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How Street Gangs Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you should know from house Stuff
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's with us,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. The podcast not
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: affiliated with any gang. No, No, I would have thought
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: that goes without saying. You never know stuff you should know.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Army that's our gang. Yeah, I guess so nerds rolling
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: around dropping knowledge. Yeah, that's how we roll. Our symbol
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: is Infinity gang sign. I don't think that should be
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: our symbol. No, No, it's um a perfect circle. No,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I think the the mike with the mean our regular logo.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: All right, that's a symbol. We just need to learn
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: how to make it and spray paint. Yes, actually that's
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: dated what we've just said. We just mentioned spray painting
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: your gang sign. But that's old time people. They still
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: do that. No, gangs have evolved so much. Yes, some
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: people do still do it, but from what I understand,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: gangs have basically come to see that. It's like, why
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: why would you do that? It doesn't make any sense.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: You're basically you're marking your territory, right, You're marking yourself
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: whereas it's better to stay out of the hands of
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: law enforcement and not through a gang sign or tag
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: something with your gang symbol than to do that. Gangs
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: are wisending up and they're just not committing crimes any
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: longer because that puts them under the police microscope. No,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I'm saying that they are committing crimes still, they're just
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: not UM. I don't think they spray paint their stuff
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: as much. They're definitely UM getting more sophisticated in some
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: gangs that've I've seen that like mortgage fraud and identity theft, counterfeiting,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: like are some of the human trafficking one, So the
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: new crimes um. So before we get started the chuck,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I want to say that throughout this reading The Stuff
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: or the House Stuff Works article and doing research, I
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: was plagued by this idea that, like, we don't really
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: have a real idea of how many people are in gangs,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: how many gangs are in the United States, exactly what
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: kind of problems like gang problem we have. Is it overstated?
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I suspect it might be overstated gangs. So this is
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: so the FBI compiles this report every few years and
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: in the original House Stuff works article. It cites the
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: two thousand five National Gang Threat Assessment, right, and it
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: says there's twangs and seven hundred and thirty one thousand
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: active gang members. Two thousand eleven, which is the most
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: recent one from what I could find, has not too
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: many more gangs thirty three thousand, but one point four
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: million gang members. Thousand more gangs, I guess it is, okay,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: but one point four million gang members. The number of
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: gang members between two thousand and five and two thousand
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and eleven, according to the FBI, doubled, doubled. And okay,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: if that's the case, right, what why what happened between
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: two thou five and two thousand and eleven? I don't know,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: because the gang heyday was in the eighties and nineties. Okay,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: all right, So what would cause gang membership to skyrocket
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: to double from two I don't think significant. I have
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: one guess, uh, federal grants going to police departments, UM
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: that say they have a gang problem. So maybe they're
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: inflating the numbers. Maybe, Okay, what if they're not inflating
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the numbers? The thing that I think the internet, no,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: the economic crisis. If you go back and look at
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: the history of gangs, and if you look at all
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: gang um activity, yeah, gang banging. If you if you
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: tried to find on the lying cause, one of the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: underlying causes, if not basically the underlying cause is a
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: lack of access to economic opportunity a k. Nothing else
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: to do, no job prospects, and then already being surrounded
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: by gangs or the possibility of gangs leads to an
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: increasing membership. So we have this economic crisis in the
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: United States. So if gang membership really did double, I
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: would put my money on the idea that it was
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: because of the economic crisis. Didn't that touch the middle
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: and upper middle classes more? Though? I mean, was there
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: a housing crisis? Oh man, everybody got totally messed up
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: by the economic crisis. Yeah, I mean I knew it
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: touched everyone, but I didn't know it wasn't just housing,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Like housing kicked the whole thing off. But like the
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: job market, like all of a sudden, all these people,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: even if it did affect like say the middle class
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: or the upper middle class, all of a sudden they
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: lose their jobs. They start taking the lower classes job
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: because they've got to survive. Now, where are the lower
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: classes doing? Interesting? Theory. I'm if membership doubled in the
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: US between two I would bet any amount of money
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: that was because of the economic crisis. You would stake
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: your stuff. You should know fortune on that. Yeah, yes,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: I would all the millions. All right, Well, we may
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: as well go and talk about white people join gangs
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: because you just teased it. Poverty is a huge reason. Um,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: these are usually in poorer areas of the city. Um,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: not a lot of money going on. You can make
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: money by robbing people, by dealing drugs. It provides a
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: financial incentive to join a gang basically. Yeah. I've read
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: about one study from Los Angeles that found that neighborhoods
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: that had unemployment rates of between fourteen and sixteen percent
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: had about fifteen times more gang related homicides than neighborhoods
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: that had unemployment rates of between four and seven percent. Yeah,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and they say that gang related homicides account for close
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: to half of all the homicides in the United States
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, that's another thing that I found, Like really,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: I saw also somewhere between I saw other places that
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: are like this is all way overstated that like the
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: gangs peaked back in the nineties and like we haven't
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: had a real problem since then. I don't think this case,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: but there are some like sociologists out there saying this
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: is this is overstated. Yeah, I don't think anyone saying
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: there's not a gang problem. Those are No. I don't
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: think anybody's disagreeing that there's a gang presence. I think
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: the degree to which there is a gang presence. So Chuck,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: for example, you can go look at something from the
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Justice Policy Institute called Violent Children two dozen send um
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: look up the youth gang violence problem is exaggerated, and
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: it provides kind of a counterpoint to it. Because if
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: there's one thing, I'm not saying there's not a gang problem,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I'm not excusing the idea that like, oh, you have
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: low economic opportunities so you join a gang. Totally get it. No,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Like there's like there's still morality. There's still plenty of
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: people in the same situation that aren't joining gangs. Like
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying is like when you when you read
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: articles that are just like there's gangs everywhere and they're
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: killing everybody. Of the homicide rates are because of gangs,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: and they're they're immoral little kids coming out of the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: inner city. Your your antenna should immediately go up, and
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: you should start asking critical questions about where this stata
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: is coming from. What they're basing the data on, Who
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: is giving you this data. Did they stand to benefit
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: from people being scared? Um? Do they get funding to
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: study this kind of stuff? You just have to ask
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: questions like that, they're creating hysteria. It's yeah, anytime you
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: encounter hysteria like that, yes, you should stop for a second.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: If you have that amount of self possession, stop and
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: just start asking questions like what everybody calmed down, agreed, sir?
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Or just run because the gangs are coming for you.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: All right. That's that was it for my soapbox. All right.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Uh so back to why you might join a gang,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: um peer pressure. I love that that's listed, uh because
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: it's true. I Mean, it sounds kind of like a
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: very high school thing. But that's a lot of times
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: is when you're getting pressure to joining gang, they seek
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: out children, right, That's where a lot of gangs find
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the roots. The crypts, bloods, both high schools, that's right.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: The blue, the red, those are the high school colors.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: That's right. We'll get to them later. Um boredom we
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: talked about that. Um, a lot of these communities there
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: isn't a lot going on. They don't have the neighborhood
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: pool or maybe even a neighborhood library or a neighborhood
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  Speaker 1: youth center um, or a playground that's in uh not
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: in disrepair. So these shuttered communities don't have a lot
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: going on. So kids are board um, and then they
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: fall into a sense of despair, which means, um, you know,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: maybe I don't have a father who's a role model.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe my father or mother or both are in prison. Um,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: but I have a family right over here. This gang
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  Speaker 1: says they love me, They're gonna get my back, and um,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: now I have a sense of community finally through this gang.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: And some gangs actually have set up overt community programs,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: like job training programs, like things that basically said, we
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: have been so neglected by the community at large that
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: like local gangs are the ones setting this up. And
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: I mean that's a pretty good reason to join a gang,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: is when they're holding community outreach programs in your community
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: and they're the only show in town. Yeah, I mean
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: there's uh, it's not just a TV thing. The gang
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: leader with a heart of gold that like secretly uh
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: snipes to build the playground, you know, like that stuff happens.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, and we're not trying to say like gang
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: leaders are just the best, that they have been known
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: to quietly reinvest money in their own communities. Well yeah times,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you don't want the place falling apart,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: especially if that's your major market. Yeah. And plus also
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: it's a really great way to ingratiate yourself with the
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: local community. Absolutely sure. So let's talk a little bit
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: about the history of gangs. If you'll indulge me for
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: a moment, you can consider yourself indulged. Um. I love
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the way. And this is by the Grabster at Grabowski. Um.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: He says criminal gangs have been around for as long
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: as crime and that makes total sense because, um, their
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: strength in numbers. And I think you've seen the movie
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Gangs of New York. Yeah, stripe pants, stripe pants, oh man,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: strip pants, Yeah, a lot of them. Fashion. Did I
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: like it? No, not really, Yeah, I've went back and
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: watched it recently. I really liked it. Um. I did
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: not like Cameron Diaz. I forgot she was in it. Yeah,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: that was she was missing. She was like a Cockney accent,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: now that I think about it. Uh no, no, it was,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: it was. It must have been a nightmare I had.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: She was I've had that same nightmare. I don't. I
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: think she had to look at some sort of a
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: weird accent. Maybe she was trying to do Cockney. You know,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: um forgot a good movie though. I think I really enjoyed. Mean,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I could stand and go back and see it as
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: an I liked it. And what's this Daniel Date lewis Man,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: what a great character. Um. So, anyway, that movie was
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: based on fact because in the nineteenth century in New
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: York and Five Points, Um, you had these ethnic gangs,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the Irish gangs, Polish gangs, Italian gangs, and they all
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: faught for territory and robbed and mugged each other and
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: had violent fights in the street. That was pretty crazy
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: in Lower Manhattan. Yeah, the Five Points gangs, Yeah, very
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: very tough. But sometimes they have banded together and fight
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: other parts of town's gangs, like the Bowery Boys, that
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So they're just fighting all the time,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: turf wars like today, like you know what, gangs they
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: kind of have always been about turf to a certain
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: degree they were about turf and that is we'll see
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: one of the ways that you can divide um gang gangs.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: It's one of the definitions of gang is a turf gang.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: But they were also um ethnic gangs typically as well,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: like Irish gangs or Polish gangs or Italian gangs. You
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: might ask yourself, what happened to the Polish gangs? What
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: happened to Irish gangs? Do you do you want to
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: hear my theory behind the economic crisis of the nineteen seventies, No, no,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: these gangs went away, and they're so so. By the
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, most of the um gangs in the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: United States were Hispanic gangs and black gangs. Ethnic gangs
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: were like we think of as like Irish or Polish
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: or whatever, just disappeared. And the reason why they were
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: disappeared because the Irish and the Polish stopped being considered
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: ethnic and they were just white after that, and then
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: all of the economic opportunities afforded to white people were
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: refording to the Irish people and the Polish people, and
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: they had very little reason to be gang members any longer,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: and they became skinheads later on. But don't you think
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: that that's probably what happened. Maybe so I couldn't find
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: anything definitive anywhere. They were like not a disenfranchised ethnic
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: group any longer. They were just part of, uh, the
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: white machine that is the United States. I could see that, like, man,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: you got theories out the wazoo today. But a lot
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: of them became like cops. That was a big thing,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: especially for like former Irish gang members. A lot of
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: them moved right from Irish gang member into Irish cops.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: They're like, where can I still go? Crackheads? Right? Exactly right.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: What's strange is as we'll see, that's kind of going
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: on today still gang members moving into things like law
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: enforcement in the military. Yeah. Boy, that was frightening, hysteria inducing,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: isn't it. It is so in the nineteen fifties, um,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: in sixties you had what we're called car clubs, and
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: um they were gangs. And this is when you think
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: of like the outsiders, like when you go to rumble
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Over territories. These were the car lubs and they would
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: get together and they would fight in a parking lot
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: with chains and knives and things like that, go rescue
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: people from burning houses and an iron Long State Old
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Bony Boy, and UM, they began to languish in the
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and then in the nineteen sixties a man
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: named Raymond Washington and a man named two Key I
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: say man two boys. Yeah, they think they were high schoolers.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: They might have been middle schoolers even they were young,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: because they originally called their gang the Baby Avenues, the
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: after school specials. That would be a good gang, the
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Baby Avenues. UM. It was a very small gang at first,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: and then it later became the Cribs because they were young,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: like Baby Cribs. And then it became the Cribs in
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: south central Los Angeles. Uh. And they were blue like
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: you said earlier, because Fremont High School where they went
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: to school, where that was their school colors. So it's
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: kind of funny to think that it was rooted in
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: like I mean, it's not like it burst out of
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: school pride, you know, but they did base their colors
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: on their high school. And then um, as a result
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: of the crips UH kind of taking over the area. UM.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Raymond Washington was murdered by the way in he didn't
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: last too long. UM. Tenure is a pretty good run
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: for a game. Yeah, probably, so I would think that's
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: longer than you would predict. And two Ki went to
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: prison for murder. But UM in the nineteen seventies, and
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: the Bloods were born as a results of the Crips
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and their activity. Um, all these smaller gangs that had
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: been uh I guess messed with by the Crips. UM
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: kind of came together and says, all right, we need
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: a rival gang, so we're gonna be the Bloods. And
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: that's why the Crips formed. Originally oh to uh for
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: other rival gangs. It was a couple of gangs that
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: came together. It's banding together, which still happens today if
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: you believe that stuff. Um. And they were from the
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Um from the high school. Yes, and they were red
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: and they were on to by Sylvester Scott and Vincent Owens.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: So then you had the Bloods, you had the Crypts.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: They are still thriving today. They do not get along.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: They have their well did they get along? So allow
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: me to mention the Watts Truce Man two Truce Watts
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: in south central Los Angeles. The Blood in the Crips
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: came together with Jim Brown football legend Jim Brown. Yeah,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I remember this actually in like u um, I think
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: a y m C a auditorium or high school auditorium
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: or jim and sat down and worked out a peace
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: treaty based on one between I think Israel and Egypt
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: that had been used um. And it was a peace
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: treaty between the Crypts and the blood and it was
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: abided by so much so as far as I can tell,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: it's still going on. Yeah, Like it was a very
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: it was a big deal. But that's not to say
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: that there's not in a related gang violence because now
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: that the Crypts and the Bloods had watch truce signed,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: there was much more infighting among different cript sets and
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: different blood sets. Well yeah, I mean this is I
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: guess we should talk about the idea of nations like
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: the Crypt Nation and Blood Nation their Bloods and Crypts
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: all over the country. Yeah, which makes them super gangs. Yeah,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: but they sound terrifying that um. The guy who did
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: the article I read said that he thought that they
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: would all be sort of cut from the same cloth
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: and they would all get along. But oh yeah, apparently
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: within nations it's very much still broken down into your
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: own neighborhood gang, and you might not get along with
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: the other crip gang that's nearby. Even so, the crip
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: is the nation and the set is like the local
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: chapter basically. But like you said, this guy named Mike
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: carly PhD. He's I think from the University of Missouri
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: or no Missouri state. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry he Um,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: I think it's a sociologist who went in and just
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: assimilated with gang members and hung out and ended up
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: like writing this treatise on it. And um, he said
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: what you just said that he expected everybody to get along.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: If you're a crip, that's just not the case, because
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: if you're a crip, your set's territory is much more
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: likely to butt up against another crip sets territory then
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: say a blood's territory on the other side of the freeway.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: And if you're selling drugs on the corner and they're
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: selling drugs in the corner, well you're fighting directly for
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: the same customers money, so you're much more likely to
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: erupt in violence or whatever. Yeah, and the nineties is
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: when the narcotics kind of came on the scene. Before that,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: gangs didn't really deal a lot of drugs. It's a
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: lot like more petty crime. And like muggings and stuff
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: like that. Yes, supposedly it was drugs that that changed everything,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: not only unleashed the spasm of violence that started in
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: the eighties in Los Angeles specifically, but also um, I
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: think even prior to that, in the seventies in Chicago
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: is where the idea of taking street gangs and turning
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: them into hierarchical drug dealing businesses was formed by a
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: couple of guys named Larry Hoover and David Barksdale. That's
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: the guy from the Wire. It wasn't David, but that
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: was Avon Barksdale, wasn't it. I wonder if he's named
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: after David Barksdale. That seems like a nod. So Larry
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Hoover formed the Black Gangsters and David Barksdale formed the
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Black Disciples, and they were rival gangs in Chicago that
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: eventually formed the Black Gangster Disciples the Super Gang, and
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: they had this idea that they would take all of
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: their gang members and just turn them into drug dealers.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: And the crack epidemic helped that tremendously, which, by the way,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: if you're interested in this kind of stuff at all,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: go listen to our crack episode. It was one of
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: our best if you asked me. Yeah, we have a
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: few episodes that touch on this. I guess I think
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: the Hell's Angels, even though biker gangs are not quite
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the same, Is that correct? Yeah, that's there categorization does
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: it called outlaw and motorcycle gangs are seriously o MG's Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: And then um, I think the one on zoot suits.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that that was a lot like this. Yeah,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: that's a great history one that we did. You should
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: look into. So um bloods and crips. Um. They have
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: this way of talking that where the Bloods won't say
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: they'll substitute uh ce in words for B and crips
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: will substitute B for C because they won't even say,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: you know, a word with B in it, Like let's
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: go to Starbucks and get a boffy, start starbups and
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: get a coffee. Yeah, because they're just hanging out in
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Starbucks now, they're hanging out in starbups Starbucks. Um. And
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: they also have their own way of walking sea walking
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: and b walking, which, um, it's sort of like a
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: little dancy sort of move. But I looked at them
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: both and I couldn't tell much of a difference, which
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: means that I would be a bad gang member because
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: I would do the wrong walk. I would guess that
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: you would pick it up pretty quick. And of course
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: they also have their besides the the blue and red clothing,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: they have their gang symbol, which in case you ever
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: were like, I kind of want to wear my red
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: hat today because I'm a Los Angeles Angels fan, but
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I don't want to get in trouble because I'm a crip.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: So they still have the the signs to rely on. Well,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: I would guess you would have to be a Dodgers fan,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: and if you're blood, you'd be an Angels fan. Yeah,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: but the Angels there, Anaheim, I don't think anyone in
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: l A Is really an Angels fan. You gotta be
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: from Orange County. Although we're going to hear from people Angels.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: So that's the bloods in the crips in a nutshell.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: That could be its own show. But we'll take a
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: break here and we will talk a little bit more
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: about gang history right for this, So Chuck, we keep
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: throwing out the words super gangs. It sounds like a
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: media creation, but it does. But there I mean, basically,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: what it what it describes is a a franchise gang
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: like the Bloods or the Crypts or um these larger
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: groups like the Folks or the People. Yeah, the People
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Nation and the Folks Nation. So I think the Bloods
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: are affiliated with the People Nation and the Crypts are
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: affiliate with Folk Nation. But this basically this network of
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: gang members who are related to one another through their
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: gang in different cities. And so say somebody in Chicago
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: wants to get into the St. Louis market, They'll send
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: some people and set up a gang there, Easy peasy.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: It's called franchising. And all of a sudden, now you
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: have a inter interstate gang, which makes it a super gang.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Those are I don't want to see peanuts because it's
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: a big deal. But compared to like a transnational gang,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: that's the transnational gangs are the ones fro. I'm like, yeah,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: there's there's a real problem there. I think, yeah, here's
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: some just because um, well, let's just read the names
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: of the People Nation in the Folk Nation just so
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: people know what's going on. And the People Nation. You
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: have the vice Lords and I believe they are out
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: of Chicago, right, the almighty Vice Lord Nation. Uh. And
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: they've been around for a long time too. They were
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: one of the earlier gangs, you like in the late sixties. Yeah. Uh,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: the Black Peace Stones, the Latin Kings, the Gay Lords,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: the South Side Popes, the Mickey Cobras, the Four Corner Hustlers,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: and the Almighty Saints and affiliated with the Bloods. That's
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: the people nation. Uh. Then the folk Nation. Um, you
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: have uh Peter Paul and Mary, you have Bob Dylan. Yeah,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: but you have the Gangster Disciples. The Insane Spanish code
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: is um. Yeah, that just sounds scary, Like how about
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: a cobra that's insane, right, you know, because the cobra
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: is not bad. I like cobra. What's worse than the
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: regular cobra? And insane cobra? Yeah? But where it could
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: it be? From Spain? Um? The Latin Spain is where
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: they're saying. Okay, I think they mean like a Hispanic Hispaniola.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: The Latin Eagles, the Maniac Latin Disciples, the Simon City Royals,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: and the Spanish Gangster Disciples are a part of the
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Folk Nation. Alright. So uh, we talked about ethnic gangs.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: That's um. You know, there can be skinheads or neo Nazis,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: or they can be largely Hispanic or African American. Um.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Even if they are turf gangs, they're usually also divided
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: among ethnic lines because people tend to live a segregated
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: life still in states like in in five Points, if
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: you're an Irish gang, you're Irish neighborhood gang probably all
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Irish people, not necessarily just because it was an Irish gang,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: but because that's where everybody lived. Yeah. Uh, there's also
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: prison gangs. Um. Most of the time they are just
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: affiliations in the prison of the gang you're in on
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: the outside, like there's bloods and cripts in prison. But
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: sometimes they form new gangs in prison um that were
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: are not part of the outside world. And I love
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: how one of these guys, one expert in the article
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: here said putting young gang members in prison is like
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: sending sending them to criminal college. So it's not like, oh,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: we took a gang member, put him in jail, and
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: then you don't have to worry about that anymore because
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: they're in prison. But lots of bad things still going on.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Listen to our Prisons episode for that man. We've covered
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff piecemeal. Huh. So there's also
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: female gangs. Yeah, those are on the rise. Yeah, female gangs,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: um supposedly originally started out is basically like um, like
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: booster gangs made up of like gang members, girlfriends, wives
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: like here, hold all these guns for us, right, or
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: they're just like we're gonna do our own thing or whatever. Um.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Then there's also female gangs that have nothing to do
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: with other male gangs. There's also co ed gangs. They
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: really don't care what gender you are. And do you
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: want to hear some of the sister gangs titles their names. Uh,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: the Bad Barbies, the Harlem Hilton's, and the Hood Barbies
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: are some of the what they call sister gangs. And um,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: like you said, they originally were just sort of like
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: help helped up the men. But in some cases now
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: they are like their own legit gangs who are are
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: pretty tough because they want to make a name for themselves,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: you know, as a as a gang of women who
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: can also be murderous, you know, like we can we
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: can do these things as well. Feminism. They actually the
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: article I read, no it did. The article I read
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: said that second wave feminism is one of the underlying things.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: But they said it's a very like tinuous link, you know,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: like that may have spurred things, right, like you know,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: I'm a woman gonna golf and do my own thing.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: But it's a gang after all. But that that co
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: ed gang that I mentioned, that's an example of another
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: type of gang, of hybrid gang. It seems like hybrid
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: gangs are the ones that are, like UM, the ones
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: on the rise. Because these this is where I got
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: the idea that UM, people don't tag like they used to,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: they don't wear colors like they used to, because there's
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: hybrid gangs. And hybrid gangs are made up of people
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: who might come from rival factions. They break up and
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: reform with different membership from time to time. Um. I
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: don't think on any set schedule or whatever, but I
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: think it's probably something that happens organically. They may have
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: co ed members, they have members of different ethnicities, they
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: may not have colors, right. Um, it's just it's some
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: melunge of gang members that aren't cut and dried and
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: hierarchical like the traditional idea of gangs are. And apparently
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: these are the gangs that are around these days. Mostly
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: I can't say that that are maybe the fastest growing
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: type of gang or hybrid gangs. Yeah, and they do.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: I was was not joking about the Juggalos. They do
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: list them as a hybrid gang in four states. You
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: have to what states are I know New Mexico's one.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I think Washington is another one. Yeah. They said that
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: they're not super organized and their crimes are sort of
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: sporadic and willie nilly, but they're increasingly violent the crimes are,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: so they are worried about them. You know, you're just laughing.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: I'm over here just being quiet, gotcha. Uh, gang initiations,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: If you um go to join a gang, there is
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: probably an initiation that you will have to go through.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: And um I found some There many different things, uh,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: throughout the years that have taken place to join a gang.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Um initiation by cop because you've got to kill a cop.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: They said, that's pretty rare these days. Understandably. Again, I
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: really feel like we might be entering just just urban
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: urban legend territory here. Oh no, dude, this was this
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: was a gang expert researcher. This is like from a
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Stanford paper. Okay, he's just making stuff up. No, I'm
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I don't think he's making it up, but I wonder
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: like how much of it is just verified or if
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: it's just chatter. Well, he went on to say it's
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: a rare thing. So are you saying no one's ever
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: killed a cop. No, I'm not saying that, but I
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: think it's fine. Go ahead. Being jumped in or beat in,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: that's when you have to be basically get whaled on
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: by all the gang members at one time. Um sexed in.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: That's used to initiate women into male dominated gangs where
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: basically they have to have sex or are forced to
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: have sex with a bunch of guys in the gang. Right,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: And what I read is like in a co ed
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: gang in particular, that's not necessarily the way that women
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: get in. Some women get beat in, sure, uh jacked
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: in and you commit a theft. There's something called the
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: gauntlet where you um basically run between two lines of
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: gang members and you have to run the gauntlet where
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: they're while they're beating on you. As well. A lot
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: of these sounds like little games. There's one called catching
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: a flag or a rag, where it's literally like there's
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: a rag in the middle of the thing and you
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: got to get the rag and get out of there,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: you know, and one piece or one where they drop
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: freeing Hoover where they there are sixpennies that are thrown
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: on the ground and you can't leave until you get
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: all those sixpennies off the ground. What does that have
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: to do with Hoover. I have no idea Hoover. I
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: haven't I don't know, I'm not. I don't know that
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: it's Lincoln. It didn't say freaking Lincoln though. Uh. And
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: then you know being courted in, which I thought was
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: super interesting. This is when they invite somebody like a
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: doctor or a lawyer who is sympathetic to their cause
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: and like you can be invited in very nicely, and
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: it said or electricians, which is kind of funny. Weird. Yeah,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I guess somebody's got to keep the clubhouse wired. Um.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: I had not heard about courted in, but I did
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: run across it, like in indirectly with um talk about
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: gangs going after um like military and law enforcement and
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: lawyers or legal um, legal field people um to join
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: their gang. Yeah, biker gangs especially apparently are really target
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: former military and that's you know, for good reason. These
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: people are highly trained and skilled and weapons and uh,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: they would imagine be how they sought after And UM,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: it's not just the former military supposedly, apparently there are
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: also um like active duty military. Yeah I had they
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: said fifty three different gangs are represented in the U. S. Military.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: That's scary. Yes, yeah, it is because the people have
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: access to some really high powered guns. That's right. Uh
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: should we take another break? I think so. All right,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about what's going on
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: these days in gang land, right for this? All right, so,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: what's an average day of the gang member? Like I
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: love Ed's description here. They sleep late, they sit around
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood, and they drink and do drugs. Later on
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: they meet up at a pool hall or some other
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: like local hangout and hang out and do some more
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: drugs and drink some more. I think probably what he
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: mentions next is what a gang member's daily life is
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: like is like selling drugs. Depending on your hierarchy. UM,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: if you are, say a member of M eighteen or
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: MS thirteen, you're doing local enforcement for transnational drug cartels. UM,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: and so you may be involved in picking up a
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: crate of UM humans that were shipped across from Mexico
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: or UM you may be involved in mortgage fraud if
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: you're one of the sharp ones that was probably corded
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: rather than jumped in. Um, there's a lot of different
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: stuff you're gonna be doing. And right about here is
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: where it becomes clear where you should stop and ask
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: the question, like, wait a minute, what is the difference
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: between a street gang and it just organized crime? Oh? Yeah,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: I mean not too much of a difference. The the
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the answer that I could come up with, the closest
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: thing to an answer I could come up with, is
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the street gang is a looser association of organized crime.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Sometimes other times it can be a very tight organization
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: of organized crime. But basically they're almost indistinguishable. It's just
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: a street gang will have more overt affiliation, UM, and
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: it's usually a lot more localized. That makes sense. So
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: listen to our episode on the Mafia, Yeah, which is
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: basically street gangs that were whipped into shape and organized
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: weapons these days are getting kind of scary. It's um,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: It's not the old days of chains and knives, especially
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: with the former military and the involvement and the just
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: accessibility of these weapons these days, body armor, police gear, UM,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: like high powered assault rifles like you name it man.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Another thing where if if gangs have infiltrated the military,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: actively infiltrating the military or trying to recruit military or
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: your law enforcement people, um fed is a real danger
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: to that is getting their hands on like some serious
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: guns because it's not like these are guns that you
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: can just buy anywhere. No, No, you have to steal
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: them from the right people, that's right, or get the
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: right people to get them for you. Yeah, they're not
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: going to the gun show. Well, yes they are, are
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: they Yeah, but you can't buy you know, military grade
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: weapons necessarily at all gun shows for the good stuff.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Native American gangs is a thing though apparently they were
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: born in the nineteen eighties and nineties, and one reason
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: was a sort of identity and solidarity that has been
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: um declining in Native American parts of the country over
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the years, and UM protection is a big one. UM
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Between two thousand two Native Americans experience experience violent crimes
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: at double the rate the rest of the United States,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: and six of that violence was incurred on them against
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: them by white people, so they're kind of banding together.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: And fifty of those cases weren't even pursued by police.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Apparently I would guess that would lead to increase gang activity. Yeah,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: so they're banding together in forming gangs, and I think
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: they're affiliating with a more Hispanic gang culture. Oh yeah,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: what I could tell it was a really interesting article
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: on Al Jazero website, which is really good, super interesting read.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: But we'll post that with our our additional links that
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: we're doing. Now, how about that, thorn tooton? What else? Chuck? Oh,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: I've I've got it, Yukuza. We did a podcast on
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the Yukusa Asian gangs. Yeah, you can go listen to
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: that one. Um, but what do you what do you do?
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: If you're in a gang, you want to get out,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: you gotta murder somebody, you know. So there's this urban legend.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: I read this, Uh, I read snippets from a book
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: um called Gangs in America three by c Ronald Off,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: and he compiled a bunch of interviews with gang members
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: and former gang members, and one of the things that
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: emerged was this, there's this myth that if you want
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: it out of the gang, you have to kill your
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: own mother. Right in some cases, um, they will you
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: have to get beat out like you're beat in almost
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: like the circles complete. Sometimes you have way more people
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: on you than you did when you were beat in UM.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: But more often than not, what emerged from these UM
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: interviews was that they they left either by moving or
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: they stopped claiming affiliation with the gang, or like they
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: got a job or something just in their life changed.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: They just yeah, they just walked away. And there wasn't
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: like a pursuit to the death, because you can't ever
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: leave the gang. There was a couple of people that said,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: like they were told stuff like that, but when it
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: came down to it, in reality and practically, they just
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: stopped being part of the gang. The problem is is
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: when you leave the gang, you're very freak only UM
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: you you might have gang tattoos still and you kind
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: of need to get rid of those, yeah or else.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Who knows what can happen because you're no longer in
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: the gang anymore. So a lot of UM post gang
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: transition UM groups. There's this one called Homeboy Industries that
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: I ran across. One of the things they offer is
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: tattoo removal of gang tattoos. Yeah, they can get kind
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: of expensive. Well, you could get your tattoo removed for free.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: To call them I thought about that, and I'm like,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: I don't think they've fall for it, and it doesn't
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: look like a gang tattoo. There are also lots of
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: UM gangs from in the United States now set up
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: from UH immigrants, Like Somali gangs are a big problem
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: UH in Minneapolis apparently, Yeah, that's there's some in Clarkston. Yeah.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Right here in Georgia, Somali gangs. And then you know
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Dominican gangs, UH, Sudanese gangs, Caribbean gangs, Jamaican gangs. UH.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Every country it seems like, has some sort of operation
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: going Here in the US, I don't know how vast
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: they are, but UM, in certain areas of the country
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: they're causing some trouble. And again it makes me wonder,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: like how much of it is due to a lack
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: of access to economic opportunity? Like do people want to
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: be in gangs? If given the choice to not be
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: in a gang? It seems like from everything I ran across, Chuck,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: the answer is like no, they would probably rather have
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: just a regular job or something like that. Because and
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: this is one of the reasons why gangs have become
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: so attractive over there's in stays so attractive is they
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: often offer like the best avenue to income around. You know,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: you just have to commit crime for it. Um. And
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: they and Ed points out that is probably the most
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: effective way to try and stop gangs. It's not to
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: just have a police crackdown, because I think everyone knows
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: you shut something down on one street corner, it's just
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: going to move to another street corner and that's probably
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: not doing much good. Um. So they have programs called
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: weed and seed programs throughout the country now from the
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Department of Justice, where they weed out the worst gang members. Um.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: And see that's what I think is going on. Like
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: when you say I think they all probably just want jobs,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think there
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: are the hardcore uh that have no interest in getting
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: a job, yeah, because they're making way more money than
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: they could with a regular job and it's just their lifestyle.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: And um, those are the ones who are trying to
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: weed out in favor of trying to leave the rest
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: that they think that can be rehabilitated. And they called
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: the second part of its seating, which means seating the neighborhood. Um,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: giving them more stuff to do, maybe job opportunities or
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: a rec center or a library or a pool, because
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: again you're talking very largely about like juvenals here. Yeah,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: fix the playground like little things that making their neighborhoods
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: uh less prone to boredom. And I don't mean sound
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: naive like all gang members just want a legitimate job.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: So everybody go give them good jobs and the gang
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: problem will go away. That's not at all what I'm saying.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Like There's always going to be people who are like,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: no matter what I do, I can make way more
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: money selling drugs, and I can like trying to go
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: get a regular job, and I'm comfortable with just selling
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: drugs and like rolling the dice and living life that way.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: There will always be people like that. The only way
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: to get rid of that, most likely is to like
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: take away the prohibition of drugs, I would guess, and
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: then you don't have like street corner drug dealers any longer.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: But from what I'm seeing in in this research, if
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: you provide economic opportunities, gang membership at large tends to
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: dry out more. You're always gonna have organized crime, But
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: that doesn't mean you're gonna have a gang problem necessarily.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Do you got anything else could I possibly, Uh, well,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: it's closed in with UM the list of the FBI's
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Most Dangerous Gangs Florencia thirteen, the Order of Them. No,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: I've heard of some of the other UM Latin games. Yeah,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: they're tied to the Mexican mafia. Uh. There's the Barrio
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: as Teca out of Texas and apparently they run the
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: They worked with the Warez cartel, so they're doing serious business. UM.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: The Latin King Nation, the Latin Kings MS thirteen. Um,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: they're definitely on the FBI Most Wanted list that I
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: they're from El Salvador. Yeah, and then so M. E
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: teen is from Mexico. Yeah. Those tattoos on MS thirt
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: team and that's pretty amazing stuff. It's like full facial tattoos.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: We did a tattoo episode two. He did uh in
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: New York. You have the Trinitarios, Um. They were formed
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: in the prison system in New York in the nineteen eighties.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: And then there's a few more. You can just look
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: them up. I don't think we need to go through
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: all these man alive the Mongols they're still around. Yeah,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: there's a huge like UM biker gang shooting in Waco,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: and this month. I think it was just a couple
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: of weeks ago. Yeah, cops and cops shot a lot
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: of them, and they shot each other's bad scene stuff
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: at Starbucks. I think again. Um, if you were in
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: a gang, we would love to hear from you, so
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: listen up for the ways to contact us afterwards, or
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: if you're a former gang member, whatever, We're We're interested.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: How far off the mark was? I let me know, Um,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about gangs, you're just
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: a regular Joe. You can type street gangs in the
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: search part how stuff works dot Com and it will
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: bring up this article. And so they said search parts.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this five year
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: old mother. Um, hey, guys. While working through my two
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: AM ship this morning, I was barreling through the male
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: puberty episode for the sake of stuff you should continuity.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: When Chuck made a comment about the female body and
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: how it probably couldn't handle childbirth at five years old.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: Of course, this is the episode where my brain decides
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: to chime in and contribute. I'm not sure if anyone's
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: pointing this out, but there was a proving girl named
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Lena Medina who gave birth to a baby boy in
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: ninety nine via c section at the age of five
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: years and seven months. Oh, my goodness. And he said
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: he snoked it too. And he said, after being brought
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: to a position due to what her parents suspected to
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: be a large abdominal tumor, I was discovered she was
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: actually pregnant. If you're feeling the ambivalence of simultaneous fascination nausea,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: I believe that to be the general response. Um. Though
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: they initially suspected her father, the identity of the man
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: whom impregnator was never confirmed. Cann't help but wonder about
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: the developmental implications that would surely arise in such a scenario.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: But her son apparently lived at the age of forty,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: having been raised under the impression that Lena was his sister. Crazy,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: my goodness. And that's from Brian. W Wow, Brian, thanks
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: for letting us soon about that. It rings the Vegas bell.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: When when was it? Did he say the nineteen thirties?
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Oh no, it doesn't. Yeah, yeah, I remember when that happened.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Well you could remember reading about it now, uh, Brian, Yeah,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: Brian W Thanks Brian. UM, if you want to get
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: in touch with us, like Brian did, Like we said,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: if you're a game member of former game member, we
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: want to hear from you, if you have a correction,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: or if you just want to say hi or whatever.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Anybody can get in touch with us via s Y
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: s K podcast on Twitter. You can join us on
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: send us an email to stuff Podcasts at house Stuff
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: works dot com and has always joined us at at
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: it house stuff works dot com,