Piru Street Gangs Research Paper

During the 1920’s, gangs started to emerge and were not like the gangs we are familiar with today. They were made up of family members, friends and were not as popular. Gangs such as Goodlows, Kelleys, Driver Brothers, and Boozies conducted minor crime as comparison to today’s types of gangs. As years started to go on, the crimes had gotten more severe. In the 1940’s crimes such as extortion, theft, prostitution, gambling and many more were conducted. In the 1950’s, more and more car clubs started to get in the mix which included lowriders, coast riders, highwaymen, and many more. Unlike the early street gangs, these car clubs were extremely protective of their territories.(Bloods and Crips: Made in America)
Crips originated from high school

campuses in Los Angeles with areas including east side crips, west side crips, and compton crips and the main reason that the organization was created because the increase in the level of police harassment of the Black community. The crips gang had grown from small Los Angeles gang to across the state of California. Most of the crip gangs were independent gang and would be in conflict with one another. Crips main activities consisted of extortion of funds, theft and assault. Later the founders of the Crip gang, Stanley ir Williams and Raymond Washington lost their affiliation with the group known as Crips(socialistalternative.org).
During the 1970’s, several other black gang emerged due to the fact of the crips running most of LA so they came out to protect themselves.

One of these gangs that emerged was known as the Bloods. The Bloods was established in the West Piru Street area in the Compton area of Los Angeles. This conflict brought several sets of the Pirus together, and the Pirus joined forces with the Lourdes Park Hustlers and the LA Brims and various other gangs around the area who had been attacked in the past by the Crips was anxious to join forces against them and these gangs were united under the name Blood. Red gangs in the Compton refer to themselves as Pirus, and several other red gangs in the area such as the Brims, Bounty Hunters, Swans, and the Family are known as the Bloods.. During the latter half of the 1970's, the Crips and the Bloods began to divide into smaller sets, and as they were set throughout the Los Angeles area. They began to claim certain neighborhoods as their territory. Their gang rivalry became more vicious and bloody. Close to 30,000 gang members associated with the Crips or Bloods were housed in or around Los Angeles during the early 80's. Gang members ranged in ages from young as fourteen to twenty-four, and they were required to perform certain acts in order to receive access into these gangs so they were expected to fight members of the gang who also wanted to become apart of the gang also these future members would also be asked to commit a crime like theft in

a particular neighborhood or attack a member of a rival gang. The Bloods and the Cripagers involved in the group was going. They were extremely territorial in protecting their neighborhood against invasion by one another as well as other rival gangs. Due to the large number of gang members occupying a relatively small area of Los Angeles, the gangs devised a method of identifying one another(nationalcrimessyndicate). This system of identification would allow gang members to avoid assaulting members of different sets who belonged to the same gang and so they would know whos is who(slate.com). The Crips identified themselves with the color blue, which was supposedly originated form the colors of Washington High School in south Los Angeles where most of the teen(complex.culture). Crip gangsters wear articles of blue clothing such as blue handkerchiefs, shoelaces, hats, belts, sweatshirts or whatever piece of clothing they could have the color blue in .If one's clothing is highly shown with color representing their group, gang signs are often used, which is a derivative of sign language for these notorious LA gangs. Crip members will also replace the letter b with the letter c when writing certain words like, cookie becomes bookie compton becomes bompton, and cat becomes bat. When speaking to each other, Crips refer to each other as Cuzz and Blood Killas, and members of this gang can be seen wearing British Knight which is also BK athletic shoes(businessinsider.com). The Bloods, in differentiating to the Crips, identify themselves with the color red, and unlike the Crips which wore blue, the Bloods can be seen wearing red clothing colors such as red bandanas, durags, and or team jackets. Members of the Blood gangs address one another in several ways such as Blood, Yo Blood, and Wassup blood? Bloods will also take out the letter c as a sign of disrespect for the Crip gang, and in addition, the Bloods will spray walls and property with graffiti which is disrespectful towards the Crips(web.stanford.edu). Bloods and Crips influenced the public in many ways and continue to do so in Los Angeles and tended to spread through the United States even Saint Louis which is the most violent city.