THE GRIPS AND THE BLOODS

The very young are the best recruits for America's

growing drug gangs. William Shawcross

reports from Los Angeles

WHOLE areas of Los Angeles are now ruled by gangs. Vast tracts of the city seem, from the outside anyway, to have fallen almost as far as Beirut. There are over 600 gangs in LA boasting around 70,000 mem- bers. They spend a lot of time killing each other with sub-machine guns.

Crack and gangs arc destroying life in dozens of American ghettoes. LA is about the worst but it is not atypical. Last year 387 people were killed in gang wars in LA. They were most- ly blacks killed by blacks and their deaths went pretty well unre- marked. But then a student was killed in a shootout in a middle-class area between gangsters fighting over the rich drug mar- ket of UCLA. As a result the story hit the covers of news magazines. Now there are constant, terrifying tales of 13-year-old boys armed with Uzi sub-machine guns, raking in hundreds of dollars a week from drug sales, driving expensive cars, flashing gold jewellery, killing their neighbours. There is an awful atmosphere of urban dereliction, welfare hopelessness, brutal but ineffective policing, younger and youn- ger children dragged into tribal warfare made hugely profitable by deadly dealing in cocaine, casual 'drive-by' killings in

which people are killed just because they are there.

A new film, Colors, by Dennis Hopper and starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall, which gives a stark and violent picture of the stupefying nature of gang life and the police response to it, has been denounced as glamorising and glorifying the gangs. One gang member has been killed at a showing of the film, which has so far been kept out of gangland cinemas.

I drove one Friday afternoon past the rich, neat lawns of Beverly Hills, where almost every home carries a placard warn- ing of 'Armed Respo e' to intruders, south through the perpetu I traffic jams of the Harbor Freeway and own into the gangland of South Central Los Angeles, a vast and sprawling ghetto bounded by freeways and lying between the skyscrap- ers of the downtown financial district and the airport.

On Slauson Avenue, between car lots, gas stations and cheap hamburger joints, I found the offices of Youth Gang Services, a community group which attempts to stop gang members murdering each other and from recruiting new, ever younger mem- bers. Kevin Wheeler, a 29-year-old man who had worked for six years with gangs, was taking me on a `ridealong' through the Friday night slums of gangland.

There have always been gangs in LA and many other big American cities, but they have exploded in the last decade because of the immense profits to be made from crack. Dealers can buy a kilo of cocaine for about $12,000 and sell it in little packets on the streets for about $250,000. Nine-year- olds employed as lookouts may be paid $100 a day. Slightly older kids who 'run' the stuff from place to place will get $300. An astute dealer in the ghet- to can make literally thousands of dollars a week.

The crack economy offers an escape, the easiest escape, from a hideous world of relent- less poverty and hopelessness. During the Reagan years jobs in manufacturing industry have declined and the funds for training and employment program- mes, which provided a safety-net for at least

some impoverished adolescents, have been slashed. Unemployment amongst young blacks runs at 37 per cent; for those who can get jobs packing groceries, shovelling fast food, the lure is only the minimum wage of $4.25. It is virtually impossible to live on that. Yet in the last eight years the number of workers with a household income below the official poverty line (calculated at $9,464 for a family of three) has apparently risen from 2.8 million to 15 million. The underside of the Reagan revolution is a nightmare of a huge welfare-dependent underclass where parents (often single parents) actually encourage their kids to deal in drugs and even to join the gang, despite all the violent affliction which that involves.

Fabulous drug profits have enabled the

gangs to arm themselves in extraordinary fashion. Uzi sub-machine guns and AK 47s are freely available in LA gun shops. There are thousands of them on the streets.

Against them the LA Police Department has a force of some 250 men called Crash, for Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, and a militaristic battering ram to smash down suspected 'rock houses' where crack is traded. The police are also beginning to exchange their revolvers for semi-automatic weapons. They engage in constant 'sweeps' of gangland rounding up hundreds of people at a time. Often civil rights have been suspended or ignored, yet the success in curbing the drug traffic has been minimal. Last month in one Los Angeles sweep, the police arrested 1,453 people, amongst them 315 juveniles. Half were soon released for lack of evidence.

Kevin Wheeler drove me to Watts, to the Baptist Church of the Revd Charles Mims Junior, who with some of his fellow ministers and congregation was about to make a foray into some of the nastier streets of gangland. Mr Mims, a well- dressed preacher with a fine voice, ex- plained that he was on a 'Jesus Sweep' rather than a police sweep, counselling 'Hope not Dope'. He wanted to reach out into the most dangerous and blighted communities to offer another way.

Before he set off, Mr Mims was asked by a bored-looking woman reporter from Channel 13 News whether this was not just all a waste of time. He replied with some dignity, 'We're taking our pulpits into the streets. We want to tell those who have been intimidated into gangs that there is another way. We can help you go out and get jobs. If we save one life it will be worth it.'

Mr Mims exhorted those of his parishioners who were accompanying him, 'I challenge those who laugh at us to think of a better solution. I was asked, "Is this not a band-aid on a cancer?", and I said, "It certainly is, and what are you doing about it?" We are out tonight sweeping for Jesus on a mission of redemption. Amen.' Mr Mims told his flock that the women were to link arms and sing 'We shall overcome', and over a plate of spaghetti in

the church hall he led a spirited rehearsal. 'Now listen, there's a measure of danger

but we have Youth Gang Services and they are going to tell us what to do and not to do.' Kevin Wheeler then stood up and explained how good he thought it was that this attempt to reach into the community was being made; he listed the number of gangs in the area into which we were venturing.

Amongst the blacks, there are two gangs or tribes in Los Angeles. The Bloods wear red, the Crips blue, and they abhor each other's colour and even the initial letters of each other's name. Thus Bloods will not use the letter C, nor Crips the letter B.

The meaning of Bloods is obvious; the origin of the name Crips is more obscure. It may have something to do with turning people into cripples, or a swagger known as 'cripping', or because leading gang members at the start were crippled. Crips often carry canes as well as guns. In terms of aims or levels of violence there is no difference between them. As amongst the McCoys and the Hatfieids, the Christians and the Muslims in Beirut, death is meted out without question.

Groups are known after their streets or areas. On 83rd and Hoover we would find the '8 Tray Hoovers' and they had about 300 members. 'Remember they are Crips,' said Kevin Wheeler, 'Their colour is blue. Their rivals are the Bloods. So the Crips refuse to say the letter B, so when you talk to some of them they won't say "I'll be back in a minute," they'll say, "I'll ce cack in a minute." In the same way Bloods won't ask you for a cigarette, they'll say, "bigarette". It's gonna sound foreign to you. Tonight is Crips country. They don't like red.' A woman parishioner in a scarlet dress asked what she should do in Crips- land. 'Stay in the middle', said Mr Mims. She wrapped herself firmly into a long coat.

We set off. Part of the caravan was a hearse with a powder-blue coffin on top, to remind kids of the dismal future that awaited them with drugs. Unfortunately, by the time we arrive at Hoover and 83rd the police had decided to put their own sweep in before the Jesus sweep. Young men were lined up on the sidewalk with their hands above their heads. The caval- cade drove quickly away. In a nearby parking lot Mr Mims, clearly disappointed, said, 'We had to pull out of the last place. It was police business and we couldn't go in there. We'll go to a different place now. We don't want anyone getting there first.'

Then through several darkening streets, where the walls were covered with menac- ing graffiti giving the street names of Crips gang members and vicious threats against the Bloods, Mr Mims walked with a bullhorn, singing and crying, 'We shall all be free! No more dope! No more intimida- tion! No more killing of babies! No more gangs! No more blood spilled in the streets!' Above, a police helicopter circled, its searchlight playing on the streets below, hunting, intimidating. It reminded me of Vietnam.

Mr Mims asked his parishioners to talk with everyone they met and take down their names. He gave out leaflets with the church's phone number. 'We wanted to let you and everyone else know that there is another way. Doesn't that make sense to you? Aren't you tired of all this killing and murder?' Some young people were in- terested and welcoming. Others were scornful or just bored.

The utter tedium of life in the ghetto seems to be another lure towards the gangs. One Crips member, pseudonymed

Racketeer, was interviewed recently in the Los Angeles Weekly. He explained, so far as he could, that you died of fighting or you died of. boredom. If they didn't have Bloods or rival Crips gangs to fight, they'd fight in their own set. 'See, you got to have someone to fight with.' Asked what made him happy, he replied:

Just when all my homeboys ]set-members] is just kickin' it, like we all go somewhere, like a big old park — we he going to a picnic or something, and there just be a long line of cars, you know, like a funeral — only we be going to a picnic and we just get up there and we just be kickin' and having fun, and then the police come, and they run everybody off the place, and we come back to our 'hood and we he talking about how much fun we had. and then the next thing you know, somebody just drive by and start shooting and somebody got hit and somebody got killed, so that just spoil all the fun that we done had, and now you ready to do the same thing, but you ain't gonna do it that night, because you know the police is gonna be out, so you gonna try to find a night when the police ain't gonna be so out. But you ain't gonna do it when you're sober: you will get like all tipsy and you will start talking crazy-like, saying, like, 'Fuck Blood!' and all of that, and then there's gonna be another homeboy saying, 'What you-all wanna do? You-all wanna go get 'em?' And you will just be so drunk and all of that you just say, 'Come on!' and everybody start getting guns and stuff. And the next thing you know, we drove over and shot them up.'

Asked what he thought he would be doing in ten years, he replied, 'I don't think I be alive in ten years.'

On 83rd and Hoover, Mr Mims went into the yard of one scruffy apartment building covered in warlike graffiti. A woman on a balcony, apparently stoned. shouted in a throttled voice, 'Get out. Go over to the white folk. Go to where the shit started!' and then some more, before disappearing into the darkness behind the rails. Kevin Wheeler said, 'She's a "gang mother". Somewhere she broke and be- came a collaborator and accepted she got to live there and this was how it would be. And she allowed them to do what they wanted in her house and said nothing.'

Throughout, Mr Mims's message was that the 'intimidation' of the gangs could be resisted. No one had to join. Kevin Wheeler was impressed as we drove away. 'The older kids — four things happen. They go to the penitentiary. They get killed. They get strung out on alcohol and they get strung out on hard drugs. And when they get strung out on hard drugs, they get burned out. They're no more good for the gangs. So the gangs need new blood. Otherwise the name of the gang dies. So they recruit kids out of high school. Tonight the older ones, about 17, were hostile. But there were a lot of youngsters taking the pamphlets. The re- cruitment was being cut. That's what we have to do.'

After we saw Mr Mims back to his church, we drove through the night to the next event the Youth Gang Services were supposed to monitor — a Friday night dance at the Camino Real ballroom. On the freeway we ran alongside an old station wagon with half a dozen kids, all dressed smartly in blue and clearly set for an evening out. Kevin spoke to them in hand signals — which all gang members employ. 'They's East Coast Crips,' he said, 'off to a party.'

Outside the hall were a couple of white stretch Cadillacs with drivers, and a spank- ing new Mercedes — all the property, I supposed, of dealers.

Everyone coming into the dance was frisked on the steps in front of the smart cars outside. A couple of Crips were ordered to unpick their blue laces from their Nike shoes. Others were told to put away their red or blue bandanas, their 'rags'.

The hall was dark inside. the band that night was Epee MD, a group from New York. Their music was loud and insistent. The audience were mostly teenagers, the girls in chic tank tops and Lurex cycling shorts, the boys in expensive sportswear by Adidas or Nike or Reebok.

Some of the dealers wore easily, sleekly apparent. They wore gold rings, Rolexes, heavy gold chains over their Adidas tops and, most important, bleepers on their waistbands — for their clients to keep in touch. They looked about 17 but some had a couple of 14-year-old helpers in tow. The kids tend to drive Honda Elite scooters.

The dealers like to use juveniles because up to the age of 18 they are rarely charged — if the police sweep them up, a caution is often all that is administered. Gangs are getting younger all the time. Kids come to school with bleepers in their satchels; schools are trying somewhat helplessly to ban the gadgets.

Inner-city schools are decaying at a horrifying rate. But there is one school in South Central LA, Garfield High, which has become a national institution because a single brilliant and dedicated teacher, Jaime Escalante, has been successfully forcing his pupils through advanced calcu- lus. His efforts have been celebrated in a moving film called Stand and Deliver; Garfield High is'now on every policitician's visiting list. George Bush was there the week I was in South Central.

As the dance hall filled with more and more young dancers and gazers, in red, blue and other colours Kevin 'Wheeler became increasingly nervous. 'There's too many gang members here,' he said. 'There's going to be real violence.' As midnight approached, waves of aggression did indeed begin to shimmer through the crowd. When fighting started, two tough-looking white policemen in dirty jeans dashed through the doors, seized whomever they considered was involved in the latest skirmish and dragged them out, often pummelling them with their night-

sticks. Such forays provoked no retalia- tion. The guests were more interested in each other than the police.

Fights began to break out more and more frequently. Kevin Wheeler decided that he did not want me, the only white there apart from the police, inside the hall. We waited on the steps for a time, watch- ing while the doors occasionally shuddered from the waves of fighting inside. Still the organisers were allowing more people in. Before the dance ended, we left.

Gangs are now becoming a national disaster in the States. Asian gangs, Jamaican gangs, black gangs, Hispanic

gangs are fanning violently through cities— Miami, New York, Detroit, Atlanta — as the drug industry extends its lethal reach.

The same day I was on my ridealong, Jesse Jackson gave a rousing campaign speech at a high school in LA's gangland. He cried that their drug-taking was a betrayal of the civil rights movement. 'I challenge you because I love you, because I care, because I'm not scared of you. You are not a crawling snake, you are a human being. Raise your expectations.' But that, of course, is precisely what is so hard for so many of these teenagers realistically, legiti- mately, to do.