of the level of organization of, say, an institution that was formally founded on the premise of being structured, so there is no compartmentalization. No individual has a specific duty assigned to him, where his efficiency can be monitored by a superior. Therefore, the serious banger often finds himself handling several “jobs” in the course of his career. For years I found my position in the set to be manifold. At any given time I was the minister of information, which included such responsibilities as writing on walls, declaring who we were and who we wanted to kill, and verbalizing our intent at gangland supremacy on street corners, on buses, in school yards, and at parties; minister of defense, which entailed organizing and overseeing general troop movement and maintaining a highly visible, militarily able contingency of soldiers who, at a moment’s notice, could be relied upon for rapid deployment anywhere in the city; teacher of war tactics, which, I guess, would fall under the heading of instructor; and combat soldier and on-the-job trainer.
All participants are obligated to represent their allegiance to their respective sets everywhere they go. You are taught from recruitment that your set is something to be proud of. Each set actually functions like the different divisions of, say, the U.S. Army. For instance, one who is in the Army may belong to the First Infantry Division, 196th Infantry Brigade, Second Battalion, Delta Company. A member of a gang might belong to the West Side Crips, Eight Tray Gangsters, North Side Eighty-third Street, or West Side Harvard Park Brims, Sixty-second Street. My point here is the complexity of both organizations. There is the Crip Army and the Blood Army. Each has various divisions or chapters. These are noted by streets and initials or abbreviations. Sets use abbreviations much like everyone else: Eight Tray Gangsters would simply be abbreviated to ETG.
As of late, sets—which are the equivalent of a company in military jargon—have started to use individual colors, outside of the universally worn red and blue, to denote their particular chapters. Most notable is the purple flag of the Grape Street Watts Crips and the all-black flags of the Compton Santana Block Crips. Of equal importance is the green flag of the San Diego Lincoln Park Pirus, Skyline Pirus, and 5—9 Brims of the Bloods.
With each new generation of Crip and Blood bangers comes a more complex system, which is now reaching institutional proportions. It is precisely because of this type of participation in the development and expansion of these groups’ mores, customs, and philosophies that gangbanging will never be stopped from without. The notion of the “war on gangs” being successful is as realistic as the People’s Republic of China telling Americans to stop being American. When gang members stop their wars and find that there is no longer a need for their sets to exist, banging will cease. But until then, all attempts by law enforcement to seriously curtail its forward motion will be in vain.
As November 1980 came to a close, several developments were on the horizon. We had forged an alliance with the Playboy Gangsters who, as we duly noted, were situated behind the Sixties. Their ’hood was far west, out of the chaotic labyrinth of South Central. This gave us an escape place to plot and plan, rest and retreat.
At this time we’d also seriously pondered the possible unification of all gangster sets, to roll back the united front of the city-wide neighborhood threat. And we were in desperate need of weapons. The Sixties had just hit an army surplus and secured hundreds of semiautomatic rifles and handguns, which they were putting to use nightly. Arms proliferation was definitely an issue. An arms race is what came out of this situation. And because there is no ceiling on numbers, or checks and balances, the proliferation continues to date.
Our goal was to wait until New Year’s Eve, when the entire community would be openly armed and celebrating, and run a truck through the wall of the Western Surplus and secure as many guns and munitions as possible. This was a good plan, we thought, as who would supply security for a store on New Year’s Eve?
It was also during this time that Crazy De and I took the “split-side” proposal to Sidewinder for possible approval. Sidewinder was the closest our set came to having a leader. He was the only one who lived on Eighty- third Street and was solely responsible for the set’s break with Tookie’s regime that involved the entire west side of Los Angeles. Tookie is the founder of the West Side Crips. Before there were any divisions by street, there was one big Crip army. Sidewinder, in effect, won liberation of the set, which was then simply called Original Gangster Crips (OGC). This is where the term “O.G.” originated, from Sidewinder’s usage of it to denote our break and thus our independence from Tookie’s West Side Crips (WSC).
So, as I explained above, with each generation comes new, more advanced ideals about the continuation of Crips in general and of one’s set in particular, as shown here with Sidewinder’s idea of an individual set on Eighty- third Street. While remaining in conjunction with West Side Crips, the set would not necessarily be controlled by them. Its conception was to promote autonomy.
All attempts at new ideas are not successful. Sets fail, much like businesses. Much work goes into establishing a set. With the success of a set comes universal recognition. Sidewinder reached Ghetto Star status by this act alone, but he still was active in all of our wars and still lends his experience to the set’s ascent today.
Our proposal, our contribution, was based on war strategy. For it seemed like every time we’d neutralize one Sixty, two would be recruited. They have always had great success with recruitment. I would honestly say that today the Rollin’ Sixties have the third largest set in South Central, following the East Coast Crips and then the Hoover Crips. We took notice of this threat early on and tried time and again to reduce their population by any means necessary, all to no avail. So our last resort was the psychological approach. Make them believe we were bigger than they thought—deceive them.
What blew me away later on, while I was a prisoner in San Quentin, was when I read Sun Tzu’s
Our deceptive tactic was this: We would seem to divide the entire ’hood up into sides—North, South, East, and West—thus making the Sixties believe we were so huge that we had to break the ’hood up into subdivisions. It was our belief that they’d fall into confusion, trying to find the sides they most wanted to attack. We also believed they’d feel enveloped by a larger, more entrenched enemy than they had originally anticipated.
But when I explained this to Sidewinder, he rejected it out of hand, citing some abstract notion that this was, in effect, breaking up the ’hood. This was straight hypocrisy on his behalf, because earlier that same year he had concocted some off-the-wall idea about turning the whole set into a new gang, calling it “West Coast Gangster Trays” (WCG3s). Crazy De and I backed him on it and supported his idea, even though it was immensely unpopular amongst other O.G.s. He had even suggested we change the color of our flag.
Despite his adamant disapproval, De and I went forward with our plans. Ironically, the same O.G.s who had disagreed with Sidewinder’s idea about the WCG3s backed our development of subdividing the set. Initially, we had four sides, but the East Side fell off the following year when its staunchest members were captured for murder. We began right away on our campaign to inform the Sixties and the entire gang community about our latest development. We went about this task with a vengeance, writing on walls, turning out parties (“turning out” means to disrupt with violence) and at schools—most anywhere we felt like shouting our presence out.
This campaign was actually carried out by no more than four dedicated soldiers: Crazy De, Legs Diamond, Tray Stone, and myself. What started out as a tactic began to produce serious strategic results. Just as we had anticipated, confusion as to who was who set in over in the Sixties ’hood, and we were able to make some stunning strikes in the midst of their indecisiveness. In the meantime, our idea was gaining momentum in our ’hood. Others began to campaign for their respective sides, though all in unity with the original idea of deception.
In mid-December I broke into a house and secured two more weapons—another double-barrel and a Browning 9 millimeter. It was also around this time that we began to put serious dents in the Rollin’ Sixties’ offensive capabilities. On a cold, gloomy night, the Sixties tried to drop some of our West Side soldiers and were cut down. On the South Side a similar situation befell one of their units when one of their shooters hung out of the back window of a rolling car in an attempt to shoot some homies and was instead blasted back into the car with a full charge from a shotgun. The car sped away with the would-be shooter—turned victim—screaming in sheer agony.
Morale was picking up, and our level of recruitment also went up. One of the most damaging things we did to our own set during this time was to call meetings where we’d whip our troops and kick certain people off the set, taking for granted we’d always be strong. When we later found ourselves at meetings with as few as thirty-five soldiers in attendance, we began to regret our earlier acts of irresponsibility in regard to the treatment of troops.
I shot two people in December, but neither died. One I caught at McDonald’s on Florence and Crenshaw, and the other I shot on Tenth Avenue and Hyde Park. Both I sprayed with buckshot. I liked to see the buckshot eat away their clothing, almost like piranha fish.
