A general clarification of different information of street gangs. Including some historic notes and extra information. If there are any questions feel free to ask.

• LA city which is known as the Gang Capital Of America is due to having the most numerous gangs (400 +/-), not gang population (45,000 +/-). Chicago have the largest gang pop ( 68,000+/-).
• Crips & Bloods conflicts are more than just over colors but mix of vendettas/drug trade which have died down mostly in LA.
• Crips original attire was based on the black panther style until 1972.
• Speaking of colors among the black gang umbrellas of LA, there is actually 4 when including Hoover Criminal's orange and Piru's burgundy. Plus there are sub umbrellas with their side colors.
• Bloods didn't originate in a impoverished neighborhood but in the middle class suburbs.
• Majority of Hispanic gangs didn't refer to themselves as Surenos until the late 60s and only some are under the influence of La Eme.
• According to the Feds, juveniles make up about 40% of the overall gang population in the US.

Another to add is that not all gangs stick to their colors. For instance, the grape street crips use purple instead of blue.

Street gangs are garbage.

So isn't organized crime, your point?

yeah but organized crime is at least fascinating.

I always call street gang documentaries "documentaries about disrespect". They seem to be obsessed with the concept and it seems that "disrespect" is the primary motive in the murders they commit, even more than drugs or struggle for power.

Street gangs aré a joke. Half the members aré little kids and all they know is slinging drugs and robbing gas stations. Most of them aré dead or doing life before they turn 25.

Is the Mexican Mafia (La Eme) considered a street-prison gang or is it closer to a mafia type organization in terms of power? Also, what about Latin Kings, MS-13 ?

Street gangs have no moral code or intrigue about their culture and origins, they are just desperate gangbangers.

Slinging drugs seems to be doing ok for the bloods in new jersey.

The state’s heroin marketplace is dominated by the presence of Bloods gang sets. More than a quarter (28%) of the gangs reported active in heroin distribution belong to one of the state’s three largest Bloods sets: Sex Money Murder (10% of all gangs in the heroin business), Nine- Trey (9%) or G-Shine (8%). Each of these Bloods sets is present in several municipalities that report their involvement in wholesale and mid-level heroin trafficking in addition to retail sales.
As many as fifty smaller Bloods sets are also actively involved in heroin sales. Among them are gangs that sell heroin in a majority of the towns where they are reported present: D-Block Bloods (83%); Cedar Block Piru (80%); 730 GKB (75%); 456 Piru (71%); Brick City Brims (65%); Cash Money Boys (60%); 793 Bloods (57%), and Neighborhood Bloods (56%).
Gang involvement in heroin trafficking activity is reported in every New Jersey county except Sussex County, but municipalities in some counties are more affected than others. A fifth (19%) of all gangs active in heroin distribution are located in Essex County, more than double the proportion represented by any other single county. Newark, East Orange, Orange and Irvington reported most of the heroin-trafficking street gangs mentioned in Essex County.

There are also a lot of gang members getting involved with different scams.

san diego gang member led mortgage fraud scam

Inside charity ‘scam’
By Dareh GregorianDecember 17, 2011 | 5:00am

A bunch of hardened gangbangers have gone from hustling on the street corner to hustling Wall Street.
Thugs from gangs such as the Crips and Bloods ran a brazen, $2 million identity-theft ring that targeted some of New York’s wealthiest residents and high-end charities, authorities said yesterday.
The larcenous lowlifes went after big game such as billionaire Ira Rennert, Ron Lauder’s son-in-law Eric Zinterhofer, and acid-washed-jeans mogul Eric Rothfeld.
The crooks even targeted charities popular with the upper crust, including the United Jewish Appeal-Federation and the Starr Foundation, chaired by former American Insurance Group Inc. CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, court filings say.
They also tried to make a fast break on NBA commissioner David Stern by stealing checks from him before being thwarted, sources told The Post.
One of the victims was Paula Sarnoff Oreck, an Upper East Side philanthropist who’s the niece of former RCA head David Sarnoff and ex-wife of Oreck vacuum- cleaner big David Oreck.
Paula told The Post she was outraged by what was, in effect, a high-tech mugging by street thugs.
“I’m just pissed,” she said.
She added she’d been ripped off for $15,000 by phony checks drawn from her account at Chase earlier this year, and then again to the tune of $18,000 six months later.
Authorities said the scammers — including members of the Brooklyn gang the Outlaws, the Bloods and the Crips — used insiders at the UJA, Chase Bank and Akam real estate to get the financial information of well more than 1,000 people.
They used the information to either drain money from their victims’ accounts or sell to other crooks.
Three Chase tellers were among the 55 charged yesterday with being part of the ring.
Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office identified one of the main cogs in the scam as Tracey Nelson, 24, who worked as a UJA clerk, processing check and credit-card donations.
DA Cyrus Vance said Nelson “betrayed” her position of trust by spiriting information from hundreds of donors that she then sold to the gang members.
She smuggled out some of the info simply by taking pictures with her smartphone of checks people had sent in, the DA said.
The identity thieves would then use that information to draw up phony checks or open up credit-card accounts in the person’s name.
Officials said the scam — which dates to the spring of 2010 — began to unravel when postal workers in Brooklyn told cops about some suspicious money orders that were regularly coming into their branch.

I'm not sure about Latin Kings and MS-13 but the Mexican Mafia is no joke and essentially has power on the west coast like LCN has in the east, if not more nowadays.

I assume you just skim the starter info I posted. Juveniles makes up 40% of our gang population ( of course it varies with individual groups) and the rest are adults. They just rob and sling is the most basic misconception of street gangs, Scorsese post reflect the diverse activities of different gangs. Feds has stated that besides the drugs trade, gangs are active in gun trafficking, gambling, extortion, fencing, prostitution, fraud, chop shops, money laundering, and racketeering.

Mexican Mafia is a prison gang and power base is Southern California.
Latin Kings is a street organization.
Ms-13 is a street gang that made the transnational crime group list. Same list including Camorra, Yakuza, a few others.

Misconception which is mostly in the grey. Membership in Chicago mobs have rules, conduct, and oath that's required ( especially in prison) to be follow. Albeit there will be those who doesn't and individual actions doesn't speak for everybody. But other gangs like MS-13, it's somewhat of a guideline to be brutal.

Is one of the oaths to shoot children? They do plenty of that. When was the last time a black gambling ring or chopshop was busted? That's because they Dont exist.

African americans are definitely the least respectable as criminals next to the south american cartels.

Italian, irish, chinese and japanese > all other criminals
minus Semion Mogelivich

don't see how a chop shop or gambling ring makes someone a more sophisticated criminal. But despite the violence and senselessness street gangs do still have the time for very savvy and sophisticated schemes and also own businesses.

http://www.operationgangup.com/WhiteCollarCrimeandGangs.pdf


http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/10/union_county_officials_arrest.html


http://www.policemag.com/blog/gangs/story/2007/06/the-business-of-gangs.aspx


http://www.scdag.com/news/item/175-grand...ndering-charges

I understand you read and hear tons of senseless violence from them but everybody isn't like that nor everywhere. You know an oath of loyalty is verbal. That's inside information that we won't know unless police post it.

CRIMINALS of ALL ethnic groups are in the same barrel. Don't let your narrow point of view say otherwise Extortion. Remember that one hand doesn't let the other is doing (public image vs reality).

I haven't heard of any mobsters shooting up playgrounds full of children or mugging grannies on the street. I dont see any 12 year old members of the Gambinos. They aré all criminals but they aré not all the same.

This post was about streetgangs. Streetgangs commit streetcrimes. Once the gang is into white collar crime they aré no longer a streetgang.

Gambling rings and chopshops aré more sophisticated than robbing a gas station or selling dimebags outside a school

Let's stop the comparison of individual actions of gang members & mobsters. Mobsters don't recruit juveniles, so that's invalid. You know very well that mobsters have harm/kill innocent bystanders as well. That's common in all crime groups.

Yes this post is about street gangs clarification ( too much bias ignorance without research). The term street gang isn't strictly define by a group doing street crimes but the origin of the group traces back to a specific neighborhood and they have a common trademark. If white collar crimes mean they're no longer a street gang by your opinion then Scorsese's post is solid evidence.

I can't disagree with the profits but I can argue that those dime bags add up in the short term. And again yes there are involved in chop shops & gambling. Anymore starburst comments?

Why does he not read my posts.

here is a more in depth look at the mortgage fraud schemes the black disciples and vice lords were running.

Gangs Find New Source of Revenue: Mortgage Fraud
by DINA TEMPLE-RASTON
August 22, 2007 1:05 PM

The housing boom of recent years has turned mortgage fraud into a big business — so big that some of the nation's largest gangs are getting into the act.

It is hard to get precise numbers on just how much mortgage fraud there is. The FBI recorded more than $1 billion in mortgage fraud losses in fiscal 2005, but even that number is thought to be understated.

"Our lenders tell us that figure is very much on the low end of the scale," says Corey Carlyle, senior director of government affairs at the Mortgage Bankers Association. "I've seen figures as high as $4 billion, and again, that is just what it cost the industry in 2006."

And while street gangs only account for a portion of that, the fact that they have moved to mortgage fraud as a money-spinning enterprise worries law enforcement officials. They say it is part of a larger trend: gangs searching for ways to launder drug-dealing and gun-selling dollars.

Chicagoland, the city and the surrounding Cook County area, has been one of the areas hardest hit by the intersection of gangs and mortgage fraud.

Consider the Black Disciples gang: Some of its members were involved in a case of mortgage fraud a couple of years ago. The price tag for that case alone: $70 million.

Jim Wagner, who previously investigated white-collar crime cases for the FBI, is now the president of the Chicago Crime Commission.

"We had information from the FBI about Vice Lords [another Chicago-area gang] that there was perhaps $80 million in fraudulent mortgage activity," Wagner says. "So it has been a significant problem, at least in the greater Chicago metropolitan area, and I suspect it is occurring in other cities, as well."

It is unclear exactly how gangs migrated from street crimes to white-collar ones. Law enforcement officials suspect that tougher gun laws and sentencing guidelines may have played a role in the shift. When street gang members were sentenced to serve time in federal institutions on gun charges, they got an unexpected new criminal education from the inmates incarcerated there.

"All of a sudden they were talking to and meeting with a different class of criminal, some who had participated in financial fraud themselves," Wagner says.

The idea was to break up the gangs so they couldn't reconstitute themselves behind bars. The unexpected result was the addition of released gang members to the ranks of white-collar criminals.

Wagner says white-collar criminals made a good case: They told gang members that they could make more money and do less jail time if they focused on fraud instead of guns and drugs. And that small epiphany, coupled with a red-hot housing market and cheap money, created the perfect storm of conditions for mortgage fraud.

Joe Ways, another former FBI fraud expert, says many of the scams now start with gangs getting a mortgage on a property they already own.

From there they "get an inflated appraisal for it, resell it a couple of times over, and when they think they have run the course on that scheme on that particular property, they just walk away from it, and walk away from the mortgage," he says.

The scheme affects more than just lenders. Innocent buyers are hit, too. The crooked appraisals have a ripple effect: "Comps" — or comparable assessments — made on the value of other houses in the neighborhood yield inflated prices. That means innocent buyers end up overpaying for their houses and are saddled with an overvalued, hard-to-sell property.

And the gangs seem to be staying one step ahead. The Mortgage Bankers Association's Carlyle says the simpler schemes are getting more complicated and harder to track.

"There is no limitation to the ingenuity of fraudsters and criminals," Carlyle says. "I am hearing cases about appraisers' identities being taken so a very qualified appraiser may not know that they are approving appraisals being made in their name."

The Chicago Crime Commission's Wagner agrees that the problem is getting harder to battle. The gangs are covering all the angles.

"They have even created some of their own companies," Wagner says. "They are adept at creating paperwork and identifications and creating pay stubs and W2s and fictitious employers."

In other words, they can create all the paperwork needed to get a loan. And it is here where one might find the only bright spot in the recent credit squeeze that has made loans so hard to get: Wagner says gangs trying to push their mortgage fraud schemes are having trouble getting those loans, too.

"I dont see any 12 year old members of the Gambinos. "

That's not really a good comparison. Not everyone involved with a family is necessarily a member. The mafia seems to have always had 'feeder gangs' like elite schools had feeder schools. A good example is from the recent NatGeo documentary call Inside the American Mob. The last episode about the Bath Avenue Boys,a Bonanno 'feeder gang', and basically said that these guys were involved very very young. I believe Calandra said he was involved before he was even 10 years old. They worked for the Bonannos, but were not actual members. The same may apply to the Gambinos or other families as well.

What's the body count of innocents bystanders killed by the mob vs streetgangs. I'd say it's 1:1000. Once in a blue moon, an innocent will be hit by a mobster's stray bullet. The streetgangs are killing kids and grannies on a weekly if not daily basis. Again, I've never heard of mobsters shooting up a playground full of kids.

The fact that most of these wannabes still live with their mamas or grannies and don't own a car pretty much tells me they don't make much money. I'm sure there are some who make millions, but they also get a life sentence pretty quickly because they don't know how to keep a low profile. For the most part they are a joke. They don't have the foresight, organization or discipline to run a gambling ring, shylock operation, or chopshop.

The topic is misconceptions about streetgangs. These feeder gangs for the mob are streetgangs, so you proved my point. They're a bunch of little punks committing petty crimes.

who in turn get pulled into the mob, which would imply that the mob is full of gangbangers who got drafted. Street gangs have more organization than people give them credit for, well, some do anyway. Sure they may do random drivebys, but most of the time its a case of mistaken identity, which does happen in organized crime as well.

Wrong again. Most of the feeder gang members never become made. The ones who get made have to prove they can do more than sell dimebags or rob gas stations.

Name one instance of the mob shooting up a schoolyard or playground full of children. Tell me about the made members selling dimebags on the streetcorners. Tell me about the unions controlled by the bloods and crips. Do They control any legit industries anywhere in América?

Sure a well organized gang of 12 year old kids carjacking people to take a joyrides

You mean aside from all those business owners who are being extorted and miss a payment and end up dead, or the case in chicago where an innocent man was gunned down with a shotgun because he was mistaken for a mob associate? or how about the bombings in italy the mob did that killed innocent people.

Gang members dont just sell dimebags, they traffic guns, just like the mob does, they sell other drugs such as heroin, coke, ex,, just like the mob does.

To say only street gangs rob gas stations is a load of crap, what about all those cases, such as the one recently of a mob guy being busted for trying to shoplift from home depot? They all do the same dumb shit and yes gangs do recruit at a young age, because they try to bring them up in it, more gang members are adults than 12 year old kids.