Weaving our way through the streets we found it hard to believe that they had knuckled under. Not a soul was in sight. We drove down Third Avenue by the Fifty-ninth Street school, where they hung, circled the school once, then pulled to a stop and sat idle, peering into the darkness of the school yard. The Sixties had yet to procure a park and were using the Fifty-ninth Street school as a meeting place.
“Hit the corner once more,” Frogg said from the passenger seat, a .357 magnum sitting firmly in his lap. Li’l G.C. sat on edge behind me. He had a .22 Remington rifle with eighteen shots.
Starting off around Third Avenue again we picked up a tail. Keeping my head straight, so as not to seem panicky in case it was the police, I surveyed the front grille and lights. No, it wasn’t a police car. The police, at least the Seventy-seventh Street Division in our ’hood, were driving Furys. This car behind us was a Chevy, a ’66 Impala.
Keeping my head straight I spoke softly to Frogg. “Cuz, you know why we can’t find these fools?”
“Why?” Frogg answered.
“ ’Cause these muthafuckas is behind us!”
“Don’t look back,” Frogg mumbled and adjusted his rear-view mirror. “Just keep straight, keep straight. Now speed up a little and turn left on Fifth Avenue.” Frogg was instructing me like a driving instructor. “At the first driveway, bust a U-turn.”
Speeding up to Fifth Avenue past Fourth, I thought about the danger of clocking (continuously, nonstop, as in time) these cats three days in a row. Perhaps we had put too much on it. No doubt, they were out on patrol and were possibly heavily armed in hopes of finding some intruders, just our fuckin’ luck. Frogg was fresh out of prison and already on the campaign trail. He loved the set intensely.
Turning left on Fifth Avenue I made another hard left into the first driveway. No sooner had I backed out and come to a rolling stop at the corner of Fifty-ninth and Fifth, than the other car slowly bent the corner in front of us. Had they been good military tacticians they would have stopped in front of us and prevented our forward motion, while simultaneously having their shooters try to take out the driver to leave the occupants stranded and on foot to be hunted and killed. But no, this was not their tactic. They drove slowly around, coming alongside us, but facing the opposite direction.
As they inched closer and closer I said to Frogg, “Shoot, shoot these muthafuckas, man!”
“Hold on, hold on,” he said. Both of us were sitting still in the front seats like we didn’t have a care in the world. “A little more, a little…”
BOOM, BOOM!
Frogg was leaning right over me, shooting into their faces. Powder and cordite flew into my face from the gun’s cylinders.
Caught by surprise, their driver panicked, punched the accelerator, and hit a light pole, which fell across the hood and roof of the car. We sped away down Fifth Avenue to Slauson and made a right. When we got to Second Avenue we turned back into their ’hood, heading toward our set. I saw two of their little homies on bicycles and ran one over. Well, actually not
I felt nothing but a sense of duty. I had been to five funerals in the previous two years and had been steeled by seeing people whom I had laughed and joked with, played and eaten with, dead in a casket. Revenge was my every thought. Only when I had put work in could I feel good that day; otherwise I couldn’t sleep. Work does not always constitute shooting someone, though this is the ultimate. Anything from wallbangin’ (writing your set name on a wall, advertising) to spitting on someone to fighting—it’s all work. And I was a hard worker.
3. THE WAR
In the fall of 1980 the war between the Eight Trays and the Rollin’ Sixties was in full swing. Five casualties had accrued on our side, eight had fallen on their side. Even though people die every day in South Central and by most any means, it was the timing and the viciousness of these killings that made the gang community stop and take notice. Escalation was the order of the day. Entire streets were turned into armed camps to be used as liberated territory, where safe “meeting and mounting up” could be carried out with not so much as a worry about enemy gunfire. (“Meeting” means a gang gathering to choose a riding party or group of shooters to invade enemy territory. “Mounting up” means starting out cn the mission.)
This particular war is of the utmost importance; it was this very conflict that changed the politics of gang relations in South Central—a significant factor in the development of the critical climate that prevails throughout the region today.
Once the Eight Trays had really fallen out and our intent at the Rollin’ Sixties’ destruction was obvious, the entire Crip community split and began to side with one set or the other. We became, in effect, superpowers, not unlike the former Soviet Union and United States. Sets whom we’d had small skirmishes with or who favored the Sixties over us sided with them. Also included were their natural allies—other Neighborhood sets. “Neighborhood” or “N-hood” is the name of a loosely knit group of sets throughout Los Angeles, including Lynwood, West Covina, and Compton. The Neighborhood Crips as a whole make up a large part of the Crip community, quite possibly comparable to the expansive republics spread throughout the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They are like Soviet republics, but not necessarily united, as each is of a different culture, with a diversity of customs and philosophical beliefs. The Neighborhoods had only ever been loosely associated; however, with the brutal escalation of the war, they became a united front against us and our allies.
Sets began to predict the winners, a virtually impossible deed as our war, like most gang wars, was not fought for territory or any specific goal other than the destruction of individuals, of human beings. The idea was to drop enough bodies, cause enough terror and suffering so that they’d come to their senses and realize that we were the wrong set to fuck with. Their goal, I’m sure, was the same. “Points” were scored when individuals with prestige were hit. The aggression displayed in 1980 was unprecedented. We set a decibel level in violence that still causes some to cringe today.
What most folks miserably fail to realize is that our wars are no less complicated than world wars, or wars fought to either suppress or liberate a country. The difference is not legality, but cause. Some causes are righteous and in accord with human nature, while others are reactionary and repressive. Gang wars fall somewhere in between. I can quite easily justify the retaliation on enemies for killing one of my comrades. But simultaneously I will condemn the murdering of noncombatants.
Retribution is a natural reaction. It’s easy to persuade the general public of your “righteousness” when you control major media. But those of us who control nothing are in the precarious position of having someone guess what our position is. This leaves quite a large gap for misinformation. Who fired the first shot? Who knows?! But, too, who cares, when one of theirs is lying in a pool of blood with his brains blown out. This question becomes weightless in the aftermath of a shooting where someone has died. Thus the goal becomes the elimination of the shooter or as many of his comrades as possible. This inevitably leads to war—a full-scale mobilization of as many troops as needed to achieve the desired effect: funerals.
It was in this season that I was captured for murder. This particular incident began in my ’hood. I had taken my li’l brother’s ten-speed out this day, as I was only venturing around the block to Shadow’s house. Time seemed to fly by, and before I knew it night had fallen, and I was left in the dangerous position of having to get back home. This task would indeed be most trying as our ’hood was now being clocked by not just the Sixties but their allies and our new enemies. Night was the killing time.
Dreading my upcoming journey and cursing myself for not having brought a strap, I mounted the bike and started out. Peddling fast toward the dark side street of Halldale, I noticed four occupants in what appeared to be a blue T-bird; they were parked on the left-hand side of the street facing me. I slowed to a precautionary coast and strained my eyes to survey the situation I was riding into. Upon further observation I realized that the T-bird belonged to my homeboy Sleepy. This meant the others had to be homies, as well. A sigh of relief fell over me and I
