Yes. That's what I wanted to explain more, it's a graduation structure per say.
The longer your a member than the further your title becomes. Think of it as a guild; apprentice, journeyman, etc. but it's Yg, G, Og. But it vary from set to set and some are structured differently.

Crips/Bloods have been involved in PCP trafficking since the 70s and most people overlook that era. Everybody knows the 80s crack wars but before then most of these gangs were involved in other activities. Some already existed before the umbrella groups formed.

i know orlando anderson is dead (BURN IN HELL)

i hope the other three mothafuckas are dead, in jail, homeless, or clucked out

I'm gonna check that out now. Thank you.

Philly has a very large pcp market. I remember when I was in high school it was all over in my neighborhood.

My theory is that henchman may have been offering him protection in exchange for industry connections and know how. There have been rumours that henchman and hatian jack were extorting a lot of rappers so it may have been an extortion thing too.

Speaking of sinatra he was supposedly not very shy of throwing his mob connections around. Didn't he try and throw someone out of a plane or something.

I think tookie williams was high on pcp when he committed the murders he convicted for.

Hi Scorsese I have always suspected the same thing that Henchman and Jack had more influence in the early days of the rap game in NYC than we know.

You are right Tookie was on PCP when he killed those people at the convenient store.

on the dvd "Rhyme and Punishment".....Lurch is interviewed and disputes that report....noteworthy , because the mother of the victim supports/agrees with Lurch's account.


the lurch segment of the dvd is surely on youtube

Yea tookie was high out of his mind on pcp when he committed them murders. He killed the Chinese family. I think 3 people and there were others. But them murders sealed his fate.

I've never actually read anywhere that he was on PCP when he committed the murders. I'm aware thought that he was addicted to it at the time, and i thought the robberies were probably so he could by more of it. Apparently he started smoking large amounts of it, after he was shot.

Here is a link where they mention Tookie and his friends smoking PCP before.

http://crime.about.com/od/deathrow/a/tookie2.htm

Thank for the link. Tookie was a pos, even if he did apparently change he still needed to be executed. I mean why did he even have to kill them?

I have to agree with you Camarel. I know he did some good while he was on death row but the fact is he killed many people in cold blood and to be honest I do not think he was really sorry. He tried to make up for what he did with the children's books and all.

There are many people who will and do disagree but the bottom line Tookie was a lowlife who did not want to take responsibility for his actions. Good riddance IMO.

That lowlife punk Tookie got what he deserved....actually he got off easy with the lethal injection, they should of fried that prick in the electric chair or stuck him in the gas chamber. Fuck him!

They were begging Arnold to grant Stanley clemency but Schwarzenegger told that asshole :

"Tookie...i'll be back...but you won't! Hasta la vista scumbag!"

Lol Giancarlo that was awesome. I agree he did get off too easy, and he got to make peace with his family first before he died. He did not allow his victims that courtesy. He always apologized for not being a better role model to young African Americans but he never apologized to the families of his victims.

In one interview he blamed the drugs for his actions, which is more BS. Lots of people use drugs not many execute people in cold blood after they get high. He could not accept the fact he wsa a lowlife, junkie, leech, scumbag and quite frankly it is disgusting that there are people who defend him and believe his BS that he changed. Every death row inmate claims he or she changed once they got locked up and are about to be executed. Funny how that is lol.

People can change but they have to accept they have problems. I sound like I am in an AA Meeting lol.

I agree he HAD to die. The good deeds done in jail were done only because he was in jail. He was a monster and lethal injection served him well. I still laugh when I see video of him on the gong show flexing like a nice guy. When in reality he was a sick fuck. But made for movie type life so very interesting stories from his time.

It's not just that they believed he changed. Incredibly people actually bought his claims of innocence . Good Riddance !

Another thing about Tookie is that according to Sgt.Curtis Jackson of the LAPD, and Jimel Barnes former leader of the Avalon Garden Crips, Tookie was neither the leader or co-founder of the Crips and didn't even lead his own set.

http://www.gangsorus.com/crips_bloods_history.htm

That was an interesting read camarel thank you. I've always heard he was a founder so that was something new to me. So what exactly are we to go by? What's the truth?

No idea Philly Mob. I just thought it was an interesting different perspective. I have to say that a 30 year veteran of the LAPD and a former set leaders and an OG Jimel Barnes are credible, but at the end of the day it's their word against his. Here's a radio interview with Barnes were he talks about Tookie and Raymond Washington -

There was no link or anything there. I wouldn't mind hearing that.

?? I posted the video. Here is the link anyway - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HDHuY0kqg2U

Thanks for that information. That's one of the topic I was going to explain on about the crips interconflicts which other posters always mentioned. Some of those crip sets were already active before the umbrella alliance started and was already on bad terms with each other.

The truth is that Raymound is the founder. No matter whose recalling their part in the foundation , Raymound remains the lynchpin in the story.

tookie was just a Capricorn opportunist. he admitted he wanted to be remembered as a notorious gangster like al capone, who was also a Capricorn and his personal hero. the true history of the crips is still muddled,what we do know seems to indicate a linear progression in this order

avenues(headed by munson,who was older than Raymond and beat him up when he was still a young adolescent)--->baby avenue cribs(started by Raymond after munson's imprisonment)--->cribs---->crips(this is where people disagree-when did cribs evolve to crip?)---->east side crips/west side crips(this is when tookie comes into the picture)/Compton crips/Inglewood crips---->where we are today,when crips turn on themselves, and fractionalize into hundreds of subsets and alliances

In the book I'm reading it says that there was more crip on crip violence than say blood on crip or any other gang for that matter. They get all high on pcp and start blasting each other in their own sets. Or another set faction that broke off from another crip group. It is just funny to me that they kill more people with their own colors on then they do with rival gangs.

It's all turf battles and shoot outs over money. They fight each other over nothing and the shit has been going on for decades.

Thank you for that

No problem.

PCP scene from training day.

That's what I'm talking about it. Crips is just the name of the umbrella with sub partnerships under it. Each of those crip sets have their own colors,Neighborhood Alliance wear baby blue, Gangster Alliance is black I think, Grape St obviously purple, Fudge Town is brown, etc. People looking outside in just see blue vs blue, it's deeper than that. The on & off skirmish is basically vendetta, if someone kill a relative of yours and you know who done it than avenge your slain relative. Other words this isn't over some bs colors. It's personal & business.
Also, there's about 95 crip sets in the city and compare that to 32 blood sets in the city. Your running into your next door partners before your rivals.

RETURN TO DUST: BANE OF THE ’70S, PCP NOW A SUPPORTING PLAYER IN THE SAGA OF AARON HERNANDEZ

By Nancy Wride

The powerful street drug PCP, largely unheard of since its violent heyday in the 1970s, may go higher profile as evidence unfolds in the murder case of former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez, who was back in a Massachusetts courtroom Oct. 9 for a pre-trial hearing.

Hernandez’s testimony was mostly procedural, so the full picture of the talented but troubled tight end will have to wait for another day. It is a story, according to a recent report in Rolling Stone magazine, that will include a shocking plot twist — about the time he signed a $40-million contract with the Patriots in August 2012, Hernandez began habitually using the notorious drug known as “angel dust” during a period of escalating bad behavior that reportedly ended in the execution-style slaying of his friend, former semipro football player Lloyd Odin, in June.

Hernandez has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and weapons charges in Lloyd’s death.

“Aaron’s out of his mind,” an unnamed Hernandez family friend told Rolling Stone. “He’s been twisted on dust now for more than a year, which is when all of this crazy s— started.”

Angel dust has taken a back seat to more recent scourges like cocaine and methamphetamine during the last 30 years. But the hallucinogen known for making its users aggressive, paranoid, even psychotic, has recently staged a comeback in pockets of larger American cities, says one of law enforcement’s foremost PCP authorities.

‘I Want a Kobe’

PCP is a trifecta of stimulant, depressant and hallucinogen that causes a dream-like state, but at higher doses may leave the user with a sense of being invincible, says Los Angeles Police Department narcotics Det. Frank Lyga, who has investigated PCP for more than 16 years. Lyga, a member of California’s only complete clandestine lab team not run by the DEA, testifies in PCP cases throughout the country, in New York, Nevada and Texas, and such cities as Philadelphia, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. While angel dust sounds powdery, PCP is used almost entirely as a liquid, and ordered on the street by code.

“It’s sold using basketball names for the amount wanted,” Lyga said. For example, code for 24 ounces of the drug would be a reference to Kobe Bryant, No. 24 for the Lakers. “So,” Lyga says, “they’ll call up and say ‘I want a Kobe’ or ‘I want a Shaq.’ Or, ‘You want a Lamar?’ ”


“Two puffs I’m good, three puffs I’m whacked,” is the saying on the street, Det. Frank Lyga said. The amber liquid is PCP, while the pink is wax used in the manufacturing process. Photo courtesy LAPD
Developed in the 1950s as an intravenous anesthetic, PCP’s use was discontinued due to the high incidence of patients experiencing postoperative delirium with hallucinations. PCP is no longer produced or used for medical purposes in the United States. However, once it became a recreational drug of choice in the 1970s, angel dust was the stuff of legend among police officers for the almost superhuman strength and aggressiveness of people they encountered under its influence.

“There’s a saying on the street, ‘two puffs I’m good, three puffs I’m whacked,’ which is when people do crazy stuff like pull out their own teeth,” Lyga said. Based on increased production and levels of seized product in places where gangs have spread, there’s been a rise in PCP use in many regions of America.

One of those places is Bristol, Conn., Hernandez’s hometown. “We have been experiencing a resurgence in the use of angel dust,” Bristol Det. Lt. Kevin Morrell told Rolling Stone. “We deal with it all the time.”

The use of PCP, also called “wet,” is reported to have contributed to Hernandez’s alleged manic behavior during the months leading up to his arrest. During that time, he became so paranoid that he installed 14 security cameras in his mansion and began carrying a handgun in his gym bag, according to the magazine. Hernandez is also being investigated as a suspect in the double homicide of two men in an SUV in 2012 who had just left a Boston nightclub when they were sprayed with bullets from another vehicle.

“Angel dust had begun to take him on this real death spiral for the last 13 to 14 months,” Rolling Stone writer Paul Solotaroff told Boston’s CBS News, “which is when the really deranged behavior began.”

It is not known whether PCP will ultimately be introduced by the defense or the prosecution in Hernandez’s murder trial. Nevertheless, Hernandez’s story has cast light on the growth of one of the most dangerous drugs to hit the streets.

Nation’s PCP Is Coming From L.A.

Los Angeles is the nation’s epicenter of angel dust production, according to Lyga and others in law enforcement.

“PCP production and distribution from Los Angeles has been increasing steadily,” DEA spokeswoman Dawn Dearden said, though noting that the drug is not the focus of the agency’s biggest cases. “Los Angeles-based street gangs continue to dominate the manufacture and distribution of PCP, continuing to serve as a major source area for PCP seized in, or destined for, other parts of the country [including] the Midwest and East Coast cities.”

Lyga said many police agencies don’t have the experience or the desire to deal with PCP users, who may violently resist arrest, which makes for unflattering cell phone videos “for the blue-suiters.” Lately, PCP has been mistaken by law enforcement for bath salts.

PCP intended for shipment via FedEx.
PCP intended for shipment via FedEx. The drug is often mailed to legitimate businesses cross-country and then signed for by a gang member masquerading as an employee.
Photo courtesy LAPD
“In July, for instance, a suspected PCP lab blew up a house outside Atlanta on a Saturday, Lyga said, “and the DEA called on Wednesday to have me write up the search warrant for what chemicals they should be looking for. A lot of police departments don’t have the experience [with PCP] to know what they’re finding.”

But the drug is out there and moving interstate, Lyga said, most popularly via the U.S. Postal Service.

“My team of people and a couple of others, including the U.S. postal inspector, [are] intercepting PCP on a regular basis being shipped across the country,” Lyga said, “so the seizure amount is up from years past.”

Just last year, $100 million worth of PCP – considered the largest PCP bust ever – was seized in Los Angeles and Culver City by the team on which Lyga and other Southern California police officers serve. Lt. Scott Fairfield of the Los Angeles Interagency Metropolitan Police Apprehension Crime Task Force, known as L.A. IMPACT, announced the seizure of 130 gallons of finished PCP, 1,000 gallons of PCP-making chemical to produce millions more of the drug, as well as assault rifles and $389,000 in cash. Suspected gang members were arrested and raids conducted on several locations. (What was first announced in the media as 500 gallons of the chemical was, Lyga said, based on his preliminary estimate, and the actual amount was about 1,000 gallons.)

Though production and trafficking are up, and police in some cities report an uptick of problems, PCP’s criminal profile has remained low for some years, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. The District of Columbia is the big exception. The Office of National Drug Control policy reports that D.C. leads the nation in PCP arrests, with 12 percent of men detained last year having PCP in their systems, according to a recent Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program.

Results from the U.S. government’s 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health published in September show that the number of past year initiates of PCP aged 12 or older was 90,000 in 2012, up from the 2011 estimate of 48,000.

In Camden, N.J., PCP is growing in popularity among young men and women, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Philadelphia/Camden drug market analysis, which notes the drug is “less expensive than crack cocaine.” Authorities in Monroe, La., have had a string of arrests over the summer surrounding people using PCP, reports KNOE News. “Not sure why that is but when there is an influx in PCP in the area, we see an increase in number of calls when people are exhibiting bizarre behavior,” said Jimmy Fried with the Monroe Police Department.

Authorities in Missouri are also seeing an uptick in the use of PCP, according to Fox4kc.com. Kansas City police believe the drug may be responsible for an attack on an ambulance worker in 2012. The news station reported that “Kansas City police are investigating the use of PCP in the city’s urban core, trying to figure out where the drug is coming from.”

‘Functioning Addicts’ on West Coast

Lyga, the PCP specialist who trains law enforcement on how to recognize and handle angel dust, says most users go unnoticed; the drug’s quick evaporation on a cigarette and lack of odor helps PCP users fly under the radar.

One drop on the end of a cigarette, two puffs, and the $10- to $20-high typically peaks at four to eight hours, but may leave a user altered for 24 hours. And it is not uncommon to find users “dipping” the cigarette into the PCP, which is the equivalent of up to 60 times one dose, said Lyga, adding, “that’s when more of the bizarre and violent behavior happens.”

Award 2012
LAPD narcotics Det. Frank Lyga, center, and PCP-assigned detectives on the L.A. IMPACT team gather with the director of the DEA in Washington, D.C. The officers from Los Angeles were honored for the seizure of $100 million in PCP in 2012. Photo courtesy LAPD
“We have people under the influence [on the West Coast] but they’re functioning addicts,” Lyga said, meaning they don’t seem to overdose and attract attention or medical aid, hospital visits being one measure of use. “The rest of the country, they are being overwhelmed with PCP, which is becoming the drug of choice for the rest of the United States,” Lyga said. “Gang members from South L.A. produce it nationwide and they own a monopoly; it all comes from here, 95 to 99% comes from here.”

L.A. gangs are either transporting it or have members who have relocated cross-country.

“My gangs here, they ship it UPS, priority mail, people fly into L.A .almost daily to pick it up and carry it out,” Lyga said. “They’ve been known to mail it to legitimate businesses, and they sit out front in the car. When the tractor-trailer driver [with deliveries] pulls up, they jump in, sign for it and off they go.”

The difference between a light-headed, out-of-body high and an overdose of PCP is astonishing.

Lyga noted a horrific case on which he recently commented in a segment of A&E’s Biography program about an aspiring rapper named Antron Singleton, aka Big Lurch. Dubbed the Cannibal Rapper on Hiphopp03ress.com, he said during the program’s prison interview that in April 2002, he was hallucinating on PCP when he says he was driven to rid his girlfriend of demons inhabiting her. He devoured some of her organs and part of her face. Lyga says in such cases, the prevailing cultural horror story – right now zombies are big – will often emerge in the tale of criminals who describe hearing voices directing them to kill some demonic creature.

While other drugs, such as meth and cocaine may get more ink in the media, PCP manufacturing is actively raided.

“There’s 150 to 200 gallons a year that I seize,” Lyga said. “There are 76,800 doses in one gallon. That’s more than 15 million doses worth of PCP confiscated in the Los Angeles area alone — not the amount of the drug actually in play. We’re good at what we do, but we get under 1 percent of it, and rarely do we get a lab or a big bunch of the stuff because it’s … sold fast.” The drug is “not physically addicting; it’s psychologically addicting,” Lyga said. “It’s a stimulant, a depressive and a hallucinogen – all three at one time.”

From the medical perspective, “PCP is the fifth-largest cause of emergency room visits of all illicit drugs with 75,000 [emergency room] visits a year in the U.S.,” said Dr. David Sack, CEO of Elements Behavioral Health, who treats addicts of all kinds.

“PCP has a high incidence of psychiatric complications including hallucinations, agitation, anxiety, paranoia, perceptual changes, irritability and unpredictable behavior,” Sack said. “Historically, PCP appealed to young adults and was frequently used in combination with marijuana. We have not seen a marked uptick at our programs and it is remains relatively uncommon compared with other illicit drugs in our centers.”

The effects of angel dust are legendary in law enforcement. ”Kids fighting four of us and running naked down the street because their body temp is going through the roof,” Morrell said to Rolling Stone. In the ’70s, before there was widespread use of meth and crack, “dust was the madman’s drug of choice,” the magazine reported. It was banned for its “psych-ward side effects: mania, delirium, violent hallucinations.”

A wealth of PCP arrests has led Slate.com to create a regular feature called “The Month in PCP,” with a July segment featuring the story of a 32-year-old driver who hit three employees, a fire hydrant, a parking meter, a tree, and a man riding a CitiBike. The driver, who allegedly had a bag of PCP in his sock, kept asking, “Am I dead?” when authorities arrived.

Here are some other PCP-related crimes:

Remains of tub that was used in manufacturing process.
Remains of tub that was used in manufacturing process. Photo courtesy LAPD
Camden, N.J., resident Osvaldo Rivera, 31, told police that he smoked a combination of PCP and pot before he allegedly slit the throats of a 6-year-old boy and his 12-year-old sister in September 2012.

Also in Camden, authorities say Chevonne Thomas was smoking PCP before beheading her 2-year-old son, Zahree, putting his head in a freezer, and then killing herself in August 2012.

In Oklahoma City, a man reportedly high on PCP was arrested after he was seen running down the street naked. The man’s mother said that when she tried to talk to him, he yelled “Alah to God! I am Bootsey.”

And in a story that received international attention, police say a patient on PCP being taken to the hospital in the District of Columbia by an ambulance jumped out and stole a second ambulance that had arrived to help him.

Nancy Wride is a senior writer at Elements Behavioral Health. Before that, Wride spent more than two decades as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times.