June 2, 2015 • 45 mins
The street gang problem in America peaked in the 1990s, but recent FBI reports find that gang membership doubled from 2006-2011. What's driving this increase, and gangs in general? Wander into gang territory with Josh and Chuck in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's with us,
and this is stuff you should know. The podcast not
affiliated with any gang. No, No, I would have thought
(00:26):
that goes without saying. You never know stuff you should know.
Army that's our gang. Yeah, I guess so nerds rolling
around dropping knowledge. Yeah, that's how we roll. Our symbol
is Infinity gang sign. I don't think that should be
our symbol. No, No, it's um a perfect circle. No,
(00:47):
I think the the mike with the mean our regular logo.
All right, that's a symbol. We just need to learn
how to make it and spray paint. Yes, actually that's
dated what we've just said. We just mentioned spray painting
your gang sign. But that's old time people. They still
do that. No, gangs have evolved so much. Yes, some
(01:09):
people do still do it, but from what I understand,
gangs have basically come to see that. It's like, why
why would you do that? It doesn't make any sense.
You're basically you're marking your territory, right, You're marking yourself
whereas it's better to stay out of the hands of
law enforcement and not through a gang sign or tag
(01:30):
something with your gang symbol than to do that. Gangs
are wisending up and they're just not committing crimes any
longer because that puts them under the police microscope. No,
I'm saying that they are committing crimes still, they're just
not UM. I don't think they spray paint their stuff
as much. They're definitely UM getting more sophisticated in some
(01:52):
gangs that've I've seen that like mortgage fraud and identity theft, counterfeiting,
like are some of the human trafficking one, So the
new crimes um. So before we get started the chuck,
I want to say that throughout this reading The Stuff
or the House Stuff Works article and doing research, I
was plagued by this idea that, like, we don't really
(02:12):
have a real idea of how many people are in gangs,
how many gangs are in the United States, exactly what
kind of problems like gang problem we have. Is it overstated?
I suspect it might be overstated gangs. So this is
so the FBI compiles this report every few years and
(02:33):
in the original House Stuff works article. It cites the
two thousand five National Gang Threat Assessment, right, and it
says there's twangs and seven hundred and thirty one thousand
active gang members. Two thousand eleven, which is the most
recent one from what I could find, has not too
many more gangs thirty three thousand, but one point four
(02:54):
million gang members. Thousand more gangs, I guess it is, okay,
but one point four million gang members. The number of
gang members between two thousand and five and two thousand
and eleven, according to the FBI, doubled, doubled. And okay,
if that's the case, right, what why what happened between
(03:17):
two thou five and two thousand and eleven? I don't know,
because the gang heyday was in the eighties and nineties. Okay,
all right, So what would cause gang membership to skyrocket
to double from two I don't think significant. I have
one guess, uh, federal grants going to police departments, UM
(03:38):
that say they have a gang problem. So maybe they're
inflating the numbers. Maybe, Okay, what if they're not inflating
the numbers? The thing that I think the internet, no,
the economic crisis. If you go back and look at
the history of gangs, and if you look at all
gang um activity, yeah, gang banging. If you if you
(03:59):
tried to find on the lying cause, one of the
underlying causes, if not basically the underlying cause is a
lack of access to economic opportunity a k. Nothing else
to do, no job prospects, and then already being surrounded
by gangs or the possibility of gangs leads to an
increasing membership. So we have this economic crisis in the
(04:21):
United States. So if gang membership really did double, I
would put my money on the idea that it was
because of the economic crisis. Didn't that touch the middle
and upper middle classes more? Though? I mean, was there
a housing crisis? Oh man, everybody got totally messed up
by the economic crisis. Yeah, I mean I knew it
touched everyone, but I didn't know it wasn't just housing,
Like housing kicked the whole thing off. But like the
(04:43):
job market, like all of a sudden, all these people,
even if it did affect like say the middle class
or the upper middle class, all of a sudden they
lose their jobs. They start taking the lower classes job
because they've got to survive. Now, where are the lower
classes doing? Interesting? Theory. I'm if membership doubled in the
US between two I would bet any amount of money
(05:04):
that was because of the economic crisis. You would stake
your stuff. You should know fortune on that. Yeah, yes,
I would all the millions. All right, Well, we may
as well go and talk about white people join gangs
because you just teased it. Poverty is a huge reason. Um,
these are usually in poorer areas of the city. Um,
(05:26):
not a lot of money going on. You can make
money by robbing people, by dealing drugs. It provides a
financial incentive to join a gang basically. Yeah. I've read
about one study from Los Angeles that found that neighborhoods
that had unemployment rates of between fourteen and sixteen percent
had about fifteen times more gang related homicides than neighborhoods
(05:50):
that had unemployment rates of between four and seven percent. Yeah,
and they say that gang related homicides account for close
to half of all the homicides in the United States
right now. Yeah, that's another thing that I found, Like really,
I saw also somewhere between I saw other places that
are like this is all way overstated that like the
(06:13):
gangs peaked back in the nineties and like we haven't
had a real problem since then. I don't think this case,
but there are some like sociologists out there saying this
is this is overstated. Yeah, I don't think anyone saying
there's not a gang problem. Those are No. I don't
think anybody's disagreeing that there's a gang presence. I think
the degree to which there is a gang presence. So Chuck,
(06:37):
for example, you can go look at something from the
Justice Policy Institute called Violent Children two dozen send um
look up the youth gang violence problem is exaggerated, and
it provides kind of a counterpoint to it. Because if
there's one thing, I'm not saying there's not a gang problem,
I'm not excusing the idea that like, oh, you have
low economic opportunities so you join a gang. Totally get it. No,
(06:57):
Like there's like there's still morality. There's still plenty of
people in the same situation that aren't joining gangs. Like
what I'm saying is like when you when you read
articles that are just like there's gangs everywhere and they're
killing everybody. Of the homicide rates are because of gangs,
and they're they're immoral little kids coming out of the
(07:18):
inner city. Your your antenna should immediately go up, and
you should start asking critical questions about where this stata
is coming from. What they're basing the data on, Who
is giving you this data. Did they stand to benefit
from people being scared? Um? Do they get funding to
study this kind of stuff? You just have to ask
(07:39):
questions like that, they're creating hysteria. It's yeah, anytime you
encounter hysteria like that, yes, you should stop for a second.
If you have that amount of self possession, stop and
just start asking questions like what everybody calmed down, agreed, sir?
Or just run because the gangs are coming for you.
(08:00):
All right. That's that was it for my soapbox. All right.
Uh so back to why you might join a gang,
um peer pressure. I love that that's listed, uh because
it's true. I Mean, it sounds kind of like a
very high school thing. But that's a lot of times
is when you're getting pressure to joining gang, they seek
out children, right, That's where a lot of gangs find
the roots. The crypts, bloods, both high schools, that's right.
(08:21):
The blue, the red, those are the high school colors.
That's right. We'll get to them later. Um boredom we
talked about that. Um, a lot of these communities there
isn't a lot going on. They don't have the neighborhood
pool or maybe even a neighborhood library or a neighborhood
youth center um, or a playground that's in uh not
in disrepair. So these shuttered communities don't have a lot
(08:43):
going on. So kids are board um, and then they
fall into a sense of despair, which means, um, you know,
maybe I don't have a father who's a role model.
Maybe my father or mother or both are in prison. Um,
but I have a family right over here. This gang
says they love me, They're gonna get my back, and um,
now I have a sense of community finally through this gang.
(09:05):
And some gangs actually have set up overt community programs,
like job training programs, like things that basically said, we
have been so neglected by the community at large that
like local gangs are the ones setting this up. And
I mean that's a pretty good reason to join a gang,
is when they're holding community outreach programs in your community
(09:27):
and they're the only show in town. Yeah, I mean
there's uh, it's not just a TV thing. The gang
leader with a heart of gold that like secretly uh
snipes to build the playground, you know, like that stuff happens.
I mean, and we're not trying to say like gang
leaders are just the best, that they have been known
to quietly reinvest money in their own communities. Well yeah times,
(09:50):
I mean, yeah, you don't want the place falling apart,
especially if that's your major market. Yeah. And plus also
it's a really great way to ingratiate yourself with the
local community. Absolutely sure. So let's talk a little bit
about the history of gangs. If you'll indulge me for
a moment, you can consider yourself indulged. Um. I love
the way. And this is by the Grabster at Grabowski. Um.
(10:12):
He says criminal gangs have been around for as long
as crime and that makes total sense because, um, their
strength in numbers. And I think you've seen the movie
Gangs of New York. Yeah, stripe pants, stripe pants, oh man,
strip pants, Yeah, a lot of them. Fashion. Did I
(10:33):
like it? No, not really, Yeah, I've went back and
watched it recently. I really liked it. Um. I did
not like Cameron Diaz. I forgot she was in it. Yeah,
that was she was missing. She was like a Cockney accent,
now that I think about it. Uh no, no, it was,
it was. It must have been a nightmare I had.
She was I've had that same nightmare. I don't. I
(10:54):
think she had to look at some sort of a
weird accent. Maybe she was trying to do Cockney. You know,
um forgot a good movie though. I think I really enjoyed. Mean,
I could stand and go back and see it as
an I liked it. And what's this Daniel Date lewis Man,
what a great character. Um. So, anyway, that movie was
based on fact because in the nineteenth century in New
(11:16):
York and Five Points, Um, you had these ethnic gangs,
the Irish gangs, Polish gangs, Italian gangs, and they all
faught for territory and robbed and mugged each other and
had violent fights in the street. That was pretty crazy
in Lower Manhattan. Yeah, the Five Points gangs, Yeah, very
very tough. But sometimes they have banded together and fight
(11:37):
other parts of town's gangs, like the Bowery Boys, that
kind of stuff. So they're just fighting all the time,
turf wars like today, like you know what, gangs they
kind of have always been about turf to a certain
degree they were about turf and that is we'll see
one of the ways that you can divide um gang gangs.
It's one of the definitions of gang is a turf gang.
(12:00):
But they were also um ethnic gangs typically as well,
like Irish gangs or Polish gangs or Italian gangs. You
might ask yourself, what happened to the Polish gangs? What
happened to Irish gangs? Do you do you want to
hear my theory behind the economic crisis of the nineteen seventies, No, no,
(12:23):
these gangs went away, and they're so so. By the
fifties and sixties, most of the um gangs in the
United States were Hispanic gangs and black gangs. Ethnic gangs
were like we think of as like Irish or Polish
or whatever, just disappeared. And the reason why they were
disappeared because the Irish and the Polish stopped being considered
(12:43):
ethnic and they were just white after that, and then
all of the economic opportunities afforded to white people were
refording to the Irish people and the Polish people, and
they had very little reason to be gang members any longer,
and they became skinheads later on. But don't you think
that that's probably what happened. Maybe so I couldn't find
(13:05):
anything definitive anywhere. They were like not a disenfranchised ethnic
group any longer. They were just part of, uh, the
white machine that is the United States. I could see that, like, man,
you got theories out the wazoo today. But a lot
of them became like cops. That was a big thing,
especially for like former Irish gang members. A lot of
them moved right from Irish gang member into Irish cops.
(13:27):
They're like, where can I still go? Crackheads? Right? Exactly right.
What's strange is as we'll see, that's kind of going
on today still gang members moving into things like law
enforcement in the military. Yeah. Boy, that was frightening, hysteria inducing,
isn't it. It is so in the nineteen fifties, um,
(13:48):
in sixties you had what we're called car clubs, and
um they were gangs. And this is when you think
of like the outsiders, like when you go to rumble
Over territories. These were the car lubs and they would
get together and they would fight in a parking lot
with chains and knives and things like that, go rescue
people from burning houses and an iron Long State Old
(14:09):
Bony Boy, and UM, they began to languish in the
nineteen sixties and then in the nineteen sixties a man
named Raymond Washington and a man named two Key I
say man two boys. Yeah, they think they were high schoolers.
They might have been middle schoolers even they were young,
because they originally called their gang the Baby Avenues, the
(14:33):
after school specials. That would be a good gang, the
Baby Avenues. UM. It was a very small gang at first,
and then it later became the Cribs because they were young,
like Baby Cribs. And then it became the Cribs in
south central Los Angeles. Uh. And they were blue like
you said earlier, because Fremont High School where they went
(14:54):
to school, where that was their school colors. So it's
kind of funny to think that it was rooted in
like I mean, it's not like it burst out of
school pride, you know, but they did base their colors
on their high school. And then um, as a result
of the crips UH kind of taking over the area. UM.
Raymond Washington was murdered by the way in he didn't
last too long. UM. Tenure is a pretty good run
(15:18):
for a game. Yeah, probably, so I would think that's
longer than you would predict. And two Ki went to
prison for murder. But UM in the nineteen seventies, and
the Bloods were born as a results of the Crips
and their activity. Um, all these smaller gangs that had
been uh I guess messed with by the Crips. UM
kind of came together and says, all right, we need
(15:39):
a rival gang, so we're gonna be the Bloods. And
that's why the Crips formed. Originally oh to uh for
other rival gangs. It was a couple of gangs that
came together. It's banding together, which still happens today if
you believe that stuff. Um. And they were from the
Um from the high school. Yes, and they were red
(15:59):
and they were on to by Sylvester Scott and Vincent Owens.
So then you had the Bloods, you had the Crypts.
They are still thriving today. They do not get along.
They have their well did they get along? So allow
me to mention the Watts Truce Man two Truce Watts
(16:23):
in south central Los Angeles. The Blood in the Crips
came together with Jim Brown football legend Jim Brown. Yeah,
I remember this actually in like u um, I think
a y m C a auditorium or high school auditorium
or jim and sat down and worked out a peace
treaty based on one between I think Israel and Egypt
(16:43):
that had been used um. And it was a peace
treaty between the Crypts and the blood and it was
abided by so much so as far as I can tell,
it's still going on. Yeah, Like it was a very
it was a big deal. But that's not to say
that there's not in a related gang violence because now
that the Crypts and the Bloods had watch truce signed,
(17:07):
there was much more infighting among different cript sets and
different blood sets. Well yeah, I mean this is I
guess we should talk about the idea of nations like
the Crypt Nation and Blood Nation their Bloods and Crypts
all over the country. Yeah, which makes them super gangs. Yeah,
but they sound terrifying that um. The guy who did
the article I read said that he thought that they
(17:28):
would all be sort of cut from the same cloth
and they would all get along. But oh yeah, apparently
within nations it's very much still broken down into your
own neighborhood gang, and you might not get along with
the other crip gang that's nearby. Even so, the crip
is the nation and the set is like the local
chapter basically. But like you said, this guy named Mike
(17:50):
carly PhD. He's I think from the University of Missouri
or no Missouri state. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry he Um,
I think it's a sociologist who went in and just
assimilated with gang members and hung out and ended up
like writing this treatise on it. And um, he said
what you just said that he expected everybody to get along.
If you're a crip, that's just not the case, because
(18:12):
if you're a crip, your set's territory is much more
likely to butt up against another crip sets territory then
say a blood's territory on the other side of the freeway.
And if you're selling drugs on the corner and they're
selling drugs in the corner, well you're fighting directly for
the same customers money, so you're much more likely to
erupt in violence or whatever. Yeah, and the nineties is
(18:34):
when the narcotics kind of came on the scene. Before that,
gangs didn't really deal a lot of drugs. It's a
lot like more petty crime. And like muggings and stuff
like that. Yes, supposedly it was drugs that that changed everything,
not only unleashed the spasm of violence that started in
the eighties in Los Angeles specifically, but also um, I
(18:56):
think even prior to that, in the seventies in Chicago
is where the idea of taking street gangs and turning
them into hierarchical drug dealing businesses was formed by a
couple of guys named Larry Hoover and David Barksdale. That's
the guy from the Wire. It wasn't David, but that
(19:18):
was Avon Barksdale, wasn't it. I wonder if he's named
after David Barksdale. That seems like a nod. So Larry
Hoover formed the Black Gangsters and David Barksdale formed the
Black Disciples, and they were rival gangs in Chicago that
eventually formed the Black Gangster Disciples the Super Gang, and
they had this idea that they would take all of
their gang members and just turn them into drug dealers.
(19:40):
And the crack epidemic helped that tremendously, which, by the way,
if you're interested in this kind of stuff at all,
go listen to our crack episode. It was one of
our best if you asked me. Yeah, we have a
few episodes that touch on this. I guess I think
the Hell's Angels, even though biker gangs are not quite
the same, Is that correct? Yeah, that's there categorization does
(20:01):
it called outlaw and motorcycle gangs are seriously o MG's Yeah. Yeah.
And then um, I think the one on zoot suits.
Oh yeah, that that was a lot like this. Yeah,
that's a great history one that we did. You should
look into. So um bloods and crips. Um. They have
this way of talking that where the Bloods won't say
(20:24):
they'll substitute uh ce in words for B and crips
will substitute B for C because they won't even say,
you know, a word with B in it, Like let's
go to Starbucks and get a boffy, start starbups and
get a coffee. Yeah, because they're just hanging out in
(20:44):
Starbucks now, they're hanging out in starbups Starbucks. Um. And
they also have their own way of walking sea walking
and b walking, which, um, it's sort of like a
little dancy sort of move. But I looked at them
both and I couldn't tell much of a difference, which
means that I would be a bad gang member because
I would do the wrong walk. I would guess that
(21:05):
you would pick it up pretty quick. And of course
they also have their besides the the blue and red clothing,
they have their gang symbol, which in case you ever
were like, I kind of want to wear my red
hat today because I'm a Los Angeles Angels fan, but
I don't want to get in trouble because I'm a crip.
So they still have the the signs to rely on. Well,
(21:27):
I would guess you would have to be a Dodgers fan,
and if you're blood, you'd be an Angels fan. Yeah,
but the Angels there, Anaheim, I don't think anyone in
l A Is really an Angels fan. You gotta be
from Orange County. Although we're going to hear from people Angels.
So that's the bloods in the crips in a nutshell.
That could be its own show. But we'll take a
break here and we will talk a little bit more
(21:49):
about gang history right for this, So Chuck, we keep
throwing out the words super gangs. It sounds like a
(22:12):
media creation, but it does. But there I mean, basically,
what it what it describes is a a franchise gang
like the Bloods or the Crypts or um these larger
groups like the Folks or the People. Yeah, the People
Nation and the Folks Nation. So I think the Bloods
are affiliated with the People Nation and the Crypts are
(22:34):
affiliate with Folk Nation. But this basically this network of
gang members who are related to one another through their
gang in different cities. And so say somebody in Chicago
wants to get into the St. Louis market, They'll send
some people and set up a gang there, Easy peasy.
(22:54):
It's called franchising. And all of a sudden, now you
have a inter interstate gang, which makes it a super gang.
Those are I don't want to see peanuts because it's
a big deal. But compared to like a transnational gang,
that's the transnational gangs are the ones fro. I'm like, yeah,
there's there's a real problem there. I think, yeah, here's
(23:16):
some just because um, well, let's just read the names
of the People Nation in the Folk Nation just so
people know what's going on. And the People Nation. You
have the vice Lords and I believe they are out
of Chicago, right, the almighty Vice Lord Nation. Uh. And
they've been around for a long time too. They were
one of the earlier gangs, you like in the late sixties. Yeah. Uh,
(23:36):
the Black Peace Stones, the Latin Kings, the Gay Lords,
the South Side Popes, the Mickey Cobras, the Four Corner Hustlers,
and the Almighty Saints and affiliated with the Bloods. That's
the people nation. Uh. Then the folk Nation. Um, you
have uh Peter Paul and Mary, you have Bob Dylan. Yeah,
but you have the Gangster Disciples. The Insane Spanish code
(24:00):
is um. Yeah, that just sounds scary, Like how about
a cobra that's insane, right, you know, because the cobra
is not bad. I like cobra. What's worse than the
regular cobra? And insane cobra? Yeah? But where it could
it be? From Spain? Um? The Latin Spain is where
they're saying. Okay, I think they mean like a Hispanic Hispaniola.
(24:23):
The Latin Eagles, the Maniac Latin Disciples, the Simon City Royals,
and the Spanish Gangster Disciples are a part of the
Folk Nation. Alright. So uh, we talked about ethnic gangs.
That's um. You know, there can be skinheads or neo Nazis,
or they can be largely Hispanic or African American. Um.
(24:46):
Even if they are turf gangs, they're usually also divided
among ethnic lines because people tend to live a segregated
life still in states like in in five Points, if
you're an Irish gang, you're Irish neighborhood gang probably all
Irish people, not necessarily just because it was an Irish gang,
but because that's where everybody lived. Yeah. Uh, there's also
(25:08):
prison gangs. Um. Most of the time they are just
affiliations in the prison of the gang you're in on
the outside, like there's bloods and cripts in prison. But
sometimes they form new gangs in prison um that were
are not part of the outside world. And I love
how one of these guys, one expert in the article
(25:30):
here said putting young gang members in prison is like
sending sending them to criminal college. So it's not like, oh,
we took a gang member, put him in jail, and
then you don't have to worry about that anymore because
they're in prison. But lots of bad things still going on.
Listen to our Prisons episode for that man. We've covered
a lot of this stuff piecemeal. Huh. So there's also
(25:52):
female gangs. Yeah, those are on the rise. Yeah, female gangs,
um supposedly originally started out is basically like um, like
booster gangs made up of like gang members, girlfriends, wives
like here, hold all these guns for us, right, or
they're just like we're gonna do our own thing or whatever. Um.
(26:13):
Then there's also female gangs that have nothing to do
with other male gangs. There's also co ed gangs. They
really don't care what gender you are. And do you
want to hear some of the sister gangs titles their names. Uh,
the Bad Barbies, the Harlem Hilton's, and the Hood Barbies
are some of the what they call sister gangs. And um,
(26:37):
like you said, they originally were just sort of like
help helped up the men. But in some cases now
they are like their own legit gangs who are are
pretty tough because they want to make a name for themselves,
you know, as a as a gang of women who
can also be murderous, you know, like we can we
can do these things as well. Feminism. They actually the
(27:00):
article I read, no it did. The article I read
said that second wave feminism is one of the underlying things.
But they said it's a very like tinuous link, you know,
like that may have spurred things, right, like you know,
I'm a woman gonna golf and do my own thing.
But it's a gang after all. But that that co
ed gang that I mentioned, that's an example of another
(27:22):
type of gang, of hybrid gang. It seems like hybrid
gangs are the ones that are, like UM, the ones
on the rise. Because these this is where I got
the idea that UM, people don't tag like they used to,
they don't wear colors like they used to, because there's
hybrid gangs. And hybrid gangs are made up of people
who might come from rival factions. They break up and
(27:45):
reform with different membership from time to time. Um. I
don't think on any set schedule or whatever, but I
think it's probably something that happens organically. They may have
co ed members, they have members of different ethnicities, they
may not have colors, right. Um, it's just it's some
melunge of gang members that aren't cut and dried and
(28:06):
hierarchical like the traditional idea of gangs are. And apparently
these are the gangs that are around these days. Mostly
I can't say that that are maybe the fastest growing
type of gang or hybrid gangs. Yeah, and they do.
I was was not joking about the Juggalos. They do
list them as a hybrid gang in four states. You
have to what states are I know New Mexico's one.
(28:28):
I think Washington is another one. Yeah. They said that
they're not super organized and their crimes are sort of
sporadic and willie nilly, but they're increasingly violent the crimes are,
so they are worried about them. You know, you're just laughing.
I'm over here just being quiet, gotcha. Uh, gang initiations,
(28:51):
If you um go to join a gang, there is
probably an initiation that you will have to go through.
And um I found some There many different things, uh,
throughout the years that have taken place to join a gang.
Um initiation by cop because you've got to kill a cop.
They said, that's pretty rare these days. Understandably. Again, I
(29:13):
really feel like we might be entering just just urban
urban legend territory here. Oh no, dude, this was this
was a gang expert researcher. This is like from a
Stanford paper. Okay, he's just making stuff up. No, I'm
I don't think he's making it up, but I wonder
like how much of it is just verified or if
it's just chatter. Well, he went on to say it's
(29:36):
a rare thing. So are you saying no one's ever
killed a cop. No, I'm not saying that, but I
think it's fine. Go ahead. Being jumped in or beat in,
that's when you have to be basically get whaled on
by all the gang members at one time. Um sexed in.
That's used to initiate women into male dominated gangs where
(29:58):
basically they have to have sex or are forced to
have sex with a bunch of guys in the gang. Right,
And what I read is like in a co ed
gang in particular, that's not necessarily the way that women
get in. Some women get beat in, sure, uh jacked
in and you commit a theft. There's something called the
gauntlet where you um basically run between two lines of
gang members and you have to run the gauntlet where
(30:21):
they're while they're beating on you. As well. A lot
of these sounds like little games. There's one called catching
a flag or a rag, where it's literally like there's
a rag in the middle of the thing and you
got to get the rag and get out of there,
you know, and one piece or one where they drop
freeing Hoover where they there are sixpennies that are thrown
(30:41):
on the ground and you can't leave until you get
all those sixpennies off the ground. What does that have
to do with Hoover. I have no idea Hoover. I
haven't I don't know, I'm not. I don't know that
it's Lincoln. It didn't say freaking Lincoln though. Uh. And
then you know being courted in, which I thought was
super interesting. This is when they invite somebody like a
(31:03):
doctor or a lawyer who is sympathetic to their cause
and like you can be invited in very nicely, and
it said or electricians, which is kind of funny. Weird. Yeah,
I guess somebody's got to keep the clubhouse wired. Um.
I had not heard about courted in, but I did
run across it, like in indirectly with um talk about
(31:27):
gangs going after um like military and law enforcement and
lawyers or legal um, legal field people um to join
their gang. Yeah, biker gangs especially apparently are really target
former military and that's you know, for good reason. These
people are highly trained and skilled and weapons and uh,
(31:48):
they would imagine be how they sought after And UM,
it's not just the former military supposedly, apparently there are
also um like active duty military. Yeah I had they
said fifty three different gangs are represented in the U. S. Military.
That's scary. Yes, yeah, it is because the people have
(32:09):
access to some really high powered guns. That's right. Uh
should we take another break? I think so. All right,
we'll talk a little bit more about what's going on
these days in gang land, right for this? All right, so,
(32:41):
what's an average day of the gang member? Like I
love Ed's description here. They sleep late, they sit around
the neighborhood, and they drink and do drugs. Later on
they meet up at a pool hall or some other
like local hangout and hang out and do some more
drugs and drink some more. I think probably what he
mentions next is what a gang member's daily life is
(33:03):
like is like selling drugs. Depending on your hierarchy. UM,
if you are, say a member of M eighteen or
MS thirteen, you're doing local enforcement for transnational drug cartels. UM,
and so you may be involved in picking up a
crate of UM humans that were shipped across from Mexico
(33:28):
or UM you may be involved in mortgage fraud if
you're one of the sharp ones that was probably corded
rather than jumped in. Um, there's a lot of different
stuff you're gonna be doing. And right about here is
where it becomes clear where you should stop and ask
the question, like, wait a minute, what is the difference
between a street gang and it just organized crime? Oh? Yeah,
(33:50):
I mean not too much of a difference. The the
the answer that I could come up with, the closest
thing to an answer I could come up with, is
the street gang is a looser association of organized crime.
Sometimes other times it can be a very tight organization
of organized crime. But basically they're almost indistinguishable. It's just
(34:12):
a street gang will have more overt affiliation, UM, and
it's usually a lot more localized. That makes sense. So
listen to our episode on the Mafia, Yeah, which is
basically street gangs that were whipped into shape and organized
weapons these days are getting kind of scary. It's um,
(34:33):
It's not the old days of chains and knives, especially
with the former military and the involvement and the just
accessibility of these weapons these days, body armor, police gear, UM,
like high powered assault rifles like you name it man.
Another thing where if if gangs have infiltrated the military,
(34:56):
actively infiltrating the military or trying to recruit military or
your law enforcement people, um fed is a real danger
to that is getting their hands on like some serious
guns because it's not like these are guns that you
can just buy anywhere. No, No, you have to steal
them from the right people, that's right, or get the
(35:17):
right people to get them for you. Yeah, they're not
going to the gun show. Well, yes they are, are
they Yeah, but you can't buy you know, military grade
weapons necessarily at all gun shows for the good stuff.
Native American gangs is a thing though apparently they were
born in the nineteen eighties and nineties, and one reason
(35:38):
was a sort of identity and solidarity that has been
um declining in Native American parts of the country over
the years, and UM protection is a big one. UM
Between two thousand two Native Americans experience experience violent crimes
(35:59):
at double the rate the rest of the United States,
and six of that violence was incurred on them against
them by white people, so they're kind of banding together.
And fifty of those cases weren't even pursued by police.
Apparently I would guess that would lead to increase gang activity. Yeah,
so they're banding together in forming gangs, and I think
(36:20):
they're affiliating with a more Hispanic gang culture. Oh yeah,
what I could tell it was a really interesting article
on Al Jazero website, which is really good, super interesting read.
But we'll post that with our our additional links that
we're doing. Now, how about that, thorn tooton? What else? Chuck? Oh,
I've I've got it, Yukuza. We did a podcast on
the Yukusa Asian gangs. Yeah, you can go listen to
(36:41):
that one. Um, but what do you what do you do?
If you're in a gang, you want to get out,
you gotta murder somebody, you know. So there's this urban legend.
I read this, Uh, I read snippets from a book
um called Gangs in America three by c Ronald Off,
and he compiled a bunch of interviews with gang members
(37:04):
and former gang members, and one of the things that
emerged was this, there's this myth that if you want
it out of the gang, you have to kill your
own mother. Right in some cases, um, they will you
have to get beat out like you're beat in almost
like the circles complete. Sometimes you have way more people
on you than you did when you were beat in UM.
(37:26):
But more often than not, what emerged from these UM
interviews was that they they left either by moving or
they stopped claiming affiliation with the gang, or like they
got a job or something just in their life changed.
They just yeah, they just walked away. And there wasn't
like a pursuit to the death, because you can't ever
(37:47):
leave the gang. There was a couple of people that said,
like they were told stuff like that, but when it
came down to it, in reality and practically, they just
stopped being part of the gang. The problem is is
when you leave the gang, you're very freak only UM
you you might have gang tattoos still and you kind
(38:07):
of need to get rid of those, yeah or else.
Who knows what can happen because you're no longer in
the gang anymore. So a lot of UM post gang
transition UM groups. There's this one called Homeboy Industries that
I ran across. One of the things they offer is
tattoo removal of gang tattoos. Yeah, they can get kind
(38:28):
of expensive. Well, you could get your tattoo removed for free.
To call them I thought about that, and I'm like,
I don't think they've fall for it, and it doesn't
look like a gang tattoo. There are also lots of
UM gangs from in the United States now set up
from UH immigrants, Like Somali gangs are a big problem
UH in Minneapolis apparently, Yeah, that's there's some in Clarkston. Yeah.
(38:52):
Right here in Georgia, Somali gangs. And then you know
Dominican gangs, UH, Sudanese gangs, Caribbean gangs, Jamaican gangs. UH.
Every country it seems like, has some sort of operation
going Here in the US, I don't know how vast
they are, but UM, in certain areas of the country
they're causing some trouble. And again it makes me wonder,
(39:15):
like how much of it is due to a lack
of access to economic opportunity? Like do people want to
be in gangs? If given the choice to not be
in a gang? It seems like from everything I ran across, Chuck,
the answer is like no, they would probably rather have
just a regular job or something like that. Because and
this is one of the reasons why gangs have become
(39:37):
so attractive over there's in stays so attractive is they
often offer like the best avenue to income around. You know,
you just have to commit crime for it. Um. And
they and Ed points out that is probably the most
effective way to try and stop gangs. It's not to
just have a police crackdown, because I think everyone knows
(40:00):
you shut something down on one street corner, it's just
going to move to another street corner and that's probably
not doing much good. Um. So they have programs called
weed and seed programs throughout the country now from the
Department of Justice, where they weed out the worst gang members. Um.
And see that's what I think is going on. Like
when you say I think they all probably just want jobs,
(40:21):
I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think there
are the hardcore uh that have no interest in getting
a job, yeah, because they're making way more money than
they could with a regular job and it's just their lifestyle.
And um, those are the ones who are trying to
weed out in favor of trying to leave the rest
that they think that can be rehabilitated. And they called
(40:43):
the second part of its seating, which means seating the neighborhood. Um,
giving them more stuff to do, maybe job opportunities or
a rec center or a library or a pool, because
again you're talking very largely about like juvenals here. Yeah,
fix the playground like little things that making their neighborhoods
uh less prone to boredom. And I don't mean sound
(41:06):
naive like all gang members just want a legitimate job.
So everybody go give them good jobs and the gang
problem will go away. That's not at all what I'm saying.
Like There's always going to be people who are like,
no matter what I do, I can make way more
money selling drugs, and I can like trying to go
get a regular job, and I'm comfortable with just selling
drugs and like rolling the dice and living life that way.
(41:27):
There will always be people like that. The only way
to get rid of that, most likely is to like
take away the prohibition of drugs, I would guess, and
then you don't have like street corner drug dealers any longer.
But from what I'm seeing in in this research, if
you provide economic opportunities, gang membership at large tends to
dry out more. You're always gonna have organized crime, But
(41:49):
that doesn't mean you're gonna have a gang problem necessarily.
Do you got anything else could I possibly, Uh, well,
it's closed in with UM the list of the FBI's
Most Dangerous Gangs Florencia thirteen, the Order of Them. No,
I've heard of some of the other UM Latin games. Yeah,
(42:12):
they're tied to the Mexican mafia. Uh. There's the Barrio
as Teca out of Texas and apparently they run the
They worked with the Warez cartel, so they're doing serious business. UM.
The Latin King Nation, the Latin Kings MS thirteen. Um,
(42:33):
they're definitely on the FBI Most Wanted list that I
they're from El Salvador. Yeah, and then so M. E
teen is from Mexico. Yeah. Those tattoos on MS thirt
team and that's pretty amazing stuff. It's like full facial tattoos.
We did a tattoo episode two. He did uh in
New York. You have the Trinitarios, Um. They were formed
(42:57):
in the prison system in New York in the nineteen eighties.
And then there's a few more. You can just look
them up. I don't think we need to go through
all these man alive the Mongols they're still around. Yeah,
there's a huge like UM biker gang shooting in Waco,
and this month. I think it was just a couple
of weeks ago. Yeah, cops and cops shot a lot
(43:17):
of them, and they shot each other's bad scene stuff
at Starbucks. I think again. Um, if you were in
a gang, we would love to hear from you, so
listen up for the ways to contact us afterwards, or
if you're a former gang member, whatever, We're We're interested.
How far off the mark was? I let me know, Um,
if you want to learn more about gangs, you're just
(43:39):
a regular Joe. You can type street gangs in the
search part how stuff works dot Com and it will
bring up this article. And so they said search parts.
Time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this five year
old mother. Um, hey, guys. While working through my two
AM ship this morning, I was barreling through the male
puberty episode for the sake of stuff you should continuity.
(44:01):
When Chuck made a comment about the female body and
how it probably couldn't handle childbirth at five years old.
Of course, this is the episode where my brain decides
to chime in and contribute. I'm not sure if anyone's
pointing this out, but there was a proving girl named
Lena Medina who gave birth to a baby boy in
ninety nine via c section at the age of five
years and seven months. Oh, my goodness. And he said
(44:23):
he snoked it too. And he said, after being brought
to a position due to what her parents suspected to
be a large abdominal tumor, I was discovered she was
actually pregnant. If you're feeling the ambivalence of simultaneous fascination nausea,
I believe that to be the general response. Um. Though
they initially suspected her father, the identity of the man
whom impregnator was never confirmed. Cann't help but wonder about
(44:45):
the developmental implications that would surely arise in such a scenario.
But her son apparently lived at the age of forty,
having been raised under the impression that Lena was his sister. Crazy,
my goodness. And that's from Brian. W Wow, Brian, thanks
for letting us soon about that. It rings the Vegas bell.
When when was it? Did he say the nineteen thirties?
(45:07):
Oh no, it doesn't. Yeah, yeah, I remember when that happened.
Well you could remember reading about it now, uh, Brian, Yeah,
Brian W Thanks Brian. UM, if you want to get
in touch with us, like Brian did, Like we said,
if you're a game member of former game member, we
want to hear from you, if you have a correction,
or if you just want to say hi or whatever.
(45:29):
Anybody can get in touch with us via s Y
s K podcast on Twitter. You can join us on
Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can
send us an email to stuff Podcasts at house Stuff
works dot com and has always joined us at at
home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
(45:51):
it house stuff works dot com,
Welcome to you Stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's with us,
and this is stuff you should know. The podcast not
affiliated with any gang. No, No, I would have thought
(00:26):
that goes without saying. You never know stuff you should know.
Army that's our gang. Yeah, I guess so nerds rolling
around dropping knowledge. Yeah, that's how we roll. Our symbol
is Infinity gang sign. I don't think that should be
our symbol. No, No, it's um a perfect circle. No,
(00:47):
I think the the mike with the mean our regular logo.
All right, that's a symbol. We just need to learn
how to make it and spray paint. Yes, actually that's
dated what we've just said. We just mentioned spray painting
your gang sign. But that's old time people. They still
do that. No, gangs have evolved so much. Yes, some
(01:09):
people do still do it, but from what I understand,
gangs have basically come to see that. It's like, why
why would you do that? It doesn't make any sense.
You're basically you're marking your territory, right, You're marking yourself
whereas it's better to stay out of the hands of
law enforcement and not through a gang sign or tag
(01:30):
something with your gang symbol than to do that. Gangs
are wisending up and they're just not committing crimes any
longer because that puts them under the police microscope. No,
I'm saying that they are committing crimes still, they're just
not UM. I don't think they spray paint their stuff
as much. They're definitely UM getting more sophisticated in some
(01:52):
gangs that've I've seen that like mortgage fraud and identity theft, counterfeiting,
like are some of the human trafficking one, So the
new crimes um. So before we get started the chuck,
I want to say that throughout this reading The Stuff
or the House Stuff Works article and doing research, I
was plagued by this idea that, like, we don't really
(02:12):
have a real idea of how many people are in gangs,
how many gangs are in the United States, exactly what
kind of problems like gang problem we have. Is it overstated?
I suspect it might be overstated gangs. So this is
so the FBI compiles this report every few years and
(02:33):
in the original House Stuff works article. It cites the
two thousand five National Gang Threat Assessment, right, and it
says there's twangs and seven hundred and thirty one thousand
active gang members. Two thousand eleven, which is the most
recent one from what I could find, has not too
many more gangs thirty three thousand, but one point four
(02:54):
million gang members. Thousand more gangs, I guess it is, okay,
but one point four million gang members. The number of
gang members between two thousand and five and two thousand
and eleven, according to the FBI, doubled, doubled. And okay,
if that's the case, right, what why what happened between
(03:17):
two thou five and two thousand and eleven? I don't know,
because the gang heyday was in the eighties and nineties. Okay,
all right, So what would cause gang membership to skyrocket
to double from two I don't think significant. I have
one guess, uh, federal grants going to police departments, UM
(03:38):
that say they have a gang problem. So maybe they're
inflating the numbers. Maybe, Okay, what if they're not inflating
the numbers? The thing that I think the internet, no,
the economic crisis. If you go back and look at
the history of gangs, and if you look at all
gang um activity, yeah, gang banging. If you if you
(03:59):
tried to find on the lying cause, one of the
underlying causes, if not basically the underlying cause is a
lack of access to economic opportunity a k. Nothing else
to do, no job prospects, and then already being surrounded
by gangs or the possibility of gangs leads to an
increasing membership. So we have this economic crisis in the
(04:21):
United States. So if gang membership really did double, I
would put my money on the idea that it was
because of the economic crisis. Didn't that touch the middle
and upper middle classes more? Though? I mean, was there
a housing crisis? Oh man, everybody got totally messed up
by the economic crisis. Yeah, I mean I knew it
touched everyone, but I didn't know it wasn't just housing,
Like housing kicked the whole thing off. But like the
(04:43):
job market, like all of a sudden, all these people,
even if it did affect like say the middle class
or the upper middle class, all of a sudden they
lose their jobs. They start taking the lower classes job
because they've got to survive. Now, where are the lower
classes doing? Interesting? Theory. I'm if membership doubled in the
US between two I would bet any amount of money
(05:04):
that was because of the economic crisis. You would stake
your stuff. You should know fortune on that. Yeah, yes,
I would all the millions. All right, Well, we may
as well go and talk about white people join gangs
because you just teased it. Poverty is a huge reason. Um,
these are usually in poorer areas of the city. Um,
(05:26):
not a lot of money going on. You can make
money by robbing people, by dealing drugs. It provides a
financial incentive to join a gang basically. Yeah. I've read
about one study from Los Angeles that found that neighborhoods
that had unemployment rates of between fourteen and sixteen percent
had about fifteen times more gang related homicides than neighborhoods
(05:50):
that had unemployment rates of between four and seven percent. Yeah,
and they say that gang related homicides account for close
to half of all the homicides in the United States
right now. Yeah, that's another thing that I found, Like really,
I saw also somewhere between I saw other places that
are like this is all way overstated that like the
(06:13):
gangs peaked back in the nineties and like we haven't
had a real problem since then. I don't think this case,
but there are some like sociologists out there saying this
is this is overstated. Yeah, I don't think anyone saying
there's not a gang problem. Those are No. I don't
think anybody's disagreeing that there's a gang presence. I think
the degree to which there is a gang presence. So Chuck,
(06:37):
for example, you can go look at something from the
Justice Policy Institute called Violent Children two dozen send um
look up the youth gang violence problem is exaggerated, and
it provides kind of a counterpoint to it. Because if
there's one thing, I'm not saying there's not a gang problem,
I'm not excusing the idea that like, oh, you have
low economic opportunities so you join a gang. Totally get it. No,
(06:57):
Like there's like there's still morality. There's still plenty of
people in the same situation that aren't joining gangs. Like
what I'm saying is like when you when you read
articles that are just like there's gangs everywhere and they're
killing everybody. Of the homicide rates are because of gangs,
and they're they're immoral little kids coming out of the
(07:18):
inner city. Your your antenna should immediately go up, and
you should start asking critical questions about where this stata
is coming from. What they're basing the data on, Who
is giving you this data. Did they stand to benefit
from people being scared? Um? Do they get funding to
study this kind of stuff? You just have to ask
(07:39):
questions like that, they're creating hysteria. It's yeah, anytime you
encounter hysteria like that, yes, you should stop for a second.
If you have that amount of self possession, stop and
just start asking questions like what everybody calmed down, agreed, sir?
Or just run because the gangs are coming for you.
(08:00):
All right. That's that was it for my soapbox. All right.
Uh so back to why you might join a gang,
um peer pressure. I love that that's listed, uh because
it's true. I Mean, it sounds kind of like a
very high school thing. But that's a lot of times
is when you're getting pressure to joining gang, they seek
out children, right, That's where a lot of gangs find
the roots. The crypts, bloods, both high schools, that's right.
(08:21):
The blue, the red, those are the high school colors.
That's right. We'll get to them later. Um boredom we
talked about that. Um, a lot of these communities there
isn't a lot going on. They don't have the neighborhood
pool or maybe even a neighborhood library or a neighborhood
youth center um, or a playground that's in uh not
in disrepair. So these shuttered communities don't have a lot
(08:43):
going on. So kids are board um, and then they
fall into a sense of despair, which means, um, you know,
maybe I don't have a father who's a role model.
Maybe my father or mother or both are in prison. Um,
but I have a family right over here. This gang
says they love me, They're gonna get my back, and um,
now I have a sense of community finally through this gang.
(09:05):
And some gangs actually have set up overt community programs,
like job training programs, like things that basically said, we
have been so neglected by the community at large that
like local gangs are the ones setting this up. And
I mean that's a pretty good reason to join a gang,
is when they're holding community outreach programs in your community
(09:27):
and they're the only show in town. Yeah, I mean
there's uh, it's not just a TV thing. The gang
leader with a heart of gold that like secretly uh
snipes to build the playground, you know, like that stuff happens.
I mean, and we're not trying to say like gang
leaders are just the best, that they have been known
to quietly reinvest money in their own communities. Well yeah times,
(09:50):
I mean, yeah, you don't want the place falling apart,
especially if that's your major market. Yeah. And plus also
it's a really great way to ingratiate yourself with the
local community. Absolutely sure. So let's talk a little bit
about the history of gangs. If you'll indulge me for
a moment, you can consider yourself indulged. Um. I love
the way. And this is by the Grabster at Grabowski. Um.
(10:12):
He says criminal gangs have been around for as long
as crime and that makes total sense because, um, their
strength in numbers. And I think you've seen the movie
Gangs of New York. Yeah, stripe pants, stripe pants, oh man,
strip pants, Yeah, a lot of them. Fashion. Did I
(10:33):
like it? No, not really, Yeah, I've went back and
watched it recently. I really liked it. Um. I did
not like Cameron Diaz. I forgot she was in it. Yeah,
that was she was missing. She was like a Cockney accent,
now that I think about it. Uh no, no, it was,
it was. It must have been a nightmare I had.
She was I've had that same nightmare. I don't. I
(10:54):
think she had to look at some sort of a
weird accent. Maybe she was trying to do Cockney. You know,
um forgot a good movie though. I think I really enjoyed. Mean,
I could stand and go back and see it as
an I liked it. And what's this Daniel Date lewis Man,
what a great character. Um. So, anyway, that movie was
based on fact because in the nineteenth century in New
(11:16):
York and Five Points, Um, you had these ethnic gangs,
the Irish gangs, Polish gangs, Italian gangs, and they all
faught for territory and robbed and mugged each other and
had violent fights in the street. That was pretty crazy
in Lower Manhattan. Yeah, the Five Points gangs, Yeah, very
very tough. But sometimes they have banded together and fight
(11:37):
other parts of town's gangs, like the Bowery Boys, that
kind of stuff. So they're just fighting all the time,
turf wars like today, like you know what, gangs they
kind of have always been about turf to a certain
degree they were about turf and that is we'll see
one of the ways that you can divide um gang gangs.
It's one of the definitions of gang is a turf gang.
(12:00):
But they were also um ethnic gangs typically as well,
like Irish gangs or Polish gangs or Italian gangs. You
might ask yourself, what happened to the Polish gangs? What
happened to Irish gangs? Do you do you want to
hear my theory behind the economic crisis of the nineteen seventies, No, no,
(12:23):
these gangs went away, and they're so so. By the
fifties and sixties, most of the um gangs in the
United States were Hispanic gangs and black gangs. Ethnic gangs
were like we think of as like Irish or Polish
or whatever, just disappeared. And the reason why they were
disappeared because the Irish and the Polish stopped being considered
(12:43):
ethnic and they were just white after that, and then
all of the economic opportunities afforded to white people were
refording to the Irish people and the Polish people, and
they had very little reason to be gang members any longer,
and they became skinheads later on. But don't you think
that that's probably what happened. Maybe so I couldn't find
(13:05):
anything definitive anywhere. They were like not a disenfranchised ethnic
group any longer. They were just part of, uh, the
white machine that is the United States. I could see that, like, man,
you got theories out the wazoo today. But a lot
of them became like cops. That was a big thing,
especially for like former Irish gang members. A lot of
them moved right from Irish gang member into Irish cops.
(13:27):
They're like, where can I still go? Crackheads? Right? Exactly right.
What's strange is as we'll see, that's kind of going
on today still gang members moving into things like law
enforcement in the military. Yeah. Boy, that was frightening, hysteria inducing,
isn't it. It is so in the nineteen fifties, um,
(13:48):
in sixties you had what we're called car clubs, and
um they were gangs. And this is when you think
of like the outsiders, like when you go to rumble
Over territories. These were the car lubs and they would
get together and they would fight in a parking lot
with chains and knives and things like that, go rescue
people from burning houses and an iron Long State Old
(14:09):
Bony Boy, and UM, they began to languish in the
nineteen sixties and then in the nineteen sixties a man
named Raymond Washington and a man named two Key I
say man two boys. Yeah, they think they were high schoolers.
They might have been middle schoolers even they were young,
because they originally called their gang the Baby Avenues, the
(14:33):
after school specials. That would be a good gang, the
Baby Avenues. UM. It was a very small gang at first,
and then it later became the Cribs because they were young,
like Baby Cribs. And then it became the Cribs in
south central Los Angeles. Uh. And they were blue like
you said earlier, because Fremont High School where they went
(14:54):
to school, where that was their school colors. So it's
kind of funny to think that it was rooted in
like I mean, it's not like it burst out of
school pride, you know, but they did base their colors
on their high school. And then um, as a result
of the crips UH kind of taking over the area. UM.
Raymond Washington was murdered by the way in he didn't
last too long. UM. Tenure is a pretty good run
(15:18):
for a game. Yeah, probably, so I would think that's
longer than you would predict. And two Ki went to
prison for murder. But UM in the nineteen seventies, and
the Bloods were born as a results of the Crips
and their activity. Um, all these smaller gangs that had
been uh I guess messed with by the Crips. UM
kind of came together and says, all right, we need
(15:39):
a rival gang, so we're gonna be the Bloods. And
that's why the Crips formed. Originally oh to uh for
other rival gangs. It was a couple of gangs that
came together. It's banding together, which still happens today if
you believe that stuff. Um. And they were from the
Um from the high school. Yes, and they were red
(15:59):
and they were on to by Sylvester Scott and Vincent Owens.
So then you had the Bloods, you had the Crypts.
They are still thriving today. They do not get along.
They have their well did they get along? So allow
me to mention the Watts Truce Man two Truce Watts
(16:23):
in south central Los Angeles. The Blood in the Crips
came together with Jim Brown football legend Jim Brown. Yeah,
I remember this actually in like u um, I think
a y m C a auditorium or high school auditorium
or jim and sat down and worked out a peace
treaty based on one between I think Israel and Egypt
(16:43):
that had been used um. And it was a peace
treaty between the Crypts and the blood and it was
abided by so much so as far as I can tell,
it's still going on. Yeah, Like it was a very
it was a big deal. But that's not to say
that there's not in a related gang violence because now
that the Crypts and the Bloods had watch truce signed,
(17:07):
there was much more infighting among different cript sets and
different blood sets. Well yeah, I mean this is I
guess we should talk about the idea of nations like
the Crypt Nation and Blood Nation their Bloods and Crypts
all over the country. Yeah, which makes them super gangs. Yeah,
but they sound terrifying that um. The guy who did
the article I read said that he thought that they
(17:28):
would all be sort of cut from the same cloth
and they would all get along. But oh yeah, apparently
within nations it's very much still broken down into your
own neighborhood gang, and you might not get along with
the other crip gang that's nearby. Even so, the crip
is the nation and the set is like the local
chapter basically. But like you said, this guy named Mike
(17:50):
carly PhD. He's I think from the University of Missouri
or no Missouri state. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry he Um,
I think it's a sociologist who went in and just
assimilated with gang members and hung out and ended up
like writing this treatise on it. And um, he said
what you just said that he expected everybody to get along.
If you're a crip, that's just not the case, because
(18:12):
if you're a crip, your set's territory is much more
likely to butt up against another crip sets territory then
say a blood's territory on the other side of the freeway.
And if you're selling drugs on the corner and they're
selling drugs in the corner, well you're fighting directly for
the same customers money, so you're much more likely to
erupt in violence or whatever. Yeah, and the nineties is
(18:34):
when the narcotics kind of came on the scene. Before that,
gangs didn't really deal a lot of drugs. It's a
lot like more petty crime. And like muggings and stuff
like that. Yes, supposedly it was drugs that that changed everything,
not only unleashed the spasm of violence that started in
the eighties in Los Angeles specifically, but also um, I
(18:56):
think even prior to that, in the seventies in Chicago
is where the idea of taking street gangs and turning
them into hierarchical drug dealing businesses was formed by a
couple of guys named Larry Hoover and David Barksdale. That's
the guy from the Wire. It wasn't David, but that
(19:18):
was Avon Barksdale, wasn't it. I wonder if he's named
after David Barksdale. That seems like a nod. So Larry
Hoover formed the Black Gangsters and David Barksdale formed the
Black Disciples, and they were rival gangs in Chicago that
eventually formed the Black Gangster Disciples the Super Gang, and
they had this idea that they would take all of
their gang members and just turn them into drug dealers.
(19:40):
And the crack epidemic helped that tremendously, which, by the way,
if you're interested in this kind of stuff at all,
go listen to our crack episode. It was one of
our best if you asked me. Yeah, we have a
few episodes that touch on this. I guess I think
the Hell's Angels, even though biker gangs are not quite
the same, Is that correct? Yeah, that's there categorization does
(20:01):
it called outlaw and motorcycle gangs are seriously o MG's Yeah. Yeah.
And then um, I think the one on zoot suits.
Oh yeah, that that was a lot like this. Yeah,
that's a great history one that we did. You should
look into. So um bloods and crips. Um. They have
this way of talking that where the Bloods won't say
(20:24):
they'll substitute uh ce in words for B and crips
will substitute B for C because they won't even say,
you know, a word with B in it, Like let's
go to Starbucks and get a boffy, start starbups and
get a coffee. Yeah, because they're just hanging out in
(20:44):
Starbucks now, they're hanging out in starbups Starbucks. Um. And
they also have their own way of walking sea walking
and b walking, which, um, it's sort of like a
little dancy sort of move. But I looked at them
both and I couldn't tell much of a difference, which
means that I would be a bad gang member because
I would do the wrong walk. I would guess that
(21:05):
you would pick it up pretty quick. And of course
they also have their besides the the blue and red clothing,
they have their gang symbol, which in case you ever
were like, I kind of want to wear my red
hat today because I'm a Los Angeles Angels fan, but
I don't want to get in trouble because I'm a crip.
So they still have the the signs to rely on. Well,
(21:27):
I would guess you would have to be a Dodgers fan,
and if you're blood, you'd be an Angels fan. Yeah,
but the Angels there, Anaheim, I don't think anyone in
l A Is really an Angels fan. You gotta be
from Orange County. Although we're going to hear from people Angels.
So that's the bloods in the crips in a nutshell.
That could be its own show. But we'll take a
break here and we will talk a little bit more
(21:49):
about gang history right for this, So Chuck, we keep
throwing out the words super gangs. It sounds like a
(22:12):
media creation, but it does. But there I mean, basically,
what it what it describes is a a franchise gang
like the Bloods or the Crypts or um these larger
groups like the Folks or the People. Yeah, the People
Nation and the Folks Nation. So I think the Bloods
are affiliated with the People Nation and the Crypts are
(22:34):
affiliate with Folk Nation. But this basically this network of
gang members who are related to one another through their
gang in different cities. And so say somebody in Chicago
wants to get into the St. Louis market, They'll send
some people and set up a gang there, Easy peasy.
(22:54):
It's called franchising. And all of a sudden, now you
have a inter interstate gang, which makes it a super gang.
Those are I don't want to see peanuts because it's
a big deal. But compared to like a transnational gang,
that's the transnational gangs are the ones fro. I'm like, yeah,
there's there's a real problem there. I think, yeah, here's
(23:16):
some just because um, well, let's just read the names
of the People Nation in the Folk Nation just so
people know what's going on. And the People Nation. You
have the vice Lords and I believe they are out
of Chicago, right, the almighty Vice Lord Nation. Uh. And
they've been around for a long time too. They were
one of the earlier gangs, you like in the late sixties. Yeah. Uh,
(23:36):
the Black Peace Stones, the Latin Kings, the Gay Lords,
the South Side Popes, the Mickey Cobras, the Four Corner Hustlers,
and the Almighty Saints and affiliated with the Bloods. That's
the people nation. Uh. Then the folk Nation. Um, you
have uh Peter Paul and Mary, you have Bob Dylan. Yeah,
but you have the Gangster Disciples. The Insane Spanish code
(24:00):
is um. Yeah, that just sounds scary, Like how about
a cobra that's insane, right, you know, because the cobra
is not bad. I like cobra. What's worse than the
regular cobra? And insane cobra? Yeah? But where it could
it be? From Spain? Um? The Latin Spain is where
they're saying. Okay, I think they mean like a Hispanic Hispaniola.
(24:23):
The Latin Eagles, the Maniac Latin Disciples, the Simon City Royals,
and the Spanish Gangster Disciples are a part of the
Folk Nation. Alright. So uh, we talked about ethnic gangs.
That's um. You know, there can be skinheads or neo Nazis,
or they can be largely Hispanic or African American. Um.
(24:46):
Even if they are turf gangs, they're usually also divided
among ethnic lines because people tend to live a segregated
life still in states like in in five Points, if
you're an Irish gang, you're Irish neighborhood gang probably all
Irish people, not necessarily just because it was an Irish gang,
but because that's where everybody lived. Yeah. Uh, there's also
(25:08):
prison gangs. Um. Most of the time they are just
affiliations in the prison of the gang you're in on
the outside, like there's bloods and cripts in prison. But
sometimes they form new gangs in prison um that were
are not part of the outside world. And I love
how one of these guys, one expert in the article
(25:30):
here said putting young gang members in prison is like
sending sending them to criminal college. So it's not like, oh,
we took a gang member, put him in jail, and
then you don't have to worry about that anymore because
they're in prison. But lots of bad things still going on.
Listen to our Prisons episode for that man. We've covered
a lot of this stuff piecemeal. Huh. So there's also
(25:52):
female gangs. Yeah, those are on the rise. Yeah, female gangs,
um supposedly originally started out is basically like um, like
booster gangs made up of like gang members, girlfriends, wives
like here, hold all these guns for us, right, or
they're just like we're gonna do our own thing or whatever. Um.
(26:13):
Then there's also female gangs that have nothing to do
with other male gangs. There's also co ed gangs. They
really don't care what gender you are. And do you
want to hear some of the sister gangs titles their names. Uh,
the Bad Barbies, the Harlem Hilton's, and the Hood Barbies
are some of the what they call sister gangs. And um,
(26:37):
like you said, they originally were just sort of like
help helped up the men. But in some cases now
they are like their own legit gangs who are are
pretty tough because they want to make a name for themselves,
you know, as a as a gang of women who
can also be murderous, you know, like we can we
can do these things as well. Feminism. They actually the
(27:00):
article I read, no it did. The article I read
said that second wave feminism is one of the underlying things.
But they said it's a very like tinuous link, you know,
like that may have spurred things, right, like you know,
I'm a woman gonna golf and do my own thing.
But it's a gang after all. But that that co
ed gang that I mentioned, that's an example of another
(27:22):
type of gang, of hybrid gang. It seems like hybrid
gangs are the ones that are, like UM, the ones
on the rise. Because these this is where I got
the idea that UM, people don't tag like they used to,
they don't wear colors like they used to, because there's
hybrid gangs. And hybrid gangs are made up of people
who might come from rival factions. They break up and
(27:45):
reform with different membership from time to time. Um. I
don't think on any set schedule or whatever, but I
think it's probably something that happens organically. They may have
co ed members, they have members of different ethnicities, they
may not have colors, right. Um, it's just it's some
melunge of gang members that aren't cut and dried and
(28:06):
hierarchical like the traditional idea of gangs are. And apparently
these are the gangs that are around these days. Mostly
I can't say that that are maybe the fastest growing
type of gang or hybrid gangs. Yeah, and they do.
I was was not joking about the Juggalos. They do
list them as a hybrid gang in four states. You
have to what states are I know New Mexico's one.
(28:28):
I think Washington is another one. Yeah. They said that
they're not super organized and their crimes are sort of
sporadic and willie nilly, but they're increasingly violent the crimes are,
so they are worried about them. You know, you're just laughing.
I'm over here just being quiet, gotcha. Uh, gang initiations,
(28:51):
If you um go to join a gang, there is
probably an initiation that you will have to go through.
And um I found some There many different things, uh,
throughout the years that have taken place to join a gang.
Um initiation by cop because you've got to kill a cop.
They said, that's pretty rare these days. Understandably. Again, I
(29:13):
really feel like we might be entering just just urban
urban legend territory here. Oh no, dude, this was this
was a gang expert researcher. This is like from a
Stanford paper. Okay, he's just making stuff up. No, I'm
I don't think he's making it up, but I wonder
like how much of it is just verified or if
it's just chatter. Well, he went on to say it's
(29:36):
a rare thing. So are you saying no one's ever
killed a cop. No, I'm not saying that, but I
think it's fine. Go ahead. Being jumped in or beat in,
that's when you have to be basically get whaled on
by all the gang members at one time. Um sexed in.
That's used to initiate women into male dominated gangs where
(29:58):
basically they have to have sex or are forced to
have sex with a bunch of guys in the gang. Right,
And what I read is like in a co ed
gang in particular, that's not necessarily the way that women
get in. Some women get beat in, sure, uh jacked
in and you commit a theft. There's something called the
gauntlet where you um basically run between two lines of
gang members and you have to run the gauntlet where
(30:21):
they're while they're beating on you. As well. A lot
of these sounds like little games. There's one called catching
a flag or a rag, where it's literally like there's
a rag in the middle of the thing and you
got to get the rag and get out of there,
you know, and one piece or one where they drop
freeing Hoover where they there are sixpennies that are thrown
(30:41):
on the ground and you can't leave until you get
all those sixpennies off the ground. What does that have
to do with Hoover. I have no idea Hoover. I
haven't I don't know, I'm not. I don't know that
it's Lincoln. It didn't say freaking Lincoln though. Uh. And
then you know being courted in, which I thought was
super interesting. This is when they invite somebody like a
(31:03):
doctor or a lawyer who is sympathetic to their cause
and like you can be invited in very nicely, and
it said or electricians, which is kind of funny. Weird. Yeah,
I guess somebody's got to keep the clubhouse wired. Um.
I had not heard about courted in, but I did
run across it, like in indirectly with um talk about
(31:27):
gangs going after um like military and law enforcement and
lawyers or legal um, legal field people um to join
their gang. Yeah, biker gangs especially apparently are really target
former military and that's you know, for good reason. These
people are highly trained and skilled and weapons and uh,
(31:48):
they would imagine be how they sought after And UM,
it's not just the former military supposedly, apparently there are
also um like active duty military. Yeah I had they
said fifty three different gangs are represented in the U. S. Military.
That's scary. Yes, yeah, it is because the people have
(32:09):
access to some really high powered guns. That's right. Uh
should we take another break? I think so. All right,
we'll talk a little bit more about what's going on
these days in gang land, right for this? All right, so,
(32:41):
what's an average day of the gang member? Like I
love Ed's description here. They sleep late, they sit around
the neighborhood, and they drink and do drugs. Later on
they meet up at a pool hall or some other
like local hangout and hang out and do some more
drugs and drink some more. I think probably what he
mentions next is what a gang member's daily life is
(33:03):
like is like selling drugs. Depending on your hierarchy. UM,
if you are, say a member of M eighteen or
MS thirteen, you're doing local enforcement for transnational drug cartels. UM,
and so you may be involved in picking up a
crate of UM humans that were shipped across from Mexico
(33:28):
or UM you may be involved in mortgage fraud if
you're one of the sharp ones that was probably corded
rather than jumped in. Um, there's a lot of different
stuff you're gonna be doing. And right about here is
where it becomes clear where you should stop and ask
the question, like, wait a minute, what is the difference
between a street gang and it just organized crime? Oh? Yeah,
(33:50):
I mean not too much of a difference. The the
the answer that I could come up with, the closest
thing to an answer I could come up with, is
the street gang is a looser association of organized crime.
Sometimes other times it can be a very tight organization
of organized crime. But basically they're almost indistinguishable. It's just
(34:12):
a street gang will have more overt affiliation, UM, and
it's usually a lot more localized. That makes sense. So
listen to our episode on the Mafia, Yeah, which is
basically street gangs that were whipped into shape and organized
weapons these days are getting kind of scary. It's um,
(34:33):
It's not the old days of chains and knives, especially
with the former military and the involvement and the just
accessibility of these weapons these days, body armor, police gear, UM,
like high powered assault rifles like you name it man.
Another thing where if if gangs have infiltrated the military,
(34:56):
actively infiltrating the military or trying to recruit military or
your law enforcement people, um fed is a real danger
to that is getting their hands on like some serious
guns because it's not like these are guns that you
can just buy anywhere. No, No, you have to steal
them from the right people, that's right, or get the
(35:17):
right people to get them for you. Yeah, they're not
going to the gun show. Well, yes they are, are
they Yeah, but you can't buy you know, military grade
weapons necessarily at all gun shows for the good stuff.
Native American gangs is a thing though apparently they were
born in the nineteen eighties and nineties, and one reason
(35:38):
was a sort of identity and solidarity that has been
um declining in Native American parts of the country over
the years, and UM protection is a big one. UM
Between two thousand two Native Americans experience experience violent crimes
(35:59):
at double the rate the rest of the United States,
and six of that violence was incurred on them against
them by white people, so they're kind of banding together.
And fifty of those cases weren't even pursued by police.
Apparently I would guess that would lead to increase gang activity. Yeah,
so they're banding together in forming gangs, and I think
(36:20):
they're affiliating with a more Hispanic gang culture. Oh yeah,
what I could tell it was a really interesting article
on Al Jazero website, which is really good, super interesting read.
But we'll post that with our our additional links that
we're doing. Now, how about that, thorn tooton? What else? Chuck? Oh,
I've I've got it, Yukuza. We did a podcast on
the Yukusa Asian gangs. Yeah, you can go listen to
(36:41):
that one. Um, but what do you what do you do?
If you're in a gang, you want to get out,
you gotta murder somebody, you know. So there's this urban legend.
I read this, Uh, I read snippets from a book
um called Gangs in America three by c Ronald Off,
and he compiled a bunch of interviews with gang members
(37:04):
and former gang members, and one of the things that
emerged was this, there's this myth that if you want
it out of the gang, you have to kill your
own mother. Right in some cases, um, they will you
have to get beat out like you're beat in almost
like the circles complete. Sometimes you have way more people
on you than you did when you were beat in UM.
(37:26):
But more often than not, what emerged from these UM
interviews was that they they left either by moving or
they stopped claiming affiliation with the gang, or like they
got a job or something just in their life changed.
They just yeah, they just walked away. And there wasn't
like a pursuit to the death, because you can't ever
(37:47):
leave the gang. There was a couple of people that said,
like they were told stuff like that, but when it
came down to it, in reality and practically, they just
stopped being part of the gang. The problem is is
when you leave the gang, you're very freak only UM
you you might have gang tattoos still and you kind
(38:07):
of need to get rid of those, yeah or else.
Who knows what can happen because you're no longer in
the gang anymore. So a lot of UM post gang
transition UM groups. There's this one called Homeboy Industries that
I ran across. One of the things they offer is
tattoo removal of gang tattoos. Yeah, they can get kind
(38:28):
of expensive. Well, you could get your tattoo removed for free.
To call them I thought about that, and I'm like,
I don't think they've fall for it, and it doesn't
look like a gang tattoo. There are also lots of
UM gangs from in the United States now set up
from UH immigrants, Like Somali gangs are a big problem
UH in Minneapolis apparently, Yeah, that's there's some in Clarkston. Yeah.
(38:52):
Right here in Georgia, Somali gangs. And then you know
Dominican gangs, UH, Sudanese gangs, Caribbean gangs, Jamaican gangs. UH.
Every country it seems like, has some sort of operation
going Here in the US, I don't know how vast
they are, but UM, in certain areas of the country
they're causing some trouble. And again it makes me wonder,
(39:15):
like how much of it is due to a lack
of access to economic opportunity? Like do people want to
be in gangs? If given the choice to not be
in a gang? It seems like from everything I ran across, Chuck,
the answer is like no, they would probably rather have
just a regular job or something like that. Because and
this is one of the reasons why gangs have become
(39:37):
so attractive over there's in stays so attractive is they
often offer like the best avenue to income around. You know,
you just have to commit crime for it. Um. And
they and Ed points out that is probably the most
effective way to try and stop gangs. It's not to
just have a police crackdown, because I think everyone knows
(40:00):
you shut something down on one street corner, it's just
going to move to another street corner and that's probably
not doing much good. Um. So they have programs called
weed and seed programs throughout the country now from the
Department of Justice, where they weed out the worst gang members. Um.
And see that's what I think is going on. Like
when you say I think they all probably just want jobs,
(40:21):
I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think there
are the hardcore uh that have no interest in getting
a job, yeah, because they're making way more money than
they could with a regular job and it's just their lifestyle.
And um, those are the ones who are trying to
weed out in favor of trying to leave the rest
that they think that can be rehabilitated. And they called
(40:43):
the second part of its seating, which means seating the neighborhood. Um,
giving them more stuff to do, maybe job opportunities or
a rec center or a library or a pool, because
again you're talking very largely about like juvenals here. Yeah,
fix the playground like little things that making their neighborhoods
uh less prone to boredom. And I don't mean sound
(41:06):
naive like all gang members just want a legitimate job.
So everybody go give them good jobs and the gang
problem will go away. That's not at all what I'm saying.
Like There's always going to be people who are like,
no matter what I do, I can make way more
money selling drugs, and I can like trying to go
get a regular job, and I'm comfortable with just selling
drugs and like rolling the dice and living life that way.
(41:27):
There will always be people like that. The only way
to get rid of that, most likely is to like
take away the prohibition of drugs, I would guess, and
then you don't have like street corner drug dealers any longer.
But from what I'm seeing in in this research, if
you provide economic opportunities, gang membership at large tends to
dry out more. You're always gonna have organized crime, But
(41:49):
that doesn't mean you're gonna have a gang problem necessarily.
Do you got anything else could I possibly, Uh, well,
it's closed in with UM the list of the FBI's
Most Dangerous Gangs Florencia thirteen, the Order of Them. No,
I've heard of some of the other UM Latin games. Yeah,
(42:12):
they're tied to the Mexican mafia. Uh. There's the Barrio
as Teca out of Texas and apparently they run the
They worked with the Warez cartel, so they're doing serious business. UM.
The Latin King Nation, the Latin Kings MS thirteen. Um,
(42:33):
they're definitely on the FBI Most Wanted list that I
they're from El Salvador. Yeah, and then so M. E
teen is from Mexico. Yeah. Those tattoos on MS thirt
team and that's pretty amazing stuff. It's like full facial tattoos.
We did a tattoo episode two. He did uh in
New York. You have the Trinitarios, Um. They were formed
(42:57):
in the prison system in New York in the nineteen eighties.
And then there's a few more. You can just look
them up. I don't think we need to go through
all these man alive the Mongols they're still around. Yeah,
there's a huge like UM biker gang shooting in Waco,
and this month. I think it was just a couple
of weeks ago. Yeah, cops and cops shot a lot
(43:17):
of them, and they shot each other's bad scene stuff
at Starbucks. I think again. Um, if you were in
a gang, we would love to hear from you, so
listen up for the ways to contact us afterwards, or
if you're a former gang member, whatever, We're We're interested.
How far off the mark was? I let me know, Um,
if you want to learn more about gangs, you're just
(43:39):
a regular Joe. You can type street gangs in the
search part how stuff works dot Com and it will
bring up this article. And so they said search parts.
Time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this five year
old mother. Um, hey, guys. While working through my two
AM ship this morning, I was barreling through the male
puberty episode for the sake of stuff you should continuity.
(44:01):
When Chuck made a comment about the female body and
how it probably couldn't handle childbirth at five years old.
Of course, this is the episode where my brain decides
to chime in and contribute. I'm not sure if anyone's
pointing this out, but there was a proving girl named
Lena Medina who gave birth to a baby boy in
ninety nine via c section at the age of five
years and seven months. Oh, my goodness. And he said
(44:23):
he snoked it too. And he said, after being brought
to a position due to what her parents suspected to
be a large abdominal tumor, I was discovered she was
actually pregnant. If you're feeling the ambivalence of simultaneous fascination nausea,
I believe that to be the general response. Um. Though
they initially suspected her father, the identity of the man
whom impregnator was never confirmed. Cann't help but wonder about
(44:45):
the developmental implications that would surely arise in such a scenario.
But her son apparently lived at the age of forty,
having been raised under the impression that Lena was his sister. Crazy,
my goodness. And that's from Brian. W Wow, Brian, thanks
for letting us soon about that. It rings the Vegas bell.
When when was it? Did he say the nineteen thirties?
(45:07):
Oh no, it doesn't. Yeah, yeah, I remember when that happened.
Well you could remember reading about it now, uh, Brian, Yeah,
Brian W Thanks Brian. UM, if you want to get
in touch with us, like Brian did, Like we said,
if you're a game member of former game member, we
want to hear from you, if you have a correction,
or if you just want to say hi or whatever.
(45:29):
Anybody can get in touch with us via s Y
s K podcast on Twitter. You can join us on
Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can
send us an email to stuff Podcasts at house Stuff
works dot com and has always joined us at at
home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
(45:51):
it house stuff works dot com,
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