• 2 months ago
Tyrone White was a member of the 65 Menlo Gangster faction of the Crips gang in South Central Los Angeles during the late '80s and '90s. White held the position of a street soldier and participated in drug dealing, gangbanging, and neighborhood drive-bys. He later joined a police force in Oklahoma. After resigning, he went to jail for robberies.

White speaks with Business Insider about his experience as a gang member, the culture of the Crips, and the rivalry with the Bloods. He also covers the role of celebrity Crips, such as Snoop Dogg and Big U, in gang prevention within California.

Since leaving the gang, he has worked as an actor and worked with the Eagle Ridge Institute.

Skipp Townsend was a member of the Rollin' 20s Avenue faction of the Bloods gang in Los Angeles for 27 years. Townsend speaks with Business Insider about the rivalry with the Crips, gang signs, culture, and music. He also covers the role of celebrities and groups affiliated with the Bloods, such as Suge Knight and Death Row Records, in gang prevention within California.

After his release from prison, Townsend founded the intervention organization 2nd Call to support local communities in LA.

Find Skipp Townsend here:
https://www.2ndcall.org

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Transcript
00:00My name is Tyrone White, I'm a former 6'5 middle-old Crip.
00:04Some of my rivalries were the blood gangs and the Crip gangs.
00:07We're involved in drive-by shootings as well as drug dealing,
00:10and this is how crime works.
00:16Yeah, of course I've participated in drive-bys.
00:19I've been a victim of drive-bys plenty of times.
00:23When you're going against war with one another, there's no winners.
00:27Now, you can look at it and say,
00:29OK, I shot more of their homies than they shot of mine,
00:32or I killed more of their homies than they killed of mine,
00:35but both sides are taking losses.
00:37So if you both are taking the loss of life, there's no winners.
00:47When I was coming up, the guns that were used in gang bangings
00:51were the 9mm, the .45s, Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun pump,
00:56AK-47s, Tec-9s.
01:00The first gun that I ever got placed in my hand,
01:03given to me as a gift from one of my homeboys, was a .25,
01:07a chrome .25, little small .25 with the pearl handle.
01:11Shot like, had like 7 shots, 6 shots in it or something like that.
01:15And as you got older and you learn more about guns and elevate yourself,
01:18of course you get bigger guns.
01:20Guns are sold on the street like dope is sold on the street.
01:23You can even buy guns from enemy gangs.
01:25Because right now it's a business, it's about making this money.
01:28They come from everywhere. Now where they get them from,
01:31could be from the police force, it could be from the military.
01:34You can never be caught what we call lacking or slipping.
01:37You got to always be ready. You got to have enough firepower.
01:40You are ready for war at all times.
01:49From the early 80s all the way up through the mid-90s,
01:53those were the years of heightened gang activities.
01:57So drive-by shootings were nothing.
02:00You could literally turn your news on every day during those years
02:05and see a drive-by shooting. I mean every day.
02:09We had a drive-by shooting that I participated in.
02:13I walked in the house and I remember seeing it on the news.
02:17I must have been about 15 at that time.
02:20I remember my mom was on the phone and she was like,
02:23I'm so tired of these kids shooting one another and killing one another.
02:27And I remember thinking to myself, like man,
02:32she has no idea that I was just in this situation.
02:37She never found out about it, but I just remember the way that I felt
02:42listening to her on the phone telling her friend like,
02:46man, these kids need to stop this and this is crazy.
02:49And there's another situation to where we were getting ready to go out
02:54on what they call Sunday Funday when all the low riders,
02:58all the motorcycle clubs, all the car clubs, all the gang members,
03:02that's like the one day to where all the gang members, enemies,
03:08everybody can congregate in one area on Crenshaw Boulevard.
03:14I remember we were seeing a car pull up to the corner
03:18and usually when you see cars pull up in the corner with no lights
03:22or anything like that, you know that's a sign of something that's going to happen.
03:27And all you see was guns come out the window and everybody just got to shooting,
03:30shooting at everybody. And we all just scattered like ants,
03:34just everybody's screaming, hollering, running, scattering,
03:37because no one had guns actually on their person at the time.
03:43One of my big homeboys, he was very known.
03:47He had got hit in the face because they shot with a 12-gauge and they had buckshots,
03:52but it didn't kill him because they weren't shot at close range.
03:55Luckily nobody got killed.
04:03The Crips were founded in the 60s and by Raymond Washington.
04:08He formed the East Side Crips, which is on the east side of L.A.
04:12Tiki Williams formed the West Side Crips. And through those two different foundations,
04:19different sets start to evolve, different areas.
04:23You know, the Hoovers, the East Coast, the Rolling 60s, the Menloes,
04:28all these different sets. The object and the goal was to keep this side of L.A. safe.
04:35But, you know, as usual, things escalated, things multiplied,
04:40and violence became the sh** that happened. When Raymond Washington got killed,
04:44that's what caused the division. That's what caused, that's what,
04:49that's when Cripping became divided between the East and the West,
04:53and different things start happening in different subsets, and it just became like a disease.
05:00You know, one Crip set betrayed this Crip set, and it just caused a never-ending feud.
05:06Bloods used to be the main rivals of the Crips.
05:09But now they're just as many Crips are against one another. Then there are Bloods.
05:14A lot of Crips and Bloods have become allies because they share the same common Crip enemy.
05:20For example, the A-Trade Gangster Crips, they have a peace treaty going on with the Englewood family Bloods.
05:29And that's because their borderline is connected right next to one another.
05:36So, since our neighborhoods are so close to one another, you got to come to my neighborhood to get home.
05:42I got to come to your neighborhood to get home. Let's make this a blood-free zone.
05:47No violence, not saying that we're homeboys, or we're just a close hood,
05:52but let's keep the peace between this dynamic, between this area.
05:56The beef between the Six-Five Menlo Crips and the Hoover Crips, it goes way back.
06:01We actually all grew up together and went to school together.
06:05We became one of the biggest enemies to the Hoovers because our sets are so close to one another.
06:11To get to the Hoover hood, you got to come through our hood.
06:14You know what I'm saying? And so for us to get to other parts of the city, we got to go through the Hoover hood.
06:25I was raised, born and raised in South Central L.A. all my life.
06:28Had a stepfather in my life that taught me how to be a man and different things.
06:32But for the most part, I was raised by a strong, single mother.
06:35Usually in the black neighborhoods, when kids that come from single-parent homes like that,
06:39they usually get caught up in these streets because your mom is out working,
06:43trying to make a living for you, provide for you.
06:46While she's at work, you're out there running the streets, doing shit that you know you're not supposed to be doing.
06:50And that's pretty much how I started it.
06:54I was about 10 when I first started hanging around them.
06:58I knew them very well. It comes down to, hey, you know, you've been hanging around us a lot.
07:04You've been chilling a lot. You're from the hood.
07:07You know, let's make it official, you know.
07:10And making it official means getting jumped in or doing something to be a member of the gang.
07:16It can be anything from you fighting one person, sometimes four or five persons.
07:21It's to see how you handle yourself. It's to see what type of skills you have.
07:26If you get into one of these type situations, you know, can you stand your ground and hold your own?
07:31Whether you get beat up or not, you have to know how to fight back.
07:34You've got to be a monster to be a member of any gang, but particularly the Crips, you better be a monster.
07:47The word Crip was really originally meant community resistance and progress.
07:52It was a way to bring the community, to uplift the community, to protect the community.
07:57Of course, they took on a moniker and the appearance of a gang because, according to the dictionary,
08:04a group of five or more people is considered a gang.
08:07To be a Crip, you have to carry yourself a certain way. You have to walk a certain way.
08:11But for me, the allure was I loved the color blue, and they wore blue rags.
08:16They wore blue jeans. They wore blue belts. They wore blue Chuck Taylors.
08:21The dress code for me back when I was an active Crip in the 90s, in the early 80s,
08:26it was definitely 501 Levi jeans, creased.
08:31I would go buy a can of starch and literally spend about an hour ironing my pants,
08:37layering the starch to the point to where before I even put my pants on, I could stand them up.
08:42Crips wore K-Swiss because it was an acronym.
08:46It was actually a disrespectful term towards the Bloods.
08:50It was called K-Swiss for kill slobs when I see some.
08:55Slobs is a disrespectful term towards the Bloods.
08:58If you weren't a Crip, you couldn't Crip walk.
09:01If you weren't a Crip, you didn't know how to Crip walk.
09:03And so to learn how to Crip walk and to actually perfect something like that was like a badge of honor.
09:09It's a cool thing. When you look at it, the feet movement, the way they dance, the way they do it,
09:14the way they incorporate certain moves, along with the hand signs and hand signals,
09:19words that you Crips use, which was part of the lingo, was, of course, cuz.
09:24Everything we say would start with a C.
09:27If you had to say burger, you say kerger.
09:30You know, if you say b**ch, you say sitch.
09:33It's just different things that you could replace the B with a C.
09:38You would do it. And that was the same thing with the Bloods.
09:41Anything with a C, they wanted to eliminate it.
09:44And it may sound strange to people.
09:46Oh, that's stupid. Y'all sound stupid. That was our language.
09:49That was the way that we talked. We understood it. And that's all that matters.
09:53And if you disrespect us and tell us it sounds stupid, you might get your ass whooped.
09:57Of course, they threw up the C. You know, the C is just, you just take your hand, you make a C with your hand.
10:03And now you're set.
10:07Your actual neighborhood, your Crip neighborhood, like the 60s, they have their signs.
10:13The Hoovers, they have their signs. The Menlo's, they have their signs.
10:17You're going to throw up that sign to represent, to let people know that you're actually from that set.
10:23You're from that neighborhood. We threw up the M. It was just an M.
10:27You just take your hands across, which is just how Ice Cube threw up the W.
10:32When he's in concert and taking pictures, Snoop Dogg throws up the W.
10:36Just turn it upside down and you throw up the M.
10:39Gang graffiti is a big part of Crips. People that are coming in there, they know when they see that on the wall,
10:45the Rolla 60 Crips or the Menlo Crips or the 55 Crips, they know we're entering this gang.
10:53This is their neighborhood.
11:00The gang structure is not so much organized like the mafia with underbosses and bosses and stuff like that.
11:07We didn't give titles like that, but people automatically knew who the OGs were,
11:12who the double OGs were, who the big homies was and who was ranked over who.
11:17The double OG is usually one of the big homies that has put in more work than you can imagine.
11:24He's done it all. Killed, robbed, made money, been to jail. You name it, he's done it.
11:32Usually 50s, 60s, you know, higher age that they were around in the 70s, in the 80s, when gang banger really just exploded.
11:41They were at the top of their game. An OG really falls not too much different from a double OG,
11:47except that he may be a little younger, may have done a little less of the crimes.
11:53Do you have some of the OGs that have turned their lives around and they just want to live life,
11:59have a family, have a wife and kids and they're getting money, they're making money the legal way?
12:04So what makes them an OG is the fact that they're talking to the little homies, to the young homies,
12:10showing them and explaining to them how they were able to do this.
12:14A street soldier is exactly what that sounds like. A street soldier is going to go out there and put in that work for the OG,
12:21for the double OG, for the little homies or just for the set period.
12:25A street soldier has no limits. He's going to go out there and do what he has to do, no matter what.
12:31The little homies are using, of course, what they sound like, the little homies that's looking up to the big homies.
12:36They're going to imitate, they're going to copy everything that the big homies do.
12:40And if the big homies is constantly going to jail, robbing people, shooting people, killing people,
12:45the little homies are going to file a suit at some point.
12:48My main thing was always to look out for my big homie, whoever called me their big homie,
12:52and make sure that he was taken care of and vice versa, because he does the same for me.
12:57He don't have to, but he does.
13:05I started out selling weed in middle school and then moved to crack, cocaine and robbing.
13:12I did robberies. That was my way mostly of making money and keeping money in my pocket.
13:18The big homies had the big dope, and they'll issue it out to the younger homies.
13:24They'll issue it down to the guys to the next level.
13:27And it was a way for everybody from the big homie, OG homies, all the way down to the homies in junior high school to make money.
13:35The homies in junior high school, they may be out there selling crack on the corners, $5 rocks, $10 rocks, $20 rocks.
13:43The big homies, they're moving big weight, you know, ounces, quarter pounds, pounds, stuff like that.
13:51The drugs came from a lot of times from drug cartels and as well as the government, believe it or not.
13:59I mean, there's a story about Free Ray Rick, one of the biggest black dope dealers in the history of Los Angeles.
14:07And he was set up, he was caught up in that IRA and contra stuff with Ronald Reagan and come to find out that the DEA was supplying him with dope.
14:15The same dope that they gave him 30 years for in prison.
14:19So, you know, it's like that's how that's just how it worked.
14:22They put they put it in our neighborhoods to bring us down, to keep us down.
14:27Always a goal of Crips to make a substantial amount of money and to open up your own business, whether it be a smoke shop or liquor store or a fool's place or whatever.
14:39That was the goal, to find a way to take that money and make it somewhat as legal as you can.
14:47The L.A. riots happened in 92.
14:51I was 18 years old at that time.
14:53The L.A. riots was a result of the Rodney King verdict.
14:57Those four officers that were clearly guilty as hell on video beating Rodney King half to death when they were found innocent.
15:05That just sparked something in the community.
15:09I didn't ever think I would see nothing like that.
15:11The ground zero of the riots happened five blocks from my house.
15:16I was sitting at home watching the news.
15:18I seen the news.
15:19So we jump in the car.
15:20We drive up to the riots.
15:22By this time, you got hundreds and hundreds of people starting to migrate to Florence and Normandy.
15:28So at this point, it just kicked off.
15:30Every disparity, like wildfire, every car that came through the intersection that had a fire.
15:36Every disparity, like wildfire, every car that came through the intersection that had a white person in it was getting attacked.
15:43I saw news reporters getting beat up.
15:45I saw cameramen getting beat up, getting the cameras taken from them.
15:48And at that time, it really didn't matter what gang you were from because now it's about it's a black against white thing now.
15:57So it didn't matter if you was a blood or a cripple, whatever you was.
16:02Even though it was such a messed up day, it's such a f***ed up day.
16:05It was also a day to kind of rejoice because that was the first time in a long time that you saw common enemies,
16:13Crips and Bloods and Mexican gangs come together against this one common enemy, the LAPD.
16:20And so after days of rioting, some of the community leaders like Jim Brown, the football player,
16:28a couple of popular gang leaders from different gangs, from different areas, different sets,
16:33had a meeting and decided that this was the perfect opportunity to try to bring a peace treaty, a truce between the gangs.
16:41Even though it was something bad that caused us to get to that level, it still was an opportunity for us to bring things together.
16:48The peace treaty lasted officially maybe a good couple of weeks and it kind of continued to dissolve as weeks and months went on
17:00to the point to where it didn't exist no more. But for that little short time, it was great to have it.
17:09When Gangsta Rap came out, it introduced a lot of cripping, a lot of Crips.
17:22And when N.W.A. came out, which is the group that started Gangsta Rap, Eazy-E Rest In Peace, Eazy-E was known to be a Crip.
17:32And from him, you had other pioneer rappers that were from Crip neighborhoods.
17:38You had Snoop Dogg, you had Dove C, all these popular gang rappers that was in the neighborhoods representing their hoods
17:48that were blowing up on the mainstream. And so now you got people sitting at home watching MTV,
17:54106 and Park, they're watching all these video shows and they got these gang members doing rap videos with the blue rags
18:03and the six foes and the low riders and wearing all the gang attire and the gang uniform.
18:09But they're actually artists making money on TV. And now it's being broadcast all over the world.
18:17Aside from the U.K. and the Netherlands, I've heard about Crips in China.
18:22I heard there's some Crips in Africa, which I've actually seen online, social media.
18:28People in Africa are Cripping and just loving this West Coast culture.
18:32And I think all that, all these countries adapted on to these United States values and these United States ways just because of how it was glorified.
18:44Not really understanding the meaning of it. Know that people lost their lives and people are killing.
18:50This is not something to play with.
18:59In 1994, I went to Oklahoma. I got a football scholarship to go to Oklahoma to play football.
19:06That's pretty much really what saved me from being killed or anything else bad happening to me on these L.A. streets.
19:12Played football there for two years at a historically black college.
19:15In 1996, 97, I moved to Oklahoma City and I started working at the juvenile detention center.
19:22They needed a gang advisor, a gang trainer. So, of course, I was qualified for that.
19:27Just volunteering my time, talking to the kids and, you know, educating them on gangs and telling them no.
19:33Because I had no idea Oklahoma had a gang problem.
19:36So I went and I sat down with the chief of police to see exactly, you know, where did he want me to go with this?
19:41I did two years at the school system. They came to me and asked me did I want to be interested in transferring to the streets.
19:48Basically running traffic, pulling people over, writing tickets, blah, blah, blah.
19:52I'm like, yeah, let me do that. I'll do that. See what that's like.
19:57I actually want to see how they dealt with drug dealers, with me being on the other side of the law.
20:05And all the complaints that I had as a criminal, all the police brutality, all the mistreatment from the police,
20:14I got to witness that firsthand working with them.
20:18And a lot of times I would have to intervene on like, hold on.
20:23Like, you know, it was a couple of times where they had to have that conversation with me.
20:27Look, either you with us or you with them. So even in the training in the police academy, I dealt with racism.
20:33I dealt with discrimination because a lot of those officers felt like this dude is a criminal.
20:39This dude is from the streets. How in the hell is are you guys going to let him work with us?
20:44Blah, blah, blah. That's even that's why even after I became a police officer and I moved back to California,
20:51I still ended up hooking back up with my old homies and old gang members.
20:56And I end up going to jail even after being a police officer. I went to jail.
21:00My experience with the LAPD, they still haven't found a way to deal with communities and cultures that they don't know anything about.
21:10It's the same tactics. No dirty cops, bogus charges, planning drugs, mistreatment because of who you are, what you represent.
21:22It's the same thing. It hasn't stopped.
21:24The one way the police can bridge the gap with the community is to continue to work with those that want to work with them.
21:31Big U.A.'s example from rolling 60s, guys that like that are gang activists that are trying to do things to stop the gang violence and help kids in the community and bring some positivity in the community.
21:43The main thing is to save lives. And after you save lives, you want to create opportunities.
21:48I went to jail in Oklahoma for robbery.
21:52Since at that time when I was out there, it was for a robbery that I did when I was living in Oklahoma.
21:59When I came back to California in 2006, I went to jail again in 2009 for another robbery.
22:09And they ended up finding about another robbery that I did, and they combined the cases.
22:14I ended up taking a three-year deal.
22:16When I first got arrested, they took me down to the main LAPD headquarters, what they call the Parker Center.
22:23They transfer you the next day to the county facility.
22:26So I left the Parker Center that morning.
22:28They put me on the jail bus, took me to the county jail, which is known as the Twin Towers.
22:33You usually go into the tank.
22:35The tank is basically a holding area where a whole bunch of other gang members are at.
22:40And I'm talking about mixed in, Crips, Bloods, Mexicans, everybody.
22:46And that's just a that's like a box of dynamite waiting to explode.
22:51And sometimes you get put in those situations and the officers just leave you and they don't care.
22:59Whatever happens in there, it happens.
23:01And you're going to always find somebody in there that's going to challenge you, especially if you're from a rival gang.
23:08You listen for the legal.
23:09You listen to what they're saying.
23:11Or you might see people that you haven't seen since elementary and you lost contact with.
23:16You wonder where they were at.
23:17Well, this is where they at.
23:19And so you find out that they from a Crips set.
23:22And so you guys, you just go to jail.
23:24Now, if it becomes a racial thing, Bloods and Crips, you know, they find a way to unite against whoever, whatever race they have to go against.
23:33You know, it could be some violence erupt in between the transportation into the different dorms or the different units.
23:39But for the most part in the county jail, Crips is with Crips, Bloods with Bloods.
23:45Or sometimes you get the general population where it's a mixed gang.
23:49Now, don't get me wrong.
23:50If I went in there as a Menlo Crip or as a 60 Crip or 60 going there and they run into some Hoovers, it's bad blood automatically.
23:59No matter if we're Crips or we're Crips, we're in the same unit.
24:01It don't matter.
24:02We need to settle this beef.
24:04So I might walk in there and a Hoover Crip might say, hey, hey, hey, you from Menlo?
24:09I need that fade.
24:10I need that fade.
24:12So that's the way it is.
24:14Hey, you from Menlo?
24:15I need that fade.
24:16I need that fade.
24:18So that lets you know that at some point you and this guy have to fight because y'all both of y'all sets don't get along.
24:26Inside or outside of prison with Crip and there's no difference.
24:29The way you carry yourself on the streets is the same way that you expected to carry yourself into prison, except at a higher level.
24:38Because it's a little more dangerous in prison than it is on the streets.
24:47The thing that made me change my life was my kids.
24:50When I took the scholarship to the school, I was in the process of changing my life.
24:54I just didn't know it.
24:56But that was my start of changing my life.
24:59And when I started working with gangs and talking to the kids in the schools and the juvenile jails and I seen how I was getting through to them and how much they respected me from what I was telling them and trying to teach them, it just made me want to change.
25:13It made me want to continue to do positive things.
25:16And that's what I've been doing ever since.
25:19I met somebody one day and they told me I had this look.
25:22It's like you should get into acting.
25:24You should think about acting.
25:26So I started doing acting little gigs, doing extra roles.
25:30And so I've done several projects and been a part of several TV series and dramas and different things that have gotten my foot into the door of acting.
25:40So there's definitely some positivity that could happen from my past that was negative.
25:54My name is Skip Townsend.
25:55I'm a former member of the Rolling 20 Avenue Bloods out of L.A.
25:58And I was active for over 27 years.
26:01And this is how crime works.
26:07As a blood gang member, I have to go out there willing to die or be killed just to stand my ground.
26:13When the fuel goes, it's looking to make a statement.
26:16And the statement is going to be dead bodies.
26:18I do not believe anybody won because every neighborhood has over 100 obituaries.
26:24Main rivals for Bloods has always been the Crips.
26:34Getting on the bus at 13 years old, the average person back then, we're going to the back of the bus.
26:40That's where you're from or what you're looking at or what size are your shoes.
26:45And if there were a group that was maybe five or six, seven deep and somebody got on and said they were from the wrong neighborhood,
26:53that's where it started.
26:54That's where the fight's going to come.
26:55And that's how I became a blood gang member, willing to fight back.
26:58And that was in 1977.
27:00I joined a movement, and the movement was to not be a victim of the Crips.
27:05That was 1980 when I'm walking home from a football game.
27:11I was on Crenshaw and 59th Street, and the Rolling 60s had a big party that night.
27:16It was about 15 of them.
27:18They had beat me to the point where I was unconscious for a second.
27:22And then when I jumped up and took off running, one guy followed me, and he kept running after me.
27:28That was a horrible experience, but I'm glad I lived through it.
27:32What Hollywood thinks about gang membership is that there are some people, you know,
27:37handing out guns to each other saying, man, we're about to go shoot this up.
27:41And that's just not the case.
27:43Most of the shootings are emotions.
27:45You know, somebody's with somebody's girlfriend.
27:47Somebody stole somebody's car.
27:49Somebody got beat up at the mall, and now they know they're going to be at the skating rink tonight.
27:53You know, the gang wars was not just a table of guys strategizing, like, who are we going to shoot next?
28:00So back in the 80s, most of the individuals had 38 specials.
28:06They had a revolver that only shot five, maybe six times.
28:10They would have a .22.
28:12And now nobody has the 38 specials and 12-gauge.
28:17They have SKs and ARs, and they have 30-round clips.
28:21They have banana clips.
28:23They can shoot 30 times within a matter of seconds.
28:25So that changed everything, and that's when L.A. became the killing field, and it was hard to survive.
28:32The beefs now are majority on Internet.
28:36Most of the beefs are going now because of someone said something,
28:41and they're really tough behind a camera and a keyboard,
28:45whereas we actually had to go to school to fight.
28:47So the beefs are totally different in today's age than it was back when I was younger.
28:59Drive-bys were happening every day,
29:02and I can tell you the time that I'm standing out waiting on one of my friends,
29:06and a guy came down the street in a nice-looking car,
29:09and I started walking in the street to go see the car,
29:12and the closer he got, he started shooting at me.
29:15He was coming to do a drive-by, and I'm looking at the car kind of unaware, didn't know who he was.
29:20It was war zone.
29:22You know, there's an area in my neighborhood that we call Iraq.
29:26You know, we call it Iraq because right here on 20th Street in Arlington,
29:31a father and son had got shot together in front of their house.
29:35You know, I mean, stuff like that happened.
29:37Every day I wake up, I don't know if this is the day.
29:41That's why so many people had to carry guns.
29:44That's why I carried a gun back in the day,
29:46because I did not know was I going to have to use the gun today just to get home,
29:51not to just intentionally go look to hurt somebody,
29:54but I just want to go home every night.
30:03The Crips chose the color blue, so red was just the opposite of blue,
30:08and also red stands out.
30:10There's something here that's brighter than you,
30:13lets you know that we're brighter than you and not hiding.
30:18I didn't have to have on any red.
30:20If I'm wearing all beige, they'd be like, oh, okay, I see what you're doing.
30:24You know, and they would know, okay, these are bloods.
30:26But we didn't, you know, some people who didn't leave their neighborhood would wear red shoes,
30:31red shoestrings, red belt, red shirt, red hat.
30:34For me, it was doing a little bit too much.
30:37The terminology really, you know, it progressed over the years.
30:42Everything would be like a Big Back B-Boo, Mocha Bigarette,
30:47Drive My Bar To The Beach, Eat A Bandy Bar, Have A Bop A Boppy.
30:51Everything was terminology used as a B.
30:54Number one blood sign is this right here.
30:57But then this is also a blood sign right here.
31:02So, you know, but different neighborhoods have their own sign.
31:06See if I can still do this.
31:08So this right here is disrespectful.
31:10And I don't mean to disrespect anybody, but this is a C with a K in the background.
31:16You know, so if you didn't know who you were talking to, instead of giving them your sign,
31:20you throw up the CK, which is to see if they're offended by it.
31:26CK stands for Crip Killer, right?
31:28Yes.
31:29And you don't want to say that?
31:30For me at my age, I don't want to do that.
31:31But I do want to say that, you know, if anybody's offended by me doing that, it wasn't my intent.
31:36I just want to show you guys what it was.
31:38I think the music industry played a vital part in promoting gang culture,
31:43made it prevalent, made it glorified.
31:48Just the rhythm, the rhythm and the excitement of being out of town
31:53and hearing an Ice Cube or a Snoop Dogg or a Tupac come in hardcore,
31:59it just filled the spirit with confidence and invincibility.
32:06I'm invincible now.
32:08Youngbloods today, a lot of them go to college.
32:10A lot of them are into videos.
32:12They're videographers.
32:13They're rappers.
32:14They're doing movies.
32:16They're entrepreneurs.
32:17Some of them work for different companies,
32:19but they still want to affiliate with the gang, with the blood culture.
32:24So there was never one way that anybody would make money in a gang.
32:29So there are guys who go out and steal cars.
32:31They're real good.
32:32Take a screwdriver.
32:33They can go out and steal cars.
32:34Then there are other people in the community who sell drugs.
32:37But everybody's not a drug dealer.
32:39So some guys will go out and sell drugs, and they'll go to a swap meet
32:42and spend all their money on fresh T-shirts, khakis, new shoes.
32:46They're fresh, real clean.
32:48But they'll never sell drugs.
32:51But they'll never be a drug dealer again.
32:54Whoever gave them that knows not to give them anything else
32:57because they don't know how to manage money.
32:59I would leave town.
33:00I would go sell drugs.
33:02But it was not ever to benefit a gang.
33:04It was to benefit.
33:05I had a Cadillac.
33:06I like lowriders.
33:08I wanted to have a better lifestyle.
33:10The most profitable thing that I did was sell crack cocaine.
33:15I got to a point where I was making about $8,000 a day in Las Vegas.
33:21But at the same time, when other people were making almost a million dollars a day
33:25selling crack in other cities.
33:28But then I know people who had PCP.
33:32We call it SHERM.
33:34And they could make $50,000 in a day.
33:37So the thing with the 1980s, the crack era and all that,
33:42it put a lot of bloods and crypts together
33:45because it was now no longer just about money for the bloods.
33:49It was like the crypts might have had a bigger sack
33:52or maybe a blood had a bigger sack and the crypts were buying from them.
33:55So really it was about relationships.
33:58I never shared money with a gang,
34:00and there was no leader that ever told me I had to bring my money back to them.
34:04Everybody had a family member who was out of town,
34:07a cousin in Alabama, Louisiana.
34:10Some people had them in Las Vegas, Arizona.
34:13I had a team of crypts and bloods,
34:15and we just started putting the drugs on the north side of Las Vegas,
34:19and it was very profitable, very fruitful.
34:22So the blood culture did expand because of all these out-of-town missions.
34:26We're gathering more blood gang members,
34:29and we're letting people know our culture,
34:32and they're able to come to L.A. and talk to us and deal with us.
34:36So it expanded throughout the 80s.
34:39Even now today, some guys are old and they have their legitimate business,
34:43so there are several ex-blood gang members who now are millionaires,
34:48and it's not from selling drugs.
34:50It's because they bought trucks.
34:52I had tow trucks. Now they have dump trucks or 18-wheelers.
34:56So there's a lot of successful people who were once part of the bloods.
35:00Suge Knight comes directly out of what is considered the Piru territory in Compton,
35:05and he got a legitimate business out of Defro Records.
35:09Defro Records came out and made a lot of music
35:13based on their relationship with the crypts.
35:15Now Suge, being from the Piru area,
35:19is able to show that bloods and crypts, or let me say Pirus and crypts, can be together.
35:25I would have used the crypts that's working to build relationships,
35:28maybe hire somebody from Southside or hire somebody from Santana block
35:33or whatever the situation is, and we could have started building peace.
35:37And I think Suge did get involved in a couple of peace agreements.
35:41I think that's a good example of Pirus and crypts working together,
35:45and we don't have to kill each other.
35:53There are definitely rules for blood members.
35:55Always say where you're from.
35:57If somebody says, where are you from, don't say, well, I don't bang, homie.
36:00You're a blood, you're a blood.
36:02Rule number two is never tell.
36:04Never tell on anybody.
36:06You can't even tell the crypt.
36:07If the crypt say, my name is John Smith and I'm about to shoot you, pow.
36:10You know, when the police come, who shot you?
36:12I ain't even seen him. I don't know.
36:14It's a rule not to snitch because if you're in this lifestyle and culture,
36:17you're going to be in jail, you're going to be going to court,
36:19you're going to go to prison, and you can't be known as a snitch and be a blood.
36:23People that didn't follow the rules would get what they call deplete, get a discipline.
36:27And you could run from it on the streets,
36:29but if somebody get in jail and they say, oh, whoop-de-whoops here,
36:32you know, they're going to be like, oh, you know what you got coming.
36:34You can't run from the DP in jail.
36:43The way the territories are separated could be based on one street.
36:48As a matter of fact, there are certain streets I could walk down in L.A.
36:51that's one neighborhood, and by the time I get to the middle of the block,
36:54it's turned into something else.
36:56The Roland 20 Avenues were based at 16th Place and 2nd Avenue,
37:01even though it was more towards 3rd Avenue, but because we're from 20s,
37:06we wouldn't say 3rd Avenue, but everybody would be hanging out on 16th Place
37:10between 2nd Avenue and 3rd Avenue.
37:12Being a part of the Roland 20 Avenues, there were well over 300.
37:18At any given time, you know, some people would be in jail,
37:22some people were off, gone somewhere.
37:24So when the blood started, there were a group of guys in L.A.
37:30that considered themselves the Brims.
37:32They did not consider themselves Bloods.
37:34There's another group of guys, the Outlaws, and that wasn't a gang,
37:38it was just a group, but as they started fighting the Crips,
37:41they got together with the guys from Athens Park,
37:44the guys from other areas too, the Pirus in Compton,
37:48and the villains, the Bloodstone villains on the East Side,
37:52to make sure that the Crips weren't dominant,
37:55no matter if it was a parade or no matter what the situation was.
38:00So even though they came together and considered themselves, you know,
38:06as one, like a Blood connection, but everybody has their own area.
38:11You know, there's the Roland 20s, which is your area.
38:14And so that's just to be able to identify where you're from.
38:19So for me, there's no difference between the Bloods and Pirus.
38:22However, there's some people that say there is a difference,
38:25but if we're standing on the same corner, you don't know the difference.
38:28All Bloods are not all African American.
38:31We have Belizean homies, we have Jamaican homies,
38:35we have a couple of guys who are white,
38:39so it was never about just African American.
38:42In other cities, other states, I know they're in Detroit, New York,
38:46there's a lot of them in Georgia.
38:48They are emulating something that we've actually gone through.
38:54There are individuals who live on a street,
38:57and one street is one neighborhood,
39:00and the other end of the street is another neighborhood.
39:03So those are things that can't be emulated,
39:06and that's just what's so different about L.A.
39:09So, yeah, and there's no hierarchy.
39:12And most of these cities out here, they pay dues and they have a timeline,
39:16and, man, there is no person who could ever collect dues not in my neighborhood.
39:21He'd be in trouble.
39:23Everybody would try to get the money back, and, you know, it doesn't make sense.
39:27There's no organization where I'm from.
39:30Everything in L.A. is unorganized until you go to a California prison.
39:34Then that's when the organizational structure comes in.
39:38My first arrest was in 1977, but I was in and out.
39:49I was juvenile.
39:51I started getting locked up in 1982 as an adult.
39:55I spent from 1977 to 2009 either on probation, on parole, in custody, or on the run.
40:04I had drug cases.
40:06I had firearm cases.
40:08I had attempted murder case.
40:11I had a perjury where just getting a license and another name,
40:16they sent me to jail for nine months, you know, violation.
40:21So there's a number of different things I was arrested for.
40:25Anything you could think of in prison, bloods are associated with it,
40:29whether it's, you know, it's not always contract killing,
40:33but, you know, I mean, it's drug selling.
40:36It's getting cell phones.
40:38The UBN that started in New York was totally different
40:41than everything we were doing out here in L.A.,
40:44and they had a hierarchy.
40:46They had a level of command, and, you know, they really organized.
40:50Going to jail in 1982, I was able to maneuver in what they call general population.
40:57So I'm in and out of general population,
40:59and later in the 80s, I would go to the blood module
41:03because that whole 9,000 floor was just full of crypts,
41:07and it was a free-for-all.
41:09It's like 100-and-something people in there,
41:11and whoever's the deepest crypt is going to beat up the other crypts,
41:14definitely all the bloods.
41:16Emotionally, in jail, it's horrible.
41:18Jail is the worst place in the world.
41:20Being away from my family is the most horrible thing for me.
41:24I think mass incarceration took out not just the blood gang or the crypt gang,
41:28they took out our families.
41:30They destroyed our families.
41:32They destroyed the fathers and mothers having to leave the house.
41:36California has the most incarcerated individuals in the country,
41:40and this country has the most incarcerated people in the world.
41:44When Arnold was the governor, he spent $7.2 billion and building more prisons,
41:51but he didn't build any junior colleges.
41:54I think that people need to have a trade
41:56because they might not do well in a four-year college,
41:59but he didn't invest in that.
42:01He invested in the prison system.
42:09LAPD played a major part in helping to develop and grow
42:15the hatred that we have for each other.
42:18LAPD would actually drop people off in different neighborhoods,
42:22would get on their loudspeaker,
42:25and they would wake up the neighborhood and say,
42:28there's a blood in your area, he's in this car,
42:31and he's sitting in front of the house right now,
42:33and people would come out to see what they're talking about.
42:36I think LAPD has taken a thousand baby steps forward.
42:41I do not think that they see us or view us any different now.
42:46I think the only thing that's a little different now is that LAPD,
42:52not the L.A. County Sheriff, but LAPD,
42:54will listen to the concerns and the complaints of the community,
42:58whereas back in the days they didn't want to hear it.
43:01Now they're proactive.
43:03They're looking to bust up groups, see who has guns, who doesn't,
43:06but prior to that it would take a phone call,
43:09and most community members didn't make the phone calls
43:13to the police department because, once again, we'd be victimized.
43:17So I don't want to be victimized, so I don't want to call the police.
43:20I don't want to call my mother.
43:27So there was never a year that I decided to leave the gang life.
43:31In 1998, when I was in jail facing two life sentences
43:34for the attempted murders,
43:36I knew that this was not where my future was,
43:39and I didn't have anybody to talk to.
43:41Everybody was either on drugs or talking about robberies,
43:44and I wasn't doing robberies. I was owning a tow truck business.
43:47So when I came home, I just stopped going around my community.
43:50However, my kids were still there,
43:52and my community members were still dying.
43:55So I never left the community.
43:58I just left that part of me that wanted to help be ignorant.
44:02So then, as I started Second Call,
44:05I started helping individuals get jobs, get into careers,
44:08get their high school diploma,
44:10help them start getting shoes and clothing for school.
44:13So now that I'm a positive part of the community,
44:15a lot of the young people have no idea who I was.
44:18So they just know me as this person,
44:21but they don't know me as the person with the gun
44:24or who went to war or any of that type of stuff.
44:27In the city of L.A., we have gang reduction youth development.
44:30So we have summer night lights at parks
44:32where during the summer months,
44:34the city pays for certain activities to go on from 7 to 11.
44:38It used to be a little later, till midnight.
44:40But what they do is they get everybody tired.
44:43They do free food, they do face paint and their prizes,
44:47and that's from the city of L.A. that use intervention workers.
44:51But also on the outskirts, they have the police to kind of monitor,
44:55to make sure nobody comes and disrupts what's going on.
44:59I think the old-school blood culture values
45:04is more so we are one.
45:08And the new-school blood culture values are they fight each other.
45:14And like I said, they were born into a war when they were born.
45:20They were born into blood-versus-blood wars.
45:23So they don't know what peace is.
45:25The ignorance part of not ever letting go of, say, the gang culture,
45:29the gang lifestyle, not developing into something different,
45:33and into a more productive neighborhood.
45:36The Blackstones don't have to be gangs.
45:39You know, the Jungles don't have to have a gang,
45:42but there needs to be more development.
45:44And don't get me wrong, there are people who went off
45:47to play professional sports,
45:49There are people who are making a million dollars off of entertainment.
45:53But I just think that there's so much more that could be...
45:56There's healing circles in the Jungles.
45:59They're doing expungement clinics.
46:02There's so much that's going on,
46:04but I think that the culture, the mindset never changed.
46:08The violence of the corruption of the bloods
46:11is definitely going to end soon, within 10, 12 years.
46:16But in the next 30, 35 years, there'll be something else
46:19that everybody gravitate...
46:21All the kids will gravitate to be this.
46:24I don't know what this is, but it's going to happen.
46:45And comment below with more topics you'd like to see us cover.

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