The Crips and the Bloods, two street gangs founded in Los Angeles, California, have been in a gang war since the 1970s. The war is made up of smaller, local conflicts perpetrated by chapters of both gangs, and has mostly taken place in major cities in the United States, especially Los Angeles (L.A.). It is also present in other countries, including Belize. The gangs often identify themselves using clothing colored blue for Crips, and red for Bloods; people wearing those colors in gang territory are often targets of violence.

The war started when a lack of economic opportunities in South Central L.A. led to the formation of gangs like the Crips, who claimed city territory and guarded it from other gangs. The Bloods formed in response to widespread shootings by the Crips. Both groups started extorting money from local businesses in the 70s, and distributing crack cocaine in the early 1980s. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) fought heavily against the gangs. In 1977, they formed a new unit, Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH), which targeted Watts housing projects. In 1987, the LAPD started an intense anti-gang operation, Operation Hammer. The operation was controversial, as it lead to mass incarceration which did not greatly reduce gang violence, and included the vandalism of people's homes; in response, the various gangs gained a sense of solidarity and began discussing a truce.

A peace agreement was signed in 1992 in Los Angeles between two rivaling Crip chapters, which eventually included the Bloods. The resulting truce lasted in the city for around 10 years; gang violence came back as there was still a lack of economic opportunities. Crime was brought down again due to new policies enacted by the city of Los Angeles starting in 2006. Despite this, the war continued in the city and elsewhere, including a major war in Hempstead, New York, in 2012, which lead to 56.

History

1970s

In the 1970s, few job opportunities for young Black men in South Central L.A., especially the neighborhood of Watts, lead to the formation of groups which claimed city territory, guarding it from other gangs. ^[1] The Crips were formed by Raymond Washington and Stanley "Tookie" Williams. Williams "ruled by terror", bringing "impressionable youths" into his gang and causing shootings across the city. Multiple groups formed in response to the Crips, including the Bloods. ^[2] The Crips and Bloods went to war with each other to defend their territory. They fought each other with cheap " Saturday Night Special" handguns, switchblades, Molotov cocktails, as well as through hand-to-hand combat. They also participated in theft, facilitated by the establishment of protection rackets to extort money from local businesses. ^[1] In 1979, Washington died in a gang-related shooting, and Williams committed four murders which would later put him on death row. ^[2]

In the 1970s, law enforcement agencies heavily patrolled the South Central area, after civilians had been participating in "collective violence" against local government in the 1960s and 70s. In 1972, Los Angeles County created a "Street Gang Detail" LAPD unit to combat violent groups. Gang enforcement in turn led to greater membership and numbers of gangs in Watts, Compton, and Inglewood. ^[1] In 1977, the police unit CRASH started, which targeted gangs mainly in the Watts housing projects of Imperial Courts, Nickerson Gardens, and Jordan Downs. ^[3]

1980s

Examples of gang identification

"Blood Killer" graffiti made by a Crip, using the Crips' color blue

A red bandana, often used by Piru Bloods to identify themselves

In the early 1980s, drug trafficker Freeway Rick Ross introduced crack cocaine to South Los Angeles Bloods and Crips gangs, and both gangs became distributors. Watts housing projects became "open-air drug markets". Gang members started identifying their membership to others through the use of clothing colored blue for Crips, or red for Bloods. This made those who wore affiliated colors targets of violence. ^[3] By the mid-1980s, the gangs had more advanced weapons, including submachine guns like MAC-10s and Uzis. The amount of weaponry available increased the amount of deaths in drive-by shootings, which resulted in the deaths of many civilians and lead to a greater police response. The Reagan administration supported the removal of many Americans from welfare rolls, food stamps, and school lunch programs, which worsened the conflict. California greatly increased its spending on policing and incarceration in the late 80s. Despite a fourth of Los Angeles gang members being arrested by 1992, gang controls measures were considered to have failed. ^[1]

In the 1980s, many African-descending gangsters from Belize living in California (who were immigrants to the U.S. after a 1961 hurricane in Belize) were deported back to their original country. This Crips–Bloods war was brought back to Belize City. The war in the city grew after the release of the 1988 film Colors, whose plot involves the two gangs in Los Angeles. By 2012, there were 20 to 25 different gangs in the city with some affiliation to either the Crips or Bloods. ^[4] The war has continued due to conflicts in drug distribution; cocaine left in the ocean by drug cartels have washed up on the shores of Belize for years. ^[5]

In the summer of 1987, as a response to the crack epidemic, LAPD officers started Operation Hammer in Los Angeles, which had a goal of "[making] life miserable" for gang members by arresting them for misdemeanors like traffic citations. Large numbers of arrests were made daily. They also performed raids which vandalized local homes; this and similar "gang-like" behavior lead to mass violence and arson. ^{[1] [3]} The reaction to the violence was a sense of "solidarity" that led to discussions (starting in summer 1988) of a ceasefire in the gang war amongst members of the Bounty Hunter Bloods, Grape Street Crips, Pirus (Bloods), and the PJ Watts Crips. ^[1]

1990s

1992 Los Angeles truce and riots

In the early 1990s, the Amer-I-Can program (led by former NFL player Jim Brown) had been holding discreet meetings on "the principles of responsibility and self-determination". Many of the men in these meetings went on to organize a truce that happened between the Grape Street Crips and their rivals, the PJ Watts Crips, at the Imperial Courts housing project (home of the PJ Watts Crips) on April 28, 1992. The 1992 Los Angeles riots on April 29 were over the acquittal of the LAPD officers who beat Rodney King. They involved mass looting and arson, and were ended by a massive law enforcement presence on May 4. ^[1]

The Crips and Bloods decided the riots were "an opportunity to transform themselves and their community". During the riots, graffiti was made across the city advertising the April 28 truce. On May 3, the Pirus joined the April 28 accords. On May 16 and 17, as the National Guard was being withdrawn from Los Angeles, the Crips and Bloods sponsored a Saturday "unity picnic" and a Sunday family event which welcomed members of the community. More than 5,000 people (including Congresswoman Maxine Waters) showed up to these events, including members of both gangs. A final treaty between gangs featured a code of ethics included the phrase: "I accept the duty to honor, uphold and defend the spirit of the red, blue and purple [the colors of the Watts gangs], to teach the black [ sic] family its legacy and protracted struggle for freedom and justice.” It also prohibited the throwing up of gang signs. ^[1]

Community organizers created the Community Against Police Abuse and Community Youth Gang Services with the goal of stopping future violence. They also pushed for more employment opportunities, to offset the amount of people who got involved in gang conflict because they could make money from the gangs' drug trade. The reforms made by the community after the riot temporarily decreased violence and lead to the association of members of both gangs. In 1993, gang-related deaths in Los Angeles decreased by 10 percent, the first decrease since 1984. ^[1]

Failure of gang reforms

After the truce, Sneakers made by the company Eurostar were manufactured which featured gang colors or the colors of the Pan-African flag, to promote the truce; "TRUCE" was written on the heels. President George H.W. Bush praised Eurostar, which promised to use the profits to pay employees who would be former gang members. The promise was unfulfilled, as Eurostar faltered by the summer of 1993. ^[1]

The LAPD claimed that the truce included a pledge among gang members to commit violence against police. This led to a greater police patrol, which went against community organizers' wishes. They also arrested many people who were celebrating the truce in hopes that they would be angered and commit violence. ^[1]

In mid-May 1992, members of the Crips and Bloods drafted a proposal for the city's new Rebuild LA city program, requesting a $3.728 billion investment in gang-affected communities. Rebuild LA chose not to work with the gangs, and so the proposal failed; however, it nonetheless influenced lawmakers' policies. Rebuild LA invested far less into affected communities than it had pledged, and by 1997, it disbanded. One of the organizers of the truce said that despite a decrease in gang violence, "this community [Watts] is more hopeless now that it was before", and that "they have no hope that anything is gonna change". The truce made in 1992 would last for about a decade. Time magazine wrote: "Given the continued lack of jobs, substandard housing, limited educational opportunities, and police harassment—all of the conditions that precipitated the rebellion in the first place—the old status quo seemed destined to reemerge. Crime, collective mistrust, and exhaustive policing ultimately prevailed." ^[1]

2000s

On December 25, 2005, Branden Lullard ("Baby Loc"), the head of the Grape Street Crips, was shot in the face. This led to a violent feud between the Bounty Hunter Bloods and Grape Street Crips which lasted for months. The first Blood to die was within an hour of Lullard's shooting. The feud would lead to 20 shootings which included 8 deaths. It lead to the area's city councilwoman, Janice Hahn, creating the Watts Gang Task Force, a neighborhood watch group headed by relatives of gang members. ^[3]

The Watts Gang Task Force included Cynthia Mendenhall, who was a high-ranking member of the PJ Crips in the 1980s. She had planned to build a charter school in Watts, which was criticized by Maxine Waters. The two had a public feud, which led to Mendenhall getting support from local Republican politicians. However, she decided to leave the task force. On April 26, 2006, Mendenhall's son Anthony Owens was shot and killed outside Imperial Courts, in a drive-by shooting perpetrated by the Carver Park Compton Crips. The hospital Owens was being treated at was visited by the PJ Crips, Grape Street Crips, and Bounty Hunter Bloods. Mendenhall told the crowd that Owens had died and pleaded with them not to seek revenge. Police honored her as a peacemaker, and provided to her a motorcade escort to the funeral, which was visited by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. ^[3]

Three months later, Mendenhall's other son Darrian was spotted by police driving in a Dodge Charger, a car frequently used by gangsters. Darrian, who had an illegal handgun in his car, sped over to a nearby housing development where Mendenhall was working as a property manager. The two had a struggle, and he shot himself in the head in front of her. A crowd outside heard the shot and assumed police had killed him. They started pelting the police at the scene with rocks and bottles, and a riot nearly started. The violence stopped after Mendenhall, at the request of LAPD Captain Rick Jacobs, told the crowd Darrian had shot himself. This meant Mendenhall had twice stopped gang-related conflict. ^[3]

In 2006, Charlie Beck, a former CRASH officer, became Deputy Chief for the South Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department. He worked with civil rights lawyer Connie Rice to develop "a plan to train, certify and deploy gang-intervention workers to the city's hot spots". Villaraigosa also changed the city's method of dealing with gangs by spending $21 million of his office's annual budget on the city's Gang Reduction and Youth Development program. The New York Times described the program as such: "Schools in neighborhoods with the highest gang presence, including Watts, now systematically identify the most at-risk children for extra services; gang-intervention workers receive city financing; and the city provides summer activities through its Summer Night Lights programs, which keeps parks and recreation centers open later in high-crime neighborhoods." Beck became the chief of the LAPD in 2009. His tenure was successful; from 2011 to 2013, violent crime fell down 30 percent in Watts. ^[3]

2010s

In 2011, a war started in San Diego, California, when a member of a Bloods-connected gang was killed by the Crips. Prosecutors claimed that a member of the Bloods gang, Nicholas Hoskins, made an agreement with at least 20 fellow members to kill Bloods. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison, but the conviction was thrown out by the California Supreme Court in 2022, saying there was no evidence of conspiracy. ^[6]

In 2012, there was a major war in and around the village of Hempstead, New York (mostly in the village's Linden Triangle neighborhood), which lead to 56 people being shot by the end of the year (40 of them within Hempstead). 10 of them died, and three became fully or partially paralyzed. The war ended when the Crips lured two of the Bloods' leaders into an ambush under the guise of negotiating a truce. Those Bloods then associated with a gang called the Very Crispy Gangsters. ^{[7] [8]}

By 2014, an estimated 20,000 people had died from the war. ^[8]

In 2015, Baltimore, Maryland's police department announced that there was a "credible threat" of violence from the city's Crips, Bloods, and Black Guerrila Family, saying that the three gangs had formed a partnership. There was a popular theory among "observers" of the police department (including Slate magazine) that this announcement was fake, and used to distract the public from the department's poor image. ^[9]

On March 31, 2019, popular rapper Nipsey Hussle, a member of the Rollin' 60s Crip gang, was murdered in Crenshaw by Eric Holder, Jr., another member of the Rollin' 60s. Nipsey Hussle was well-liked among both Crips and Bloods for his peaceful relations with the Bloods, which included bringing them on stage to perform with him. His death led to the most peace negotiations between the gangs since the 1992 truce. This started with a public meeting between the Swamp Crips and Campanella Park Pirus at Van Ness Park, and continued for multiple meetings at a location east of the 110 Freeway. ^{[10] [11]}

2020s

In 2020, an up-and-coming Blood rapper from Fort Worth, Texas, named Javien Calvin Wright ("J-Dub"), was fatally shot outside of his residence. "Arguing and posturing" regarding his death began on social media; notably, a YouTube vlogger uploaded a video titled "Why Channel-5 J-Dub is dead.", which featured clips of people celebrating while holding guns and wads of money. This conflict over Wright, which began to involve members of gangs on the east and south sides of Fort Worth, lead to a gathering of over 400 people at the city's Village Creek Park on May 10. At the park, there was a shooting which wounded five people. ^{[12] [13]}

In popular culture

The 1988 film Colors, which follows police officers as they investigate the two gangs (as well as a fictional third one) in Los Angeles, gained notoriety for using real gangsters as extras, as well as when a Crip murdered a Blood waiting in line to see the movie in Stockton, California. ^[4]

References