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.

L.A. Gangs' New Target--Vegas Strip
May 30, 1994|JESSE KATZ | TIMES STAFF WRITER
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LAS VEGAS — Like corporate raiders seeking new markets to exploit, Los Angeles gang members have come gunning for easy money on the high-rolling Strip.

In a spree of brazen invasion-style heists--three of them in the last three months--suspected Bloods and Crips have stormed into casinos, rifled through the cashier's cages and made off with tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of seconds.



No bystanders have been injured in any of the holdups, which reflect the continuing evolution of some South-Central gangs into profit-driven enterprises. But the robberies, captured on dramatic surveillance videotape, have stunned this mushrooming tourist mecca and forced image-conscious proprietors to begin beefing up their intentionally low-key security measures.

"When you see these guys jumping like animals over the counters with their pillowcases ready to fill with booty, that really strikes fear in people's hearts," said Beecher Avants, security chief at the Gold Coast and a candidate for Clark County sheriff. "This is going to continue . . . as long as we leave cash laying out there like candy."

Starting with a November, 1992, robbery at the San Remo Hotel and Casino, there have been seven casino heists in Las Vegas, including holdups at the Aladdin, the Flamingo Hilton, Harrah's and the San Remo again. Although Los Angeles gangs are suspected in five of the crimes, authorities have had enough evidence to file charges in only two.

In almost every case, at least three or four masked gunmen have burst into the neon-bathed gambling halls, waving shotguns and shouting for everyone to hit the floor. A few times, the crowds failed even to hear the commands, drowned out by the clatter of slot machines and the unshakable lounge bands.

Vaulting over the belly-high counters of the cashier's cages, the robbers have scooped up bundles of large bills, then sped away in stolen cars. One group of alleged thieves, all suspected Crips, was caught in Las Vegas after a high-speed chase. The 15-year-old triggerman in another casino robbery was arrested in South-Central Los Angeles after an informant overheard him boasting about his feat.

None of the loot, which has ranged from $47,000 to $158,000, has been recovered.

"It's like they think we're the new frontier, that we're easy pickin's," said Deputy Dist. Atty. Victoria Villegas, who successfully urged a 30-year prison term for the juvenile shooter. "We're trying to send a message to L.A. gangs that this is not going to be looked upon lightly."

Back in the old days, when legendary mobster Bugsy Siegel first envisioned a shimmering oasis in the desert, the implied threat of Mafia retaliation was enough to discourage almost anyone from pulling such a high-stakes heist.

Veteran newsman Don Digilio likes to tell the tale of Tony Brancato, a daring crook who stole $4,000 from the race book at Siegel's Flamingo in 1951 with three henchmen. When mysterious fates befell all his cohorts, the story goes, Brancato decided he was better off surrendering to the FBI--only to be shot to death in a parked car in Hollywood shortly after his release on bail.

"There is . . . a big-time problem here that wouldn't be one if the broken-nose crowd still ran the gambling houses," Digilio wrote in a Las Vegas Sun column last month.



As the Mafia's influence waned, large publicly held corporations moved in, eager to erase the Sin City image. In their effort to lure a more family-oriented clientele, many of the Strip's tonier resorts toned down their security features, replacing armed guards with radio-toting officers in sports jackets.

The traditionalists could still go downtown to haunts such as Binion's Horseshoe, a dark, wood-paneled joint where iron bars cover the cashier's window and the Western-style guards swagger with large revolvers on their hips. But at the fuchsia-trimmed Flamingo, now owned by the Hilton chain, company officials decided to yank out the cashier's bars two years ago on an interior designer's recommendation.

"The idea was to make everything very open and inviting," said Flamingo spokesman Terry Lindberg. "Unfortunately, it was to the wrong people."

On April 22, four young men in ski masks burst through the doors, dashed past Bugsy's Bar, knocked over a blackjack table and hurled themselves over the unprotected cashier's counter, where Shipley Stratford was ducking for cover. "Don't look at me, bitch," one of the robbers snarled.

Within a minute, they had escaped with more than $150,000. Stratford, 28, recalls that her terror briefly melted when she spotted one of the fleeing thieves--dressed in baggy gang style--struggling to pull up his pants from around his ankles.

The Flamingo's management wasted no time enclosing her cashier's cage again with shiny gold-colored bars.

"I feel a lot safer now, really," said Stratford, who had trouble sleeping after the attack. "Without the bars here, you're just so vulnerable and exposed."

It was probably only a matter of time, authorities say, before South-Central's gangs seized upon Vegas' vulnerability.

For much of the last decade, Crips and Bloods have been evolving from turf-oriented neighborhood cliques into business-minded outfits. Some of the more sophisticated factions have helped fuel a nationwide drug-trafficking network, while others have been linked to the alarming rise in Southern California bank robberies.



"Our gangbangers are master opportunists," said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Wes McBride, who fields calls from law enforcement agencies across the country seeking information about Crips and Bloods migrating from Los Angeles. "Like any predator, they take what they can get."

With the crack cocaine market saturated and banks rapidly bolstering security, gang experts say, the fast cash of Las Vegas became a lucrative target. Not only are many of the cashier's cages wide open, but there is little chance that a security guard would risk firing a gun in a casino crowded with tourists.

"No matter what gets taken in a robbery, it's not as much as they'd have to pay if Grandma gets shot at the damn slot machine," said Jim Galipeau, a deputy probation officer in South-Central. "It's well-known in the gang community that you can go in and take anything you want from a Vegas casino as long as you can get out the door."

Six suspected gang members between the ages of 17 and 24 currently are awaiting trial for their alleged roles in the Harrah's and San Remo heists. Four suspects in the Aladdin robbery also were arrested, though later released for lack of evidence, after an anti-gang raid at their South-Central home unexpectedly turned up a bag full of the casino's money wrappers.

The only suspect to be convicted is 15-year-old Donathan Darnell Smith, known on the streets as Deuce Dog, who entered the San Remo casino in August with three youthful-looking friends.

When a security guard told them they would have to leave, court records show, Donathan stuck a .22-caliber pistol to his head. "You, whitey. . . . I'm going to blow your brains out," the guard, Colin Keel, recalled his attacker saying.

As Donathan's cohorts leaped into the casino cage and snatched $78,000 in cash, Keel tried to grab the gun, which discharged into the boy's thigh. The guard broke free and began to flee. Donathan, though wounded, fired at him several more times. After Las Vegas police caught up with him a few months later in Los Angeles, Donathan confessed that he had been paid $150 for his efforts.

Both Donathan's public defender and gang veterans said he had been used.

"I'm tired of the big homies sending the little homies in on suicide missions," said T. Rodgers, an ex-Bloods leader who now works as a TV producer for "Behind Bars," an upcoming Fox series based on jailhouse interviews. "The younger homies only want to earn some respect, but the older homies treat them like they're expendable. It's wrong."

So far, the wave of robberies does not seem to have had any ill effect on the seemingly insatiable demand for gambling in Las Vegas, which annually lures more than 20 million visitors to its multibillion-dollar casino industry.



Fearing the potential for serious harm, however, the Nevada Gaming Control Board this month met with casino chiefs, Las Vegas police and the U.S. attorney's office to map a preventive strategy. Afterward, the board issued an advisory, recommending that all casinos consider installing more bars, alarms and surveillance cameras, as well as reducing the amount of cash available in the casino cages.

"Future robberies involving serious injury or death could, in addition to the tremendous harm suffered by individuals, have a very negative impact on our tourism and gaming industry," the May 17 memo warned.

At some of the Strip's more posh resorts, where the exotic theme is as big a draw as the casino itself, officials have been reluctant to erect any barriers that might detract from the aesthetics.

William Thompson, a gaming expert at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, likens this to his own unsuccessful attempt to market in-room safes to the hotels; several balked, he said, because they didn't want to create the impression that the rooms were not secure.

"Some of these places are more worried about the perception than the reality," Thompson said.

Pair Sentenced for Bank Holdups Using Youngsters
November 02, 1993|JESSE KATZ | TIMES STAFF WRITER
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Two reputed members of the Rollin' 60s Crips were sent to prison Monday for helping make Los Angeles the bank robbery capital of the world--a feat the FBI says they accomplished by recruiting schoolchildren, arming them with high-powered assault rifles and aiding their getaways with brazen carjackings.

Masterminding the scheme was Robert Sheldon Brown, who, though just 23, has been implicated in 175 bank heists over the last four years, more than anyone in U.S. history. Having pleaded guilty to his role in five of them, he received a 30-year sentence from U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson, who blamed him for "a bank robbery spree of vast and perhaps unprecedented proportions."



His cohort, Donzell Lamar Thompson, 24, pleaded guilty to his role in two of the holdups and was handed a 25-year term. Dressed in a blue prison uniform with shackles around his hands and feet, Thompson contended that he was framed by other bank robbers who fingered him in exchange for lenient sentences. "I truly and honesty feel this is . . . the beginning of modern slavery," he told the judge.

Remarkably, neither of the defendants ever entered a bank during the crimes. In a detailed 29-page sentencing memorandum that reads like the anatomy of an invasion-style robbery, federal agents describe how Brown, known as Casper, and Thompson, known as C-Dog, honed their technique with indiscriminate violence, a touch of ingenuity and "an unquenchable daily thirst for more" even when nothing seemed to be going their way.

Often offering money or drugs as bait, the pair allegedly used their status in the gang to recruit dozens of impressionable wanna-bes--some as young as 13--to perform the riskiest tasks while they remained at a distance, far from surveillance cameras and security guards. Authorities say that on one particularly prolific day--Aug. 21, 1991--Brown orchestrated a string of five bank robberies between West Los Angeles and Montebello, using a 16-year-old boy as the lone front man.

Last April, according to the memo, Brown organized a team of three high school students--one of whom had been lured away from campus during his nutrition class--to rob a First Interstate bank on Wilshire Boulevard. The plan fizzled, however, when two of them approached the bank's front door, but could not summon the courage to push it open. Police caught them after being alerted by bank employees who were amazed at the sight of the hesitant youths standing out front with a pillow case.

In one robbery at a Wells Fargo branch in Downey on Aug. 14, 1992, one of the boys struck a woman with his gun, then sprayed the ceiling with bullets. When police surrounded the bank, the youths smashed a window and burst out, guns blazing. Officers killed a 15-year-old recruit.

"Boys do not rob banks unless someone shows them how," two assistant U.S. attorneys, John Shepard Wiley Jr. and Michael Reese Davis, wrote in the sentencing memo. "Brown and Thompson showed them. They took disadvantaged teen-agers and turned them into felons of the most serious degree."

In a nod to the Charles Dickens' classic "Oliver Twist," the prosecutors compared the defendants to the character of Fagin, who trained young pickpockets and lived off their spoils. "Dickens invented Fagin as the exploiter and debaucher of youth to inspire horror and revulsion in his Victorian audience," they wrote. "Brown and Thompson inspire the same horror and revulsion today. The difference is that Fagin was only fiction."



It was this compulsion for using teen-age henchmen, authorities allege, that ultimately led them to Brown and Thompson. The youngsters were so inexperienced and panicky, officials said, that they were frequently arrested and often willing to squeal on their mentors.

After a 15-count grand jury indictment was issued against the two defendants, FBI agents conducted an all-night search before arresting Thompson on May 28 outside a Crenshaw Boulevard restaurant. Brown was arrested the same day as he stepped from a taxi cab that had just taken him from a Norwalk motel to a South-Central Los Angeles residence.

"It was very clear that these were some bad boys," Davis said after an afternoon news conference Monday.

The alleged crime rampage coincided with an alarming increase in bank robberies across Southern California, where 29% of the nation's bank robberies are recorded. Between 1989, when FBI agents first began linking Brown to the holdups, and the record year of 1992, annual bank robberies here almost doubled--from 1,440 to 2,641.

During that time, authorities grew particularly concerned by a sudden jump in invasion-style robberies, with gunmen using terror to get their money rather than the old-style approach of handing the teller a discreet note. After the number of such takeover robberies tripled last year, the FBI blamed the trend on a shift by gangs into more profit-motivated endeavours.

In their memo, authorities allege that Brown's robbers fired bullets in 20 of the heists, assaulted 15 bank employees and five customers, and individually robbed seven customers and five employees.

"Brown and Thompson worked relentlessly to make Southern California more violent, more traumatizing, more forbidding, more deadly, more laden with fear and loss and pain and grief," the memo states. "Their harm to others was daily, sometimes even hourly. Their violence continued for years. It ranged from the merely shattering to the completely lethal."



Brown embarked early on a life of crime, beginning with a juvenile conviction for first-degree burglary when he was 14. In their memo, prosecutors say that he "has a loving mother and the rest of his family lives in an intact home," but Brown's attorney, Jerry L. Newton, challenged that assessment.

"If being on the streets since you were 14 is a stable home environment, then the prosecutor and I grew up in very different neighborhoods," Newton said.

Brown, authorities say, began to rise through the ranks of the Rollin' 60s, a Crenshaw-area gang that is perhaps the city's most notorious Crip faction.

In one particularly savage attack, two members of the gang burst into the home of former NFL star Kermit Alexander's family in 1984, killing his 58-year-old mother, his sister and two young nephews. As it turned out, they had misread the address and entered the wrong house.

Four years later, in another act of violence that sent shock waves across Los Angeles, a 23-year-old member of the gang opened fire on a rival along a crowded Westwood street, missing his target and fatally striking a graphic artist from Long Beach, Karen Toshima.

But even as the Rollin' 60s became associated with reckless gunfire, they were changing the gang world in a far more profound way. During the 1980s, according to authorities, they emerged as one of the first Los Angeles gangs to expand their operations beyond turf rivalries into the more lucrative pursuit of cash.

Brown, who has been convicted for selling crack, soon took on the title of O.G.--original gangster--a sobriquet usually reserved for the most senior and respected members.

"He was a good kid, but with no family background, no one who really cared and he was forced to deal with the streets," said Chilton Alphonse, director of Community Youth Sports and Arts Foundation, a Crenshaw district gang prevention agency. Alphonse said that Brown came to him looking for a job earlier this year, but that he was unable to help.

"Sadly . . . there's a lot of kids like him out there, young people who feel alienated from the system, who do not feel they can share in the American dream," he said. "He was reaching out for help, but there was no one who could help him."

In just a few years, the FBI says, Brown also became the most sustained bank robbery phenomenon that agents have ever confronted.



The previous record holder was Edwin Chambers Dotson, dubbed the "Yankee Bandit" for his New York baseball cap. He was arrested after 64 holdups around Southern California in 1983 and 1984 and is still in prison.

William J. Rehder, a 26-year FBI veteran who studies bank robbery trends in Southern California, said in a declaration added to the sentencing memo that as many as 50 agents and officers had worked to track Brown down.

He alleged that Brown frequently changed addresses, concealed his assets in other people's names and routinely used evasive driving tactics--"on par with the most sophisticated Colombian drug trafficker."

He also had a gift for improvisation.

During December, 1991, according to the memo, Brown hired an addict to perform three separate robberies, paying him in crack for each one. In another case last April, he allegedly picked up a homeless man and persuaded him to try to rob a bank with nothing more than a note.

Using a sawed-off shotgun supplied by Brown, authorities say, gunmen commandeered a getaway car from the parking lot of the McDonald's at 54th Street and Western Avenue. Another of Brown's alleged henchmen tried to carjack a vehicle from a Van Nuys apartment complex, but his first victim turned out to have a Mercedes--far too conspicuous for a bank robbery. While the driver lay on the garage floor, the gunman waited for a second victim, who turned over her Ford Escort.

But none of Brown's moves was as brazen as the time he allegedly used a yellow school bus to pull off robberies in Long Beach and West Covina.

"This is genuine innovation," Rehder wrote. "Never before have I heard of getaway school buses."

Why does he not read my posts.

Just because they're black doesn't mean they're automatically a streetgang. Once they are no longer involved in daily streetcrimes, they are not a streetgang.

Selling dimebags is a streetcrime. Moving tons of cocaine and heroin is not a streetcrime. Streetgangs do not move tons of heroin from Asian or South America to NYC, LA or Miami.

Streetgangs are known for their brainless crimes. It doesn't take any brainpower or organization to sell a dimebag or rob a gas station. It take brains to run a successful gambling operation. It takes brains to control the garbage or construction industry. It take brains to run casinos. It take brains and organization to run a chopshop operation.

Storming into Las Vegas Strip casinos in voilent robberies is stupid. It attracts attention and could result in dozens of people getting hurt. Most of the robbers were caught and are still in prison. What kind of brains does it take to run into a casino with guns drawn and rob the place? There are hundreds of cameras all over the place.

Let me know when the crips ever run casinos, control unions or any industry or can operate a successful gambling ring. Until then, it's 99% petty streetcrimes. Like I said, most of the members still live with their mamas or grannies and can't even afford a car.

Just let me know when was the last time a mobster shot up a playground full of kids and killed some toddler.

I read about streetgangs doing that on a weekly basis.


Of course, there's no difference.

you're comparing the actions of teenagers/early20s to grown men in their 40s

some innocent bystanders got popped during the philly and columbo wars

Many street gangs are worse than the mafia also because they often have rape as part of their initiations, I never heard about a street gang enforcing discipline not to commit sexual crimes. What kind of psycho perverts they are? In mafia-like organizations at least "theoretically" rapists are outcasts to be whacked. Of course, some rapists manage to weasel their way into the ranks thanks to their connections, but in many street gangs rape isn't an exception to the rules, but sometimes is even required

Yes, those hundreds of businessmen and children on playgrounds killed each year by the mob. You're right.

Those 12 year old crips really are a powerful and organized criminal force. They built Las Vegas, controlled casinos in Cuba, controlled the docks from New York to Miami, controlled bookmaking across the country, controlled the construction club in New York and taxed every project in Manhattan. They also controlled all the unions in Atlantic City.

All this while the Mafia was out robbing gas stations for $20 and shooting up playgrounds full of kids. You guys are so smart and well-informed.

Many street gangs are worse than the mafia also because they often have rape as part of their initiations, I never heard about a street gang enforcing discipline not to commit sexual crimes. What kind of psycho perverts they are? In mafia-like organizations at least "theoretically" rapists are outcasts to be whacked. Of course, some rapists manage to weasel their way into the ranks thanks to their connections, but in many street gangs rape isn't an exception to the rules, but sometimes is even required

Name one gang where that is mandatory?

I don't remember all the gang names, but I think in some gangs (I think it was Crips or Bloods, but I am not sure) if a woman wants to join, she has to be raped by gang members. Also, in a Gangland episode it was said that one gang, I think it was the Tri-City bombers, is particularly infamous for allowing any kind of sexual crime.
I may have expressed myself badly, meaning that it's not like they say "you have to commit rape otherwise you're not one of us", but for example their treatment of women and extreme tollerance towards members who rape somebody is quite shocking.
I also remember a documentary about a prison gang in South Africa where a boss interviewed by the journalist Ross Kemp said that he uses to rape other inmates from his gang, if they refuse, he kills him.

I also agree in essence but put LA crips/bloods in the same field with MS-13. There are many cases of crips/bloods violent activities that wasn't nessacary; Las Vegas home invasion for example, took the some items then killed the residents execution style smh.

With so many complaints about the city’s supposed worst 11, the L.A. Weekly crafted its own Dirty Dozen list of worst gangs, based on crime statistics and numerous interviews with LAPD gang experts, officers in gang details, homicide investigators, gang members and community leaders. The results, roughly in order from worst to not as bad:

Rollin’ 60s Crips

Grape Street Crips

Florencia 13

Hoover Street Criminals

18th Street Westside

Black P. Stones Bloods

Quarto Flats

PJ Crips

East Coast Crips

Avenues

Main Street Crips

Mara Salvatrucha

77th Division
Eight Tray (83) Gangster Crip (77th Division): If you are going to name the Rollin 60s you have to name this neighborhood. Their rivalry is fueled by the hatred they have for each other and by not mentioning this neighborhood in the same context is completely illogical. In 1988, LAPD Lt. Bob Ruchoft said “the Eight-Trey Gangster Crips are considered to be one of the city’s most violent street gangs because they have a reputation for being ruthless with people who oppose them. At least six homicides-including one other case this year-have been linked to the group since the start of 1987 (Los Angeles Times, May 12, 1988),” and not much has changed since then in this community.

Eight Tray (83) Hoovers (South LA – 77th Division), here are six separate Hoover neighborhoods from 52nd Street to 112th Street, but the 83 Hoovers are the most active and the largest and they fight with all Crips and Bloods. They used to identify as “Hoover Crips” but in 1996 they dropped the Crip label and became Crip killers. They have no allies.

Eighteen Street SC click (77th Division): This particular click of 18th Street has the strongest rivalry with the Florencia 13 barrio, has one of the largest neighborhoods of the 20 different 18th Street clicks, has the most membership as well.

Florencia 13 (77th Division): This is the largest single Hispanic barrio in the entire City and County and engaged in a biter rivalry with all Eighteen Street clicks, especially the South Central click. It is also in a racially motivated battle against the East Coast Crips. This gang manages to stay out of media headlines but law enforcement knows how active this gang is. They haven’t killed a 14-year old girl yet, most of their victims are black gang members.

Rollin’ 60 Crips (Hyde Park – 77th Division): I agree that this neighborhood is a top ten most active gang. They are the first Crip gang to be engaged in a serious rivalry with another Crip gang, the Eight tray Gangsters, and the 60s are the most powerful gang from the N-hood alliance. Back in 2003 there was a gang injunction filed against them but apparently that civil order has done little to slow down this neighbourhood.

Southwest Division

Black P Stones (Baldwin Village – Southwest Division): The Black P Stones are actually two seperate gangs, so the City’s list is actually a top 12 list. On the City’s map one can observe the two separate areas of these two neighborhoods, one in the Baldwin Village (the Jungles) and the other in the West Adams area. I do agree that the BPS in the Jungles is a top ten gang, fighting rigorously with the Rollin 30s Crips, the West Blvd Crips, and their racial conflict with the Alsace click of 18th Street, but the West Adams neighborhood, known as the City Stones is not a top ten gang. In November 2005, the BPS in the jungles were target by the 1,000 FBI and LAPD officers in a sweep that arrested 18 people in what was known as “Operation Stone Cold” and there was also an injunction filed against them in June 2006, the LAPD had.

Eighteen Street (Pico-Union- Rampart Division): This is the second largest 18th Street neighborhood in Los Angeles and the original location where this gang was born nearly 40-years ago. This gang is in the Pico-Union area, the most drug plagued area in the County. I would go as far as to rank the entire Pico-Union in the top ten.

Rollin 30s Crips (Jefferson Park – Southwest): One of the largest west side Crip gangs in the entire County and engaged in a bitter rivalry with the Rollin 20s Bloods and the Black P Stones.

Rollin 20s Bloods (West Adams – Southwest): The largest geographical area for a Blood gang in all of Los Angeles engaged in a rivalry with the Rollin’ 30s Crips, which has been responsible for a significant portion of murder in this neighborhood. The 20s also joined with the BPS in their conflict with the 18th Street neighborhood in the West Adams area.

Southeast
118 East Coast Crip (South LA – South East Division): There are about 11 active East Coasts Crip neighborhoods in LA County and this area is perhaps their most active hood engaged in a rivalry with the Athens Park Bloods and a racially motivated conflict with Florencia 13.

Bounty Hunters (Watts – Southeast Division): Arguably the largest Blood gang in LA occupying the largest public housing in in the City, the Nickerson Gardens. Their rivalry with the Grape Streets is perhaps the second most deadliest rivalry in LA gang history. A gang injunction was filed against this neighborhood in August of 2003 and the City was correct by listing this neighbourhood.

Grape Street Crips (Watts – Southeast Division): The largest Crip gang in Watts and perhaps the largest on the eastside occupying the Jordon Downs housing project. The City got it right naming this gang. They are engaged in a rivalry with the Bounty Hunters after several years of a truce. There was a gang injunction filed against this gang, but this is another testament of the ineffectiveness of a gang injunction when you still make the top ten gang list.

Watts Varrio Grape (Watts – Southeast Division):

Rampart
Eighteen Street
(Pico-Union- Rampart Division)

Mara Salvatrucha (Pico Union – Rampart Division)

Newton Division
38th Street (South LA, Newton Division)
52 Pueblos (East Side, Newton Division)
Blood Stone Villians (South LA, Newton Division)
Mad Swan Bloods (East Side, Newton Division)
Play Boys, South Side (South LA, Newton Division)<

There are six gangs on the City’s list that I would not make my top ten or even top 20 list.

Mara Salvatrucha is the most mentioned gang in the last year because of its international presence in Central America, but many gangs throughout the country decided to take on the MS name expanding its reputation. Several of these over night clicks have appeared in dozens of cities but they do not have roots in Los Angeles. MS did make my top ten list, but not the click in Hollywood. Additionally this Hollywood click had an injunction filed against them in 1998 but apparently the injunction is having little impact on this neighborhood if they managed to make LA’s top ten.

Rollin’ 40s Crip gang is certainly a major gang, but how it made it into the top ten I cannot explain. They actually have a truce with the Rollin’ 30s Crips whom they have been feuding with since 1997.

The 204th Street gang is one of the smallest gangs in the entire city, and the only reason why they have been the most discussed gang in the last two months is because of the racial killing of 14-year old Cheryl Green. They have been involved in a couple of other racial killings during the last five years, but they don’t even make my top 50 list of most active violent gangs in Los Angeles.

The Avenues is definitely an active gang with a violent reputation, but there are other gangs that carry stronger reputations. It makes my top 25 for sure but remember that City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo grew up in this neighborhood so he is going to cater to his core constituents and make sure that extra law enforcement resources are directed to this neighborhood. So I understand why this neighborhood made the list; I want my neighborhood safe to. This choice demonstrates to me that this gang naming process is certainly political. And did we forget that the Avenues had an injunction filed against them in December 2002 with a safety zone covering 9.7 square miles, far bigger than it’s actual turf, realy putting a clamp down on this gang, but as I have been advocating for years, the injunction does little to reduce crime long term in this community.

Canoga Park Alabama has a large west valley barrio, but there is not one gang neighborhood in the valley that has a level of gang activity that compares to the typical neighborhoods in South and East Los Angeles for the last 30 years. If I was doing a top ten valley list CPA would make that list, but it does not make my top 50 list for Los Angeles, but there are several prominent people and neighborhoods that live a “stone throw” from this barrio. Can we say “not in my back yard?”

What have the LaMirada Locos done? I almost forgot that this neighborhood existed, and if you drive through there, you will be hard luck to find the gang hanging out in public. Even on the City of Los Angeles; official map of the area, the turf is shaded with dashes to suggest some uncertainty about its boundaries. This neighborhood does not make my top 100.