![]() This naturally led to an exorbitant increase in violence which was once limited to certain L.A. Members would simply announce their visit to a certain city and be informed as to who is in charge, link up and garner their local protection. The business had rapidly outgrown local cash exchanges and spread to cities nationwide. A member could easily make anywhere from $300 to $500 per day from slinging a few crack rocks around the neighborhood.ĭunn explained that both Crips and Bloods controlled a significant portion of the crack cocaine operations across the country. Buying cocaine in bulk and selling its crack variety - which had never been in higher demand - seemed like a financially savvy way to become a more independent gang.īetween poverty and unemployment, and a choice between welfare or crime, the Bloods grew and began to make a substantial portion of their funds from dealing drugs. The Reagan era and its mythologized trickle down economics didn’t find its way into the inner city communities of South Central, unfortunately. "Crack had supplemented cocaine as the most popular illicit drug of choice." "By 1983, African-American Los Angeles gangs seized upon the availability of narcotics, particularly crack, as a means of income," Marcus Hoover explained. Bloods have established themselves from coast to coast since the 1970s. Their gang rivalry became vicious and bloody." The 1980s: The Bloods Expand In the late 1970s, having established a firm "take no prisoners" attitude, the Bloods, wrote Marcus Hoover, "began to claim certain neighborhoods as their territory. In Compton, those who don the primary color refer to themselves as Pirus, while the Brims, Bounty Hunters, Swans, and the Family are known as Bloods. While all Bloods are encouraged to and proudly wear red to distinguish themselves, not everyone wearing red is necessarily a Blood. All of these crews were now united under the Bloods umbrella. Soon various other gangs who had been attacked or had their territory encroached upon by the Crips came under the fold. The latter were content to unite against the Crips, as they had recently killed one of their members. As a result, however, multiple sets of Pirus bonded together and joined forces with smaller groups like the Laurdes Park Hustlers and the LA Brims. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Compton Pirus were viciously demolished. Naturally, with the Compton Crips set having established itself in the same neighborhood years earlier, severe conflict ensued between the two groups. Two native Angelenos, Sylvester Scott, and Vincent Owens, initially founded the Bloods as the Compton Pirus. The gang established itself around West Piru Street in Compton. The Bloods distinguished themselves from the rest of L.A.’s gangs in the 1970s by engaging in more violence and crime than their peers. In the 1970s, in an effort to protect themselves against these countless sets of Crip gangs, alternative gangs and leaderships were birthed. Eventually, these groups were all war with each other. The gang’s activities largely originated in high-school campuses across L.A. ![]() In the 1960s, however, the foundation for a more thoroughly armed, consolidated and violent variety - the Crips - fell into place in South Central L.A. It was the 1950s that introduced lowrider culture to Los Angeles, though the weapons of choice back then consisted of now nearly charming knives and bats. ![]() Though Thrasher’s social analysis is now nearly a century old, the main tenets of gang culture - namely the "attachment to a local territory" he mentions further on - really haven’t changed too much since then.Īccording to Stanford University’s Julia Dunn in Poverty & Prejudice: Gangs of All Colors, gang culture shifted from petty crimes such as theft and forgery in the 1920s and 1930s to extortion and gambling in the 1940s. ![]() "It is characterized by the following types of behavior: meeting face to face, milling, movement through space as a unit, conflict, and planning." "A gang is an interstitial group, originally formed spontaneously, and then integrated through conflict," Frederic Thrasher wrote in his 1927 book The Gang. Even this majority, however, living on the periphery, has been culturally made aware of the Los Angeles Crips and the Bloods. Most Americans have the luxury of being entirely uninformed of gang culture, the minutiae of street life, or the adherence to the vitally imperative code one needs to follow in order not to be killed. ![]()
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