Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you should know from house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's with us,
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. The podcast not
Speaker 1: affiliated with any gang. No, No, I would have thought
Speaker 1: that goes without saying. You never know stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: Army that's our gang. Yeah, I guess so nerds rolling
Speaker 1: around dropping knowledge. Yeah, that's how we roll. Our symbol
Speaker 1: is Infinity gang sign. I don't think that should be
Speaker 1: our symbol. No, No, it's um a perfect circle. No,
Speaker 1: I think the the mike with the mean our regular logo.
Speaker 1: All right, that's a symbol. We just need to learn
Speaker 1: how to make it and spray paint. Yes, actually that's
Speaker 1: dated what we've just said. We just mentioned spray painting
Speaker 1: your gang sign. But that's old time people. They still
Speaker 1: do that. No, gangs have evolved so much. Yes, some
Speaker 1: people do still do it, but from what I understand,
Speaker 1: gangs have basically come to see that. It's like, why
Speaker 1: why would you do that? It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: You're basically you're marking your territory, right, You're marking yourself
Speaker 1: whereas it's better to stay out of the hands of
Speaker 1: law enforcement and not through a gang sign or tag
Speaker 1: something with your gang symbol than to do that. Gangs
Speaker 1: are wisending up and they're just not committing crimes any
Speaker 1: longer because that puts them under the police microscope. No,
Speaker 1: I'm saying that they are committing crimes still, they're just
Speaker 1: not UM. I don't think they spray paint their stuff
Speaker 1: as much. They're definitely UM getting more sophisticated in some
Speaker 1: gangs that've I've seen that like mortgage fraud and identity theft, counterfeiting,
Speaker 1: like are some of the human trafficking one, So the
Speaker 1: new crimes um. So before we get started the chuck,
Speaker 1: I want to say that throughout this reading The Stuff
Speaker 1: or the House Stuff Works article and doing research, I
Speaker 1: was plagued by this idea that, like, we don't really
Speaker 1: have a real idea of how many people are in gangs,
Speaker 1: how many gangs are in the United States, exactly what
Speaker 1: kind of problems like gang problem we have. Is it overstated?
Speaker 1: I suspect it might be overstated gangs. So this is
Speaker 1: so the FBI compiles this report every few years and
Speaker 1: in the original House Stuff works article. It cites the
Speaker 1: two thousand five National Gang Threat Assessment, right, and it
Speaker 1: says there's twangs and seven hundred and thirty one thousand
Speaker 1: active gang members. Two thousand eleven, which is the most
Speaker 1: recent one from what I could find, has not too
Speaker 1: many more gangs thirty three thousand, but one point four
Speaker 1: million gang members. Thousand more gangs, I guess it is, okay,
Speaker 1: but one point four million gang members. The number of
Speaker 1: gang members between two thousand and five and two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven, according to the FBI, doubled, doubled. And okay,
Speaker 1: if that's the case, right, what why what happened between
Speaker 1: two thou five and two thousand and eleven? I don't know,
Speaker 1: because the gang heyday was in the eighties and nineties. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, So what would cause gang membership to skyrocket
Speaker 1: to double from two I don't think significant. I have
Speaker 1: one guess, uh, federal grants going to police departments, UM
Speaker 1: that say they have a gang problem. So maybe they're
Speaker 1: inflating the numbers. Maybe, Okay, what if they're not inflating
Speaker 1: the numbers? The thing that I think the internet, no,
Speaker 1: the economic crisis. If you go back and look at
Speaker 1: the history of gangs, and if you look at all
Speaker 1: gang um activity, yeah, gang banging. If you if you
Speaker 1: tried to find on the lying cause, one of the
Speaker 1: underlying causes, if not basically the underlying cause is a
Speaker 1: lack of access to economic opportunity a k. Nothing else
Speaker 1: to do, no job prospects, and then already being surrounded
Speaker 1: by gangs or the possibility of gangs leads to an
Speaker 1: increasing membership. So we have this economic crisis in the
Speaker 1: United States. So if gang membership really did double, I
Speaker 1: would put my money on the idea that it was
Speaker 1: because of the economic crisis. Didn't that touch the middle
Speaker 1: and upper middle classes more? Though? I mean, was there
Speaker 1: a housing crisis? Oh man, everybody got totally messed up
Speaker 1: by the economic crisis. Yeah, I mean I knew it
Speaker 1: touched everyone, but I didn't know it wasn't just housing,
Speaker 1: Like housing kicked the whole thing off. But like the
Speaker 1: job market, like all of a sudden, all these people,
Speaker 1: even if it did affect like say the middle class
Speaker 1: or the upper middle class, all of a sudden they
Speaker 1: lose their jobs. They start taking the lower classes job
Speaker 1: because they've got to survive. Now, where are the lower
Speaker 1: classes doing? Interesting? Theory. I'm if membership doubled in the
Speaker 1: US between two I would bet any amount of money
Speaker 1: that was because of the economic crisis. You would stake
Speaker 1: your stuff. You should know fortune on that. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: I would all the millions. All right, Well, we may
Speaker 1: as well go and talk about white people join gangs
Speaker 1: because you just teased it. Poverty is a huge reason. Um,
Speaker 1: these are usually in poorer areas of the city. Um,
Speaker 1: not a lot of money going on. You can make
Speaker 1: money by robbing people, by dealing drugs. It provides a
Speaker 1: financial incentive to join a gang basically. Yeah. I've read
Speaker 1: about one study from Los Angeles that found that neighborhoods
Speaker 1: that had unemployment rates of between fourteen and sixteen percent
Speaker 1: had about fifteen times more gang related homicides than neighborhoods
Speaker 1: that had unemployment rates of between four and seven percent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they say that gang related homicides account for close
Speaker 1: to half of all the homicides in the United States
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, that's another thing that I found, Like really,
Speaker 1: I saw also somewhere between I saw other places that
Speaker 1: are like this is all way overstated that like the
Speaker 1: gangs peaked back in the nineties and like we haven't
Speaker 1: had a real problem since then. I don't think this case,
Speaker 1: but there are some like sociologists out there saying this
Speaker 1: is this is overstated. Yeah, I don't think anyone saying
Speaker 1: there's not a gang problem. Those are No. I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody's disagreeing that there's a gang presence. I think
Speaker 1: the degree to which there is a gang presence. So Chuck,
Speaker 1: for example, you can go look at something from the
Speaker 1: Justice Policy Institute called Violent Children two dozen send um
Speaker 1: look up the youth gang violence problem is exaggerated, and
Speaker 1: it provides kind of a counterpoint to it. Because if
Speaker 1: there's one thing, I'm not saying there's not a gang problem,
Speaker 1: I'm not excusing the idea that like, oh, you have
Speaker 1: low economic opportunities so you join a gang. Totally get it. No,
Speaker 1: Like there's like there's still morality. There's still plenty of
Speaker 1: people in the same situation that aren't joining gangs. Like
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is like when you when you read
Speaker 1: articles that are just like there's gangs everywhere and they're
Speaker 1: killing everybody. Of the homicide rates are because of gangs,
Speaker 1: and they're they're immoral little kids coming out of the
Speaker 1: inner city. Your your antenna should immediately go up, and
Speaker 1: you should start asking critical questions about where this stata
Speaker 1: is coming from. What they're basing the data on, Who
Speaker 1: is giving you this data. Did they stand to benefit
Speaker 1: from people being scared? Um? Do they get funding to
Speaker 1: study this kind of stuff? You just have to ask
Speaker 1: questions like that, they're creating hysteria. It's yeah, anytime you
Speaker 1: encounter hysteria like that, yes, you should stop for a second.
Speaker 1: If you have that amount of self possession, stop and
Speaker 1: just start asking questions like what everybody calmed down, agreed, sir?
Speaker 1: Or just run because the gangs are coming for you.
Speaker 1: All right. That's that was it for my soapbox. All right.
Speaker 1: Uh so back to why you might join a gang,
Speaker 1: um peer pressure. I love that that's listed, uh because
Speaker 1: it's true. I Mean, it sounds kind of like a
Speaker 1: very high school thing. But that's a lot of times
Speaker 1: is when you're getting pressure to joining gang, they seek
Speaker 1: out children, right, That's where a lot of gangs find
Speaker 1: the roots. The crypts, bloods, both high schools, that's right.
Speaker 1: The blue, the red, those are the high school colors.
Speaker 1: That's right. We'll get to them later. Um boredom we
Speaker 1: talked about that. Um, a lot of these communities there
Speaker 1: isn't a lot going on. They don't have the neighborhood
Speaker 1: pool or maybe even a neighborhood library or a neighborhood
Speaker 1: youth center um, or a playground that's in uh not
Speaker 1: in disrepair. So these shuttered communities don't have a lot
Speaker 1: going on. So kids are board um, and then they
Speaker 1: fall into a sense of despair, which means, um, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't have a father who's a role model.
Speaker 1: Maybe my father or mother or both are in prison. Um,
Speaker 1: but I have a family right over here. This gang
Speaker 1: says they love me, They're gonna get my back, and um,
Speaker 1: now I have a sense of community finally through this gang.
Speaker 1: And some gangs actually have set up overt community programs,
Speaker 1: like job training programs, like things that basically said, we
Speaker 1: have been so neglected by the community at large that
Speaker 1: like local gangs are the ones setting this up. And
Speaker 1: I mean that's a pretty good reason to join a gang,
Speaker 1: is when they're holding community outreach programs in your community
Speaker 1: and they're the only show in town. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there's uh, it's not just a TV thing. The gang
Speaker 1: leader with a heart of gold that like secretly uh
Speaker 1: snipes to build the playground, you know, like that stuff happens.
Speaker 1: I mean, and we're not trying to say like gang
Speaker 1: leaders are just the best, that they have been known
Speaker 1: to quietly reinvest money in their own communities. Well yeah times,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you don't want the place falling apart,
Speaker 1: especially if that's your major market. Yeah. And plus also
Speaker 1: it's a really great way to ingratiate yourself with the
Speaker 1: local community. Absolutely sure. So let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the history of gangs. If you'll indulge me for
Speaker 1: a moment, you can consider yourself indulged. Um. I love
Speaker 1: the way. And this is by the Grabster at Grabowski. Um.
Speaker 1: He says criminal gangs have been around for as long
Speaker 1: as crime and that makes total sense because, um, their
Speaker 1: strength in numbers. And I think you've seen the movie
Speaker 1: Gangs of New York. Yeah, stripe pants, stripe pants, oh man,
Speaker 1: strip pants, Yeah, a lot of them. Fashion. Did I
Speaker 1: like it? No, not really, Yeah, I've went back and
Speaker 1: watched it recently. I really liked it. Um. I did
Speaker 1: not like Cameron Diaz. I forgot she was in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was she was missing. She was like a Cockney accent,
Speaker 1: now that I think about it. Uh no, no, it was,
Speaker 1: it was. It must have been a nightmare I had.
Speaker 1: She was I've had that same nightmare. I don't. I
Speaker 1: think she had to look at some sort of a
Speaker 1: weird accent. Maybe she was trying to do Cockney. You know,
Speaker 1: um forgot a good movie though. I think I really enjoyed. Mean,
Speaker 1: I could stand and go back and see it as
Speaker 1: an I liked it. And what's this Daniel Date lewis Man,
Speaker 1: what a great character. Um. So, anyway, that movie was
Speaker 1: based on fact because in the nineteenth century in New
Speaker 1: York and Five Points, Um, you had these ethnic gangs,
Speaker 1: the Irish gangs, Polish gangs, Italian gangs, and they all
Speaker 1: faught for territory and robbed and mugged each other and
Speaker 1: had violent fights in the street. That was pretty crazy
Speaker 1: in Lower Manhattan. Yeah, the Five Points gangs, Yeah, very
Speaker 1: very tough. But sometimes they have banded together and fight
Speaker 1: other parts of town's gangs, like the Bowery Boys, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So they're just fighting all the time,
Speaker 1: turf wars like today, like you know what, gangs they
Speaker 1: kind of have always been about turf to a certain
Speaker 1: degree they were about turf and that is we'll see
Speaker 1: one of the ways that you can divide um gang gangs.
Speaker 1: It's one of the definitions of gang is a turf gang.
Speaker 1: But they were also um ethnic gangs typically as well,
Speaker 1: like Irish gangs or Polish gangs or Italian gangs. You
Speaker 1: might ask yourself, what happened to the Polish gangs? What
Speaker 1: happened to Irish gangs? Do you do you want to
Speaker 1: hear my theory behind the economic crisis of the nineteen seventies, No, no,
Speaker 1: these gangs went away, and they're so so. By the
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, most of the um gangs in the
Speaker 1: United States were Hispanic gangs and black gangs. Ethnic gangs
Speaker 1: were like we think of as like Irish or Polish
Speaker 1: or whatever, just disappeared. And the reason why they were
Speaker 1: disappeared because the Irish and the Polish stopped being considered
Speaker 1: ethnic and they were just white after that, and then
Speaker 1: all of the economic opportunities afforded to white people were
Speaker 1: refording to the Irish people and the Polish people, and
Speaker 1: they had very little reason to be gang members any longer,
Speaker 1: and they became skinheads later on. But don't you think
Speaker 1: that that's probably what happened. Maybe so I couldn't find
Speaker 1: anything definitive anywhere. They were like not a disenfranchised ethnic
Speaker 1: group any longer. They were just part of, uh, the
Speaker 1: white machine that is the United States. I could see that, like, man,
Speaker 1: you got theories out the wazoo today. But a lot
Speaker 1: of them became like cops. That was a big thing,
Speaker 1: especially for like former Irish gang members. A lot of
Speaker 1: them moved right from Irish gang member into Irish cops.
Speaker 1: They're like, where can I still go? Crackheads? Right? Exactly right.
Speaker 1: What's strange is as we'll see, that's kind of going
Speaker 1: on today still gang members moving into things like law
Speaker 1: enforcement in the military. Yeah. Boy, that was frightening, hysteria inducing,
Speaker 1: isn't it. It is so in the nineteen fifties, um,
Speaker 1: in sixties you had what we're called car clubs, and
Speaker 1: um they were gangs. And this is when you think
Speaker 1: of like the outsiders, like when you go to rumble
Speaker 1: Over territories. These were the car lubs and they would
Speaker 1: get together and they would fight in a parking lot
Speaker 1: with chains and knives and things like that, go rescue
Speaker 1: people from burning houses and an iron Long State Old
Speaker 1: Bony Boy, and UM, they began to languish in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and then in the nineteen sixties a man
Speaker 1: named Raymond Washington and a man named two Key I
Speaker 1: say man two boys. Yeah, they think they were high schoolers.
Speaker 1: They might have been middle schoolers even they were young,
Speaker 1: because they originally called their gang the Baby Avenues, the
Speaker 1: after school specials. That would be a good gang, the
Speaker 1: Baby Avenues. UM. It was a very small gang at first,
Speaker 1: and then it later became the Cribs because they were young,
Speaker 1: like Baby Cribs. And then it became the Cribs in
Speaker 1: south central Los Angeles. Uh. And they were blue like
Speaker 1: you said earlier, because Fremont High School where they went
Speaker 1: to school, where that was their school colors. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of funny to think that it was rooted in
Speaker 1: like I mean, it's not like it burst out of
Speaker 1: school pride, you know, but they did base their colors
Speaker 1: on their high school. And then um, as a result
Speaker 1: of the crips UH kind of taking over the area. UM.
Speaker 1: Raymond Washington was murdered by the way in he didn't
Speaker 1: last too long. UM. Tenure is a pretty good run
Speaker 1: for a game. Yeah, probably, so I would think that's
Speaker 1: longer than you would predict. And two Ki went to
Speaker 1: prison for murder. But UM in the nineteen seventies, and
Speaker 1: the Bloods were born as a results of the Crips
Speaker 1: and their activity. Um, all these smaller gangs that had
Speaker 1: been uh I guess messed with by the Crips. UM
Speaker 1: kind of came together and says, all right, we need
Speaker 1: a rival gang, so we're gonna be the Bloods. And
Speaker 1: that's why the Crips formed. Originally oh to uh for
Speaker 1: other rival gangs. It was a couple of gangs that
Speaker 1: came together. It's banding together, which still happens today if
Speaker 1: you believe that stuff. Um. And they were from the
Speaker 1: Um from the high school. Yes, and they were red
Speaker 1: and they were on to by Sylvester Scott and Vincent Owens.
Speaker 1: So then you had the Bloods, you had the Crypts.
Speaker 1: They are still thriving today. They do not get along.
Speaker 1: They have their well did they get along? So allow
Speaker 1: me to mention the Watts Truce Man two Truce Watts
Speaker 1: in south central Los Angeles. The Blood in the Crips
Speaker 1: came together with Jim Brown football legend Jim Brown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember this actually in like u um, I think
Speaker 1: a y m C a auditorium or high school auditorium
Speaker 1: or jim and sat down and worked out a peace
Speaker 1: treaty based on one between I think Israel and Egypt
Speaker 1: that had been used um. And it was a peace
Speaker 1: treaty between the Crypts and the blood and it was
Speaker 1: abided by so much so as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: it's still going on. Yeah, Like it was a very
Speaker 1: it was a big deal. But that's not to say
Speaker 1: that there's not in a related gang violence because now
Speaker 1: that the Crypts and the Bloods had watch truce signed,
Speaker 1: there was much more infighting among different cript sets and
Speaker 1: different blood sets. Well yeah, I mean this is I
Speaker 1: guess we should talk about the idea of nations like
Speaker 1: the Crypt Nation and Blood Nation their Bloods and Crypts
Speaker 1: all over the country. Yeah, which makes them super gangs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they sound terrifying that um. The guy who did
Speaker 1: the article I read said that he thought that they
Speaker 1: would all be sort of cut from the same cloth
Speaker 1: and they would all get along. But oh yeah, apparently
Speaker 1: within nations it's very much still broken down into your
Speaker 1: own neighborhood gang, and you might not get along with
Speaker 1: the other crip gang that's nearby. Even so, the crip
Speaker 1: is the nation and the set is like the local
Speaker 1: chapter basically. But like you said, this guy named Mike
Speaker 1: carly PhD. He's I think from the University of Missouri
Speaker 1: or no Missouri state. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry he Um,
Speaker 1: I think it's a sociologist who went in and just
Speaker 1: assimilated with gang members and hung out and ended up
Speaker 1: like writing this treatise on it. And um, he said
Speaker 1: what you just said that he expected everybody to get along.
Speaker 1: If you're a crip, that's just not the case, because
Speaker 1: if you're a crip, your set's territory is much more
Speaker 1: likely to butt up against another crip sets territory then
Speaker 1: say a blood's territory on the other side of the freeway.
Speaker 1: And if you're selling drugs on the corner and they're
Speaker 1: selling drugs in the corner, well you're fighting directly for
Speaker 1: the same customers money, so you're much more likely to
Speaker 1: erupt in violence or whatever. Yeah, and the nineties is
Speaker 1: when the narcotics kind of came on the scene. Before that,
Speaker 1: gangs didn't really deal a lot of drugs. It's a
Speaker 1: lot like more petty crime. And like muggings and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Yes, supposedly it was drugs that that changed everything,
Speaker 1: not only unleashed the spasm of violence that started in
Speaker 1: the eighties in Los Angeles specifically, but also um, I
Speaker 1: think even prior to that, in the seventies in Chicago
Speaker 1: is where the idea of taking street gangs and turning
Speaker 1: them into hierarchical drug dealing businesses was formed by a
Speaker 1: couple of guys named Larry Hoover and David Barksdale. That's
Speaker 1: the guy from the Wire. It wasn't David, but that
Speaker 1: was Avon Barksdale, wasn't it. I wonder if he's named
Speaker 1: after David Barksdale. That seems like a nod. So Larry
Speaker 1: Hoover formed the Black Gangsters and David Barksdale formed the
Speaker 1: Black Disciples, and they were rival gangs in Chicago that
Speaker 1: eventually formed the Black Gangster Disciples the Super Gang, and
Speaker 1: they had this idea that they would take all of
Speaker 1: their gang members and just turn them into drug dealers.
Speaker 1: And the crack epidemic helped that tremendously, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in this kind of stuff at all,
Speaker 1: go listen to our crack episode. It was one of
Speaker 1: our best if you asked me. Yeah, we have a
Speaker 1: few episodes that touch on this. I guess I think
Speaker 1: the Hell's Angels, even though biker gangs are not quite
Speaker 1: the same, Is that correct? Yeah, that's there categorization does
Speaker 1: it called outlaw and motorcycle gangs are seriously o MG's Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then um, I think the one on zoot suits.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that that was a lot like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great history one that we did. You should
Speaker 1: look into. So um bloods and crips. Um. They have
Speaker 1: this way of talking that where the Bloods won't say
Speaker 1: they'll substitute uh ce in words for B and crips
Speaker 1: will substitute B for C because they won't even say,
Speaker 1: you know, a word with B in it, Like let's
Speaker 1: go to Starbucks and get a boffy, start starbups and
Speaker 1: get a coffee. Yeah, because they're just hanging out in
Speaker 1: Starbucks now, they're hanging out in starbups Starbucks. Um. And
Speaker 1: they also have their own way of walking sea walking
Speaker 1: and b walking, which, um, it's sort of like a
Speaker 1: little dancy sort of move. But I looked at them
Speaker 1: both and I couldn't tell much of a difference, which
Speaker 1: means that I would be a bad gang member because
Speaker 1: I would do the wrong walk. I would guess that
Speaker 1: you would pick it up pretty quick. And of course
Speaker 1: they also have their besides the the blue and red clothing,
Speaker 1: they have their gang symbol, which in case you ever
Speaker 1: were like, I kind of want to wear my red
Speaker 1: hat today because I'm a Los Angeles Angels fan, but
Speaker 1: I don't want to get in trouble because I'm a crip.
Speaker 1: So they still have the the signs to rely on. Well,
Speaker 1: I would guess you would have to be a Dodgers fan,
Speaker 1: and if you're blood, you'd be an Angels fan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the Angels there, Anaheim, I don't think anyone in
Speaker 1: l A Is really an Angels fan. You gotta be
Speaker 1: from Orange County. Although we're going to hear from people Angels.
Speaker 1: So that's the bloods in the crips in a nutshell.
Speaker 1: That could be its own show. But we'll take a
Speaker 1: break here and we will talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about gang history right for this, So Chuck, we keep
Speaker 1: throwing out the words super gangs. It sounds like a
Speaker 1: media creation, but it does. But there I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: what it what it describes is a a franchise gang
Speaker 1: like the Bloods or the Crypts or um these larger
Speaker 1: groups like the Folks or the People. Yeah, the People
Speaker 1: Nation and the Folks Nation. So I think the Bloods
Speaker 1: are affiliated with the People Nation and the Crypts are
Speaker 1: affiliate with Folk Nation. But this basically this network of
Speaker 1: gang members who are related to one another through their
Speaker 1: gang in different cities. And so say somebody in Chicago
Speaker 1: wants to get into the St. Louis market, They'll send
Speaker 1: some people and set up a gang there, Easy peasy.
Speaker 1: It's called franchising. And all of a sudden, now you
Speaker 1: have a inter interstate gang, which makes it a super gang.
Speaker 1: Those are I don't want to see peanuts because it's
Speaker 1: a big deal. But compared to like a transnational gang,
Speaker 1: that's the transnational gangs are the ones fro. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a real problem there. I think, yeah, here's
Speaker 1: some just because um, well, let's just read the names
Speaker 1: of the People Nation in the Folk Nation just so
Speaker 1: people know what's going on. And the People Nation. You
Speaker 1: have the vice Lords and I believe they are out
Speaker 1: of Chicago, right, the almighty Vice Lord Nation. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they've been around for a long time too. They were
Speaker 1: one of the earlier gangs, you like in the late sixties. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Black Peace Stones, the Latin Kings, the Gay Lords,
Speaker 1: the South Side Popes, the Mickey Cobras, the Four Corner Hustlers,
Speaker 1: and the Almighty Saints and affiliated with the Bloods. That's
Speaker 1: the people nation. Uh. Then the folk Nation. Um, you
Speaker 1: have uh Peter Paul and Mary, you have Bob Dylan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you have the Gangster Disciples. The Insane Spanish code
Speaker 1: is um. Yeah, that just sounds scary, Like how about
Speaker 1: a cobra that's insane, right, you know, because the cobra
Speaker 1: is not bad. I like cobra. What's worse than the
Speaker 1: regular cobra? And insane cobra? Yeah? But where it could
Speaker 1: it be? From Spain? Um? The Latin Spain is where
Speaker 1: they're saying. Okay, I think they mean like a Hispanic Hispaniola.
Speaker 1: The Latin Eagles, the Maniac Latin Disciples, the Simon City Royals,
Speaker 1: and the Spanish Gangster Disciples are a part of the
Speaker 1: Folk Nation. Alright. So uh, we talked about ethnic gangs.
Speaker 1: That's um. You know, there can be skinheads or neo Nazis,
Speaker 1: or they can be largely Hispanic or African American. Um.
Speaker 1: Even if they are turf gangs, they're usually also divided
Speaker 1: among ethnic lines because people tend to live a segregated
Speaker 1: life still in states like in in five Points, if
Speaker 1: you're an Irish gang, you're Irish neighborhood gang probably all
Speaker 1: Irish people, not necessarily just because it was an Irish gang,
Speaker 1: but because that's where everybody lived. Yeah. Uh, there's also
Speaker 1: prison gangs. Um. Most of the time they are just
Speaker 1: affiliations in the prison of the gang you're in on
Speaker 1: the outside, like there's bloods and cripts in prison. But
Speaker 1: sometimes they form new gangs in prison um that were
Speaker 1: are not part of the outside world. And I love
Speaker 1: how one of these guys, one expert in the article
Speaker 1: here said putting young gang members in prison is like
Speaker 1: sending sending them to criminal college. So it's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: we took a gang member, put him in jail, and
Speaker 1: then you don't have to worry about that anymore because
Speaker 1: they're in prison. But lots of bad things still going on.
Speaker 1: Listen to our Prisons episode for that man. We've covered
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff piecemeal. Huh. So there's also
Speaker 1: female gangs. Yeah, those are on the rise. Yeah, female gangs,
Speaker 1: um supposedly originally started out is basically like um, like
Speaker 1: booster gangs made up of like gang members, girlfriends, wives
Speaker 1: like here, hold all these guns for us, right, or
Speaker 1: they're just like we're gonna do our own thing or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: Then there's also female gangs that have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with other male gangs. There's also co ed gangs. They
Speaker 1: really don't care what gender you are. And do you
Speaker 1: want to hear some of the sister gangs titles their names. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Bad Barbies, the Harlem Hilton's, and the Hood Barbies
Speaker 1: are some of the what they call sister gangs. And um,
Speaker 1: like you said, they originally were just sort of like
Speaker 1: help helped up the men. But in some cases now
Speaker 1: they are like their own legit gangs who are are
Speaker 1: pretty tough because they want to make a name for themselves,
Speaker 1: you know, as a as a gang of women who
Speaker 1: can also be murderous, you know, like we can we
Speaker 1: can do these things as well. Feminism. They actually the
Speaker 1: article I read, no it did. The article I read
Speaker 1: said that second wave feminism is one of the underlying things.
Speaker 1: But they said it's a very like tinuous link, you know,
Speaker 1: like that may have spurred things, right, like you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a woman gonna golf and do my own thing.
Speaker 1: But it's a gang after all. But that that co
Speaker 1: ed gang that I mentioned, that's an example of another
Speaker 1: type of gang, of hybrid gang. It seems like hybrid
Speaker 1: gangs are the ones that are, like UM, the ones
Speaker 1: on the rise. Because these this is where I got
Speaker 1: the idea that UM, people don't tag like they used to,
Speaker 1: they don't wear colors like they used to, because there's
Speaker 1: hybrid gangs. And hybrid gangs are made up of people
Speaker 1: who might come from rival factions. They break up and
Speaker 1: reform with different membership from time to time. Um. I
Speaker 1: don't think on any set schedule or whatever, but I
Speaker 1: think it's probably something that happens organically. They may have
Speaker 1: co ed members, they have members of different ethnicities, they
Speaker 1: may not have colors, right. Um, it's just it's some
Speaker 1: melunge of gang members that aren't cut and dried and
Speaker 1: hierarchical like the traditional idea of gangs are. And apparently
Speaker 1: these are the gangs that are around these days. Mostly
Speaker 1: I can't say that that are maybe the fastest growing
Speaker 1: type of gang or hybrid gangs. Yeah, and they do.
Speaker 1: I was was not joking about the Juggalos. They do
Speaker 1: list them as a hybrid gang in four states. You
Speaker 1: have to what states are I know New Mexico's one.
Speaker 1: I think Washington is another one. Yeah. They said that
Speaker 1: they're not super organized and their crimes are sort of
Speaker 1: sporadic and willie nilly, but they're increasingly violent the crimes are,
Speaker 1: so they are worried about them. You know, you're just laughing.
Speaker 1: I'm over here just being quiet, gotcha. Uh, gang initiations,
Speaker 1: If you um go to join a gang, there is
Speaker 1: probably an initiation that you will have to go through.
Speaker 1: And um I found some There many different things, uh,
Speaker 1: throughout the years that have taken place to join a gang.
Speaker 1: Um initiation by cop because you've got to kill a cop.
Speaker 1: They said, that's pretty rare these days. Understandably. Again, I
Speaker 1: really feel like we might be entering just just urban
Speaker 1: urban legend territory here. Oh no, dude, this was this
Speaker 1: was a gang expert researcher. This is like from a
Speaker 1: Stanford paper. Okay, he's just making stuff up. No, I'm
Speaker 1: I don't think he's making it up, but I wonder
Speaker 1: like how much of it is just verified or if
Speaker 1: it's just chatter. Well, he went on to say it's
Speaker 1: a rare thing. So are you saying no one's ever
Speaker 1: killed a cop. No, I'm not saying that, but I
Speaker 1: think it's fine. Go ahead. Being jumped in or beat in,
Speaker 1: that's when you have to be basically get whaled on
Speaker 1: by all the gang members at one time. Um sexed in.
Speaker 1: That's used to initiate women into male dominated gangs where
Speaker 1: basically they have to have sex or are forced to
Speaker 1: have sex with a bunch of guys in the gang. Right,
Speaker 1: And what I read is like in a co ed
Speaker 1: gang in particular, that's not necessarily the way that women
Speaker 1: get in. Some women get beat in, sure, uh jacked
Speaker 1: in and you commit a theft. There's something called the
Speaker 1: gauntlet where you um basically run between two lines of
Speaker 1: gang members and you have to run the gauntlet where
Speaker 1: they're while they're beating on you. As well. A lot
Speaker 1: of these sounds like little games. There's one called catching
Speaker 1: a flag or a rag, where it's literally like there's
Speaker 1: a rag in the middle of the thing and you
Speaker 1: got to get the rag and get out of there,
Speaker 1: you know, and one piece or one where they drop
Speaker 1: freeing Hoover where they there are sixpennies that are thrown
Speaker 1: on the ground and you can't leave until you get
Speaker 1: all those sixpennies off the ground. What does that have
Speaker 1: to do with Hoover. I have no idea Hoover. I
Speaker 1: haven't I don't know, I'm not. I don't know that
Speaker 1: it's Lincoln. It didn't say freaking Lincoln though. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then you know being courted in, which I thought was
Speaker 1: super interesting. This is when they invite somebody like a
Speaker 1: doctor or a lawyer who is sympathetic to their cause
Speaker 1: and like you can be invited in very nicely, and
Speaker 1: it said or electricians, which is kind of funny. Weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess somebody's got to keep the clubhouse wired. Um.
Speaker 1: I had not heard about courted in, but I did
Speaker 1: run across it, like in indirectly with um talk about
Speaker 1: gangs going after um like military and law enforcement and
Speaker 1: lawyers or legal um, legal field people um to join
Speaker 1: their gang. Yeah, biker gangs especially apparently are really target
Speaker 1: former military and that's you know, for good reason. These
Speaker 1: people are highly trained and skilled and weapons and uh,
Speaker 1: they would imagine be how they sought after And UM,
Speaker 1: it's not just the former military supposedly, apparently there are
Speaker 1: also um like active duty military. Yeah I had they
Speaker 1: said fifty three different gangs are represented in the U. S. Military.
Speaker 1: That's scary. Yes, yeah, it is because the people have
Speaker 1: access to some really high powered guns. That's right. Uh
Speaker 1: should we take another break? I think so. All right,
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about what's going on
Speaker 1: these days in gang land, right for this? All right, so,
Speaker 1: what's an average day of the gang member? Like I
Speaker 1: love Ed's description here. They sleep late, they sit around
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, and they drink and do drugs. Later on
Speaker 1: they meet up at a pool hall or some other
Speaker 1: like local hangout and hang out and do some more
Speaker 1: drugs and drink some more. I think probably what he
Speaker 1: mentions next is what a gang member's daily life is
Speaker 1: like is like selling drugs. Depending on your hierarchy. UM,
Speaker 1: if you are, say a member of M eighteen or
Speaker 1: MS thirteen, you're doing local enforcement for transnational drug cartels. UM,
Speaker 1: and so you may be involved in picking up a
Speaker 1: crate of UM humans that were shipped across from Mexico
Speaker 1: or UM you may be involved in mortgage fraud if
Speaker 1: you're one of the sharp ones that was probably corded
Speaker 1: rather than jumped in. Um, there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: stuff you're gonna be doing. And right about here is
Speaker 1: where it becomes clear where you should stop and ask
Speaker 1: the question, like, wait a minute, what is the difference
Speaker 1: between a street gang and it just organized crime? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean not too much of a difference. The the
Speaker 1: the answer that I could come up with, the closest
Speaker 1: thing to an answer I could come up with, is
Speaker 1: the street gang is a looser association of organized crime.
Speaker 1: Sometimes other times it can be a very tight organization
Speaker 1: of organized crime. But basically they're almost indistinguishable. It's just
Speaker 1: a street gang will have more overt affiliation, UM, and
Speaker 1: it's usually a lot more localized. That makes sense. So
Speaker 1: listen to our episode on the Mafia, Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: basically street gangs that were whipped into shape and organized
Speaker 1: weapons these days are getting kind of scary. It's um,
Speaker 1: It's not the old days of chains and knives, especially
Speaker 1: with the former military and the involvement and the just
Speaker 1: accessibility of these weapons these days, body armor, police gear, UM,
Speaker 1: like high powered assault rifles like you name it man.
Speaker 1: Another thing where if if gangs have infiltrated the military,
Speaker 1: actively infiltrating the military or trying to recruit military or
Speaker 1: your law enforcement people, um fed is a real danger
Speaker 1: to that is getting their hands on like some serious
Speaker 1: guns because it's not like these are guns that you
Speaker 1: can just buy anywhere. No, No, you have to steal
Speaker 1: them from the right people, that's right, or get the
Speaker 1: right people to get them for you. Yeah, they're not
Speaker 1: going to the gun show. Well, yes they are, are
Speaker 1: they Yeah, but you can't buy you know, military grade
Speaker 1: weapons necessarily at all gun shows for the good stuff.
Speaker 1: Native American gangs is a thing though apparently they were
Speaker 1: born in the nineteen eighties and nineties, and one reason
Speaker 1: was a sort of identity and solidarity that has been
Speaker 1: um declining in Native American parts of the country over
Speaker 1: the years, and UM protection is a big one. UM
Speaker 1: Between two thousand two Native Americans experience experience violent crimes
Speaker 1: at double the rate the rest of the United States,
Speaker 1: and six of that violence was incurred on them against
Speaker 1: them by white people, so they're kind of banding together.
Speaker 1: And fifty of those cases weren't even pursued by police.
Speaker 1: Apparently I would guess that would lead to increase gang activity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're banding together in forming gangs, and I think
Speaker 1: they're affiliating with a more Hispanic gang culture. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: what I could tell it was a really interesting article
Speaker 1: on Al Jazero website, which is really good, super interesting read.
Speaker 1: But we'll post that with our our additional links that
Speaker 1: we're doing. Now, how about that, thorn tooton? What else? Chuck? Oh,
Speaker 1: I've I've got it, Yukuza. We did a podcast on
Speaker 1: the Yukusa Asian gangs. Yeah, you can go listen to
Speaker 1: that one. Um, but what do you what do you do?
Speaker 1: If you're in a gang, you want to get out,
Speaker 1: you gotta murder somebody, you know. So there's this urban legend.
Speaker 1: I read this, Uh, I read snippets from a book
Speaker 1: um called Gangs in America three by c Ronald Off,
Speaker 1: and he compiled a bunch of interviews with gang members
Speaker 1: and former gang members, and one of the things that
Speaker 1: emerged was this, there's this myth that if you want
Speaker 1: it out of the gang, you have to kill your
Speaker 1: own mother. Right in some cases, um, they will you
Speaker 1: have to get beat out like you're beat in almost
Speaker 1: like the circles complete. Sometimes you have way more people
Speaker 1: on you than you did when you were beat in UM.
Speaker 1: But more often than not, what emerged from these UM
Speaker 1: interviews was that they they left either by moving or
Speaker 1: they stopped claiming affiliation with the gang, or like they
Speaker 1: got a job or something just in their life changed.
Speaker 1: They just yeah, they just walked away. And there wasn't
Speaker 1: like a pursuit to the death, because you can't ever
Speaker 1: leave the gang. There was a couple of people that said,
Speaker 1: like they were told stuff like that, but when it
Speaker 1: came down to it, in reality and practically, they just
Speaker 1: stopped being part of the gang. The problem is is
Speaker 1: when you leave the gang, you're very freak only UM
Speaker 1: you you might have gang tattoos still and you kind
Speaker 1: of need to get rid of those, yeah or else.
Speaker 1: Who knows what can happen because you're no longer in
Speaker 1: the gang anymore. So a lot of UM post gang
Speaker 1: transition UM groups. There's this one called Homeboy Industries that
Speaker 1: I ran across. One of the things they offer is
Speaker 1: tattoo removal of gang tattoos. Yeah, they can get kind
Speaker 1: of expensive. Well, you could get your tattoo removed for free.
Speaker 1: To call them I thought about that, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't think they've fall for it, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like a gang tattoo. There are also lots of
Speaker 1: UM gangs from in the United States now set up
Speaker 1: from UH immigrants, Like Somali gangs are a big problem
Speaker 1: UH in Minneapolis apparently, Yeah, that's there's some in Clarkston. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right here in Georgia, Somali gangs. And then you know
Speaker 1: Dominican gangs, UH, Sudanese gangs, Caribbean gangs, Jamaican gangs. UH.
Speaker 1: Every country it seems like, has some sort of operation
Speaker 1: going Here in the US, I don't know how vast
Speaker 1: they are, but UM, in certain areas of the country
Speaker 1: they're causing some trouble. And again it makes me wonder,
Speaker 1: like how much of it is due to a lack
Speaker 1: of access to economic opportunity? Like do people want to
Speaker 1: be in gangs? If given the choice to not be
Speaker 1: in a gang? It seems like from everything I ran across, Chuck,
Speaker 1: the answer is like no, they would probably rather have
Speaker 1: just a regular job or something like that. Because and
Speaker 1: this is one of the reasons why gangs have become
Speaker 1: so attractive over there's in stays so attractive is they
Speaker 1: often offer like the best avenue to income around. You know,
Speaker 1: you just have to commit crime for it. Um. And
Speaker 1: they and Ed points out that is probably the most
Speaker 1: effective way to try and stop gangs. It's not to
Speaker 1: just have a police crackdown, because I think everyone knows
Speaker 1: you shut something down on one street corner, it's just
Speaker 1: going to move to another street corner and that's probably
Speaker 1: not doing much good. Um. So they have programs called
Speaker 1: weed and seed programs throughout the country now from the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice, where they weed out the worst gang members. Um.
Speaker 1: And see that's what I think is going on. Like
Speaker 1: when you say I think they all probably just want jobs,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think there
Speaker 1: are the hardcore uh that have no interest in getting
Speaker 1: a job, yeah, because they're making way more money than
Speaker 1: they could with a regular job and it's just their lifestyle.
Speaker 1: And um, those are the ones who are trying to
Speaker 1: weed out in favor of trying to leave the rest
Speaker 1: that they think that can be rehabilitated. And they called
Speaker 1: the second part of its seating, which means seating the neighborhood. Um,
Speaker 1: giving them more stuff to do, maybe job opportunities or
Speaker 1: a rec center or a library or a pool, because
Speaker 1: again you're talking very largely about like juvenals here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fix the playground like little things that making their neighborhoods
Speaker 1: uh less prone to boredom. And I don't mean sound
Speaker 1: naive like all gang members just want a legitimate job.
Speaker 1: So everybody go give them good jobs and the gang
Speaker 1: problem will go away. That's not at all what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Like There's always going to be people who are like,
Speaker 1: no matter what I do, I can make way more
Speaker 1: money selling drugs, and I can like trying to go
Speaker 1: get a regular job, and I'm comfortable with just selling
Speaker 1: drugs and like rolling the dice and living life that way.
Speaker 1: There will always be people like that. The only way
Speaker 1: to get rid of that, most likely is to like
Speaker 1: take away the prohibition of drugs, I would guess, and
Speaker 1: then you don't have like street corner drug dealers any longer.
Speaker 1: But from what I'm seeing in in this research, if
Speaker 1: you provide economic opportunities, gang membership at large tends to
Speaker 1: dry out more. You're always gonna have organized crime, But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean you're gonna have a gang problem necessarily.
Speaker 1: Do you got anything else could I possibly, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: it's closed in with UM the list of the FBI's
Speaker 1: Most Dangerous Gangs Florencia thirteen, the Order of Them. No,
Speaker 1: I've heard of some of the other UM Latin games. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're tied to the Mexican mafia. Uh. There's the Barrio
Speaker 1: as Teca out of Texas and apparently they run the
Speaker 1: They worked with the Warez cartel, so they're doing serious business. UM.
Speaker 1: The Latin King Nation, the Latin Kings MS thirteen. Um,
Speaker 1: they're definitely on the FBI Most Wanted list that I
Speaker 1: they're from El Salvador. Yeah, and then so M. E
Speaker 1: teen is from Mexico. Yeah. Those tattoos on MS thirt
Speaker 1: team and that's pretty amazing stuff. It's like full facial tattoos.
Speaker 1: We did a tattoo episode two. He did uh in
Speaker 1: New York. You have the Trinitarios, Um. They were formed
Speaker 1: in the prison system in New York in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: And then there's a few more. You can just look
Speaker 1: them up. I don't think we need to go through
Speaker 1: all these man alive the Mongols they're still around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a huge like UM biker gang shooting in Waco,
Speaker 1: and this month. I think it was just a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago. Yeah, cops and cops shot a lot
Speaker 1: of them, and they shot each other's bad scene stuff
Speaker 1: at Starbucks. I think again. Um, if you were in
Speaker 1: a gang, we would love to hear from you, so
Speaker 1: listen up for the ways to contact us afterwards, or
Speaker 1: if you're a former gang member, whatever, We're We're interested.
Speaker 1: How far off the mark was? I let me know, Um,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about gangs, you're just
Speaker 1: a regular Joe. You can type street gangs in the
Speaker 1: search part how stuff works dot Com and it will
Speaker 1: bring up this article. And so they said search parts.
Speaker 1: Time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this five year
Speaker 1: old mother. Um, hey, guys. While working through my two
Speaker 1: AM ship this morning, I was barreling through the male
Speaker 1: puberty episode for the sake of stuff you should continuity.
Speaker 1: When Chuck made a comment about the female body and
Speaker 1: how it probably couldn't handle childbirth at five years old.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is the episode where my brain decides
Speaker 1: to chime in and contribute. I'm not sure if anyone's
Speaker 1: pointing this out, but there was a proving girl named
Speaker 1: Lena Medina who gave birth to a baby boy in
Speaker 1: ninety nine via c section at the age of five
Speaker 1: years and seven months. Oh, my goodness. And he said
Speaker 1: he snoked it too. And he said, after being brought
Speaker 1: to a position due to what her parents suspected to
Speaker 1: be a large abdominal tumor, I was discovered she was
Speaker 1: actually pregnant. If you're feeling the ambivalence of simultaneous fascination nausea,
Speaker 1: I believe that to be the general response. Um. Though
Speaker 1: they initially suspected her father, the identity of the man
Speaker 1: whom impregnator was never confirmed. Cann't help but wonder about
Speaker 1: the developmental implications that would surely arise in such a scenario.
Speaker 1: But her son apparently lived at the age of forty,
Speaker 1: having been raised under the impression that Lena was his sister. Crazy,
Speaker 1: my goodness. And that's from Brian. W Wow, Brian, thanks
Speaker 1: for letting us soon about that. It rings the Vegas bell.
Speaker 1: When when was it? Did he say the nineteen thirties?
Speaker 1: Oh no, it doesn't. Yeah, yeah, I remember when that happened.
Speaker 1: Well you could remember reading about it now, uh, Brian, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Brian W Thanks Brian. UM, if you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, like Brian did, Like we said,
Speaker 1: if you're a game member of former game member, we
Speaker 1: want to hear from you, if you have a correction,
Speaker 1: or if you just want to say hi or whatever.
Speaker 1: Anybody can get in touch with us via s Y
Speaker 1: s K podcast on Twitter. You can join us on
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can
Speaker 1: send us an email to stuff Podcasts at house Stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com and has always joined us at at
Speaker 1: home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
Speaker 1: it house stuff works dot com,