy Riders relinquish a large, lucrative portion of MacArthur Park for drug trafficking.
It used to be so simple. Bloods hated crips, crips hated Bloods. Today, however, the huge profits available from trafficking in cocaine and the proliferation of Asian and Hispanic gangs have made such straightforward rivalries obsolete. The Mid City area contains a number of separate Crip gangs, some of whom are at war -- with each other.
Often, the combatants themselves don't even know why they're fighting. No one remembers, for example, why the Marvins and Mansfield, neighboring Crip gangs, are battling. A Mansfield apparently killed a Marvin in January, and the two rivals declared Venice Boulevard their Mason-Dixon line -- if a Marvin is caught walking on the wrong side of the boulevard, it will probably trigger a deadly confrontation.
The infusion of Hispanics into these traditionally black neighborhoods has forced gangs to reshuffle turf boundaries. In a twisted version of detente, this overcrowding has forced some black and Hispanic gangs to align with one another and share turf and lucrative drug-sales locations.
A lazy urban sociologist hoping to observe the panoply of L.A. gang culture would be wise to visit Universal City Walk: On weekends, members of 30 to 40 gangs can be seen cruising the faux boulevards and shoplifting in the faux boutiques.
Why is City Walk so popular with bangers? Perched on the hill between the Valley and L.A., it's almost equidistant from Pomona (notorious gang territory) and Venice/Palms (notorious gang territory) and an easy freeway drive from most of South-Central. And because so many crews congregate there, no one gang can hope to claim it as home turf. It is, in effect, a gang demilitarized zone.
There are, of course, other reasons behind City Walk's unique appeal: It's free (except for parking), and the proliferation of gangsters makes it a pleasant and convenient place to buy -- or sell -- drugs. They also come for the same things "civilians" do: the concerts, the food, the abundant opportunity to pick up girls. This last attraction, however, is a regular source of friction between bangers, according to one probation officer familiar with the area, and has led to numerous knife fights. A favorite spot for "jumping" rivals is the parking structure, but the privacy this affords denies a combatant the chance to get "credit," to declare publicly -- by either shouts or hand signs -- his gang affiliation. And if you don't get credit for stabbing someone, why bother? That's why gangsters tend to congregate and fight near the theaters, the central fountain and the Hard Rock Cafe.
The weekly migration has not gone unnoticed. On any given night, the LAPD, the sheriffs department (which maintains a substation at City Walk), probation gang suppression units and City Walk's own security force are out patrolling and conducting curfew sweeps. And for the most part, they've managed to keep a lid on things. There have been a few all-out gang-versus-gang knife fights, but an uneasy peace is usually maintained.
In fact, the biggest problem is not killings but petty crimes like shoplifting and loitering. (There is also plenty of "tagging," but City Walk's platoon of maintenance workers scrapes off graffiti before the paint dries.) The restaurant hit hardest by the petty-crime wave is Gladstone's, where gang members like to, literally, eat and run -- skipping out on the check, demonstrating that even gang life has its prosaic side.
Local law-enforcement agencies report that gang membership has soared in the last few years. "No neighborhood is safe anymore," says Sgt. Wes McBride, a nationally recognized gang expert with the L.A. County Sheriffs Department. "No one's truly immune." He says the safest communities are Beverly Hills, San Marino and Brentwood; everyone else is just fooling himself if he thinks he's out of harm's way.
How many "boyz" are there? It's hard to say, since gangs rarely cooperate with the U.S. Census. The sheriffs department estimates that the county is home to 150,000 gangbangers in more than 1,300 gangs. Among ethnic gangs, the breakdown is Hispanic, 667 gangs; black, 386; and Asian, 151. White motorcycle and skinhead gangs (14) have been pushed into rural nether regions such as the Antelope Valley.
While our gangs are flourishing, they're also evolving. Though you're unlikely to spot nascent gangbangers shopping for Day-Runners and fax machines, they're rapidly adopting the free-market capitalist's credo. These days, they're all business, and the old rules -- and feuds -- no longer apply: Bloods and Crips work together, blacks and Hispanics share drug territories. "Business is business," explains one gang member doing commerce with a hated rival.
Today's L.A. gang members defy categorization. While most are in it for the relatively easy money, a few get in just to pick up girls or act tough. Some are strictly shooters, like the designated hitter on a baseball team. There are the bank robbers, the strong-arm robbers and the ones who steal beer from 7-Eleven every weekend on "beer runs."
Against this backdrop of a bull market in gangbanging is the inexplicable drop in homicides. After a steady, decade-long increase that topped out in 1995 with 807 gang-related fatalities, gang homicides dropped by nearly 200 countywide in 1996 and remained low in 1997. Those who work with hard-core gang members to stop the killing say the reduction can be linked to the various peace treaties cobbled together since the L.A. riots. Statisticians have a more sober take: They point out that a decrease in drive-bys correlates with an increase in the number of jobs available in L.A.'s urban areas. So maybe Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty wasn't such a harebrained idea after all.
The following maps are based on information provided by gang experts from parole, probation, police and sheriffs departments and former and current gang members. They are, by necessity, incomplete. Instead of redrawing the entire Thomas Bros. map, we focused on a few hot spots. Nor did we try to catalog every gang -- some do not have clearly defined turf, others are too smart or amorphous to get a fix on.
One final caveat: Don't expect either the LAPD or the sheriff's department to confirm any of the boundaries delineated here. Both agencies refused to share gang intelligence, saying it was secret information handed out on a "need to know" basis -- and the residents of Los Angeles don't need to know. A sergeant in the LAPD media department explains that detailed information about gang turf is "bad for business and bad for tourism."
If you ever take a late-afternoon stroll within a six-block radius of the Civic Center, you may notice that the area is populated by an unusually active bunch of whistlers. They're not happy; they're working. Lookouts for the local gangs' drug dealers use a variety of whistles to signal one another about an unsafe contact, an approaching black-and-white or an undercover officer who's been spotted nearby. And like the opening bell on Wall Street, a whistle can indicate that the "market" is open, that it's safe to start selling again.
Many gangs view downtown as the Grand Central Market for drug sales. One female gang member strolls her beat like a circus barker, saying to strangers, "What do you need? I got what you want." Two safe areas for "civilians": the Civic Center and Olvera Street, which are heavily patrolled by police and private security.
Areas to avoid MacArthur Park, which is claimed by three gangs -- Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street, both powerhouses, and the smaller, scrappier Crazy Riders. The park is a legendary drug bazaar and is routinely the subject of city council debate and LAPD stings. Sandwiched between the two main gangs, Crazy Riders approached Mara Salvatrucha last summer, asking for a peace treaty in exchange for protection against 18th Street. Mara Salvatrucha agreed, but demanded that Crazy Riders relinquish a large, lucrative portion of MacArthur Park for drug trafficking.
It used to be so simple. Bloods hated crips, crips hated Bloods. Today, however, the huge profits available from trafficking in cocaine and the proliferation of Asian and Hispanic gangs have made such straightforward rivalries obsolete. The Mid City area contains a number of separate Crip gangs, some of whom are at war -- with each other.
Often, the combatants themselves don't even know why they're fighting. No one remembers, for example, why the Marvins and Mansfield, neighboring Crip gangs, are battling. A Mansfield apparently killed a Marvin in January, and the two rivals declared Venice Boulevard their Mason-Dixon line -- if a Marvin is caught walking on the wrong side of the boulevard, it will probably trigger a deadly confrontation.
The infusion of Hispanics into these traditionally black neighborhoods has forced gangs to reshuffle turf boundaries. In a twisted version of detente, this overcrowding has forced some black and Hispanic gangs to align with one another and share turf and lucrative drug-sales locations.
