All About Gangs

In Los Angeles the 18th Street gang is considered the largest gang in Los Angeles County. It is estimated that there are close to 20,000 members in Los Angeles County. Most of them are Mexican and Chicano with some Salvadorean membership and a few Blacks. Some estimates of the 18th are as low as 8,000, but this low estimate still makes them the largest gang in the county if you include all their barrios as one. The 18th Street G ang is actually a collection of several smaller gangs, making them the most fragmented gang in the County also. The individual factions can number from 50 to several hundred members each. Factions of the 18th Streets are dispersed throughout the county in San Fernando Valley, the San Gabriel Valley, the South Bay, South Los Angeles, and Downtown Los Angeles just to name a few. Their strong hold and their oldest barrio is located east of the Staples center between the Harbor 110 Freeway (east) and Hoover Ave (west). There are also two significant size 18th Stree...

Introduction The MS-13 gang, aka Mara Salvatrucha 13, is one of the most violently dangerous gangs in the United States - and one of the most organized. The MS-13 gang has cliques, or factions, located throughout the United States and is unique in that it retains is ties to its El Salvador counterparts. With cliques in Washington DC, Oregon, Alaska, Arkansas, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Canada, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and several other South American countries, the MS-13 gang is truly "international" and on the verge of becoming the first gang to be categorized as an "organized crime" entity. Gang members, who sport numerous tattoos on their bodies and faces, wear blue and white colors taken from the El Salvadoran flag. Their membership is estimated to total...

« Paul V. Coates--Confidential File | Main | Random shot » Asian gang war June 4, 1957 Los Angeles Meet the city's Japanese American gangs: The Black Juans, the Dominators, the Koshakus, the Ministers, the Algonquins and the Little Gents. Unfortunately, The Times wrote very little about them. One exception was a 1970 story about the Yellow Brotherhood , a self-help group founded to help get gang members off drugs and back in school. One unidentified founder, a former gang member, said: "The kids aren't happy. The parents are working so hard to give the kids the things they didn't have but they are thinking in terms of material things. Not love." Tadashi Nakamura 's 2004 film on the Yellow Brotherhood won an award for best documentary short at the San Diego Asia Film Festival.

( excerpts from Territoriality Among African American Street Gangs in Los Angeles by Alex Alonso, PhD Candidate . In Los Angeles and other urban areas in the United States, the formation of street gangs increased at a n alarming pace throughout the 1980s and 1990s . The Bloods and the Crips, the most well-known gangs of Los Angeles, are predominately African American [1] and they have steadily increased in number since their beginnings in 1969. In addition, there are approximately 600 Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles County with a growing Asian gang population numbering approximately 20,000 members. Surprisingly, little has been written about the historical background of black gangs in Los Angeles (LA). Literature and firsthand interviews with Los Angeles residents seem to point to three significant periods relevant to the development of the contemporary black gangs. The first period, which followed WWII and significant black migrati...