Word: ganges
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Gangs have existed in Los Angeles since the turn of the century, but they have been turned into small armies by drugs and money and the violence that goes with them. Combat has changed from bare knuckles and knives to random shots at an enemy who is tracked from a distance, is usually faceless and is therefore all the easier to gun down without remorse. Not all gang members deal drugs, just as not all drug dealers belong to gangs, but the flow of drug money has infiltrated every crevice, creating a hyperinflation of shooting...
...gang members use crack, the community's best-selling drug. Kids don't need to see TV public-service ads of a man frying an egg to know what crack does to the mind. They see it all the time on the streets and in their homes. "It makes people go out of their heads," says Edgar, 15. "My friends would stop me if I ever tried it." His mouth pursed with disgust, J.J., 15, says, "It makes people skinny and ugly." In South Central the only thing worse than a "basehead" is a "strawberry," a woman addict who trades...
...Most gang members are in their late teens and early 20s, but kids as young as ten or eleven readily join. They are called "wanna-bes" and are looked on even by the cops as apprentices in the trade. Yet it doesn't take much for a wanna-be to earn full stripes. According to Henry, 13, a Grape Street Crip, the only difference between "little gangsters" and "big gangsters" is firepower: little gangsters use .22s or .25s; big gangsters, .38s or Uzis...
Henry has a much stronger sense of being a Grape Street Crip than a Mexican American or an Angeleno. Ask him about his family, and he'll talk about his "homies." He knows the odds against surviving gang life. "I might get killed one day," he says. "My uncle did." His uncle, a Florencia gang member, was shot in the back with a .45 when Henry was ten. His uncle was Florencia because he lived in that neighborhood, but that was long ago, and Henry has always been Grape Street. "I don't like Florencia, I never did." One reason...
Henry doesn't sell drugs or commit robberies. "I just like gang banging," he says, meaning hanging out with his friends. He witnessed the mortal consequences of gang banging when he was eleven: a 16-year-old homeboy was shot twice in the head by some guys from "Colonia Watts." Henry was hanging out on the next street, heard the shots and ran over to find the boy sprawled on the street, his blood seeping onto the concrete. "I was mad, everybody was." Henry didn't get a chance to vent his anger until much later, for a different shooting...