Blog - Gangs - May 2007

No matter where you heard it, Stanley “Tookie” Williams was not the co-founder of the Crip street gang in Los Angeles.

Many of the leaders of the first Crip gangs knew each other at Washington, Fremont, or Locke High Schools. But more often they were fellow inmates at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, Youth Authority, and Fred Shaw or Bob Simmon’s Home for Boys.

Throughout history gangs have developed, multiplied, and mutated into many forms. Today one of law enforcement’s biggest problems is the inability of law enforcement intelligence to accurately estimate the number of gangs and gang members. There are several reasons for this, but the key one is that we have no universally accepted definition of a gang.

The traditional gangs are those that are territorial or claim turf. This would include your Hispanic “Cholos,” the African-American Blo