Gang Violence in America

CHAPTER 6 History of gangs In the early 1900s, Whyos Menu GANG VIOLENCE IN AMERICA The first gangs in the United States can be gang activity began (Course meets the qualifications for 3 hours traced back to soon after the Revolutionary War. to move west as Punching ... $2 of continuing education credit for MFCs and However, those first groups are characterized Chicago street gangs Break nose & jaw ...$10 LCSs as required by the California Board of more as social clubs, forming among groups formed in earnest, Break leg or arm ... $19 Behavioral Sciences) of like background and ethnicity, devoted to although a few white Shoot in leg ... $25 maintaining some form of homogeneity while the gangs in the area The Big Job $100 and up (Source: OJJDP) Learning objectives nation moved forward into the unknown territory could trace their roots back to the 1860s. Chicago was gearing up as ! Gain knowledge of the history of gangs in of its newly won independence from England. an industrial giant toward the end of the 19th United States. The more serious street gangs did not emerge century, and recruited workers heavily from ! Describe the current state of gang until the early 19th century, and were still mostly 4 southern and Eastern Europe. As with New York, membership and activity. youth fighting over local turf. gangs grew out of this massive immigration and ! Identify the breadth of the gang violence New York City, as the hub of immigration, mirrored the New York patterns. problem. naturally assumed the role as birthplace of gangs ! Describe the role and image of gangs in in America. Some early Chicago gangs sprang out of the popular culture. famous ward politics system. One of the most In a comprehensive report on gang history in ! List programs shown to be effective against infamous was Ragen’s Colts, an offshoot of the America, the U.S. Justice Department’s Office gang violence. Ragen Athletic Club established by Cook County of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commissioner Frank Ragen. The club, originally Introduction (OJJDP) found that early immigrants encountered formed as an amateur baseball team, made the A 15-year-old Chicago boy is gunned down limited possibilities because of discrimination by news of the day repeatedly in stories about while standing in front of his cousin’s house, native-born Americans and a lack of marketable violence against black Chicagoans.8 receiving his birthday gift.1 skills. Because of the enormous waves of people In St. Louis, during a funeral visitation, a arriving daily, housing was scarce, as were jobs During this period, Chicago had a well-defined dispute between gang rivals erupts in gunfire for the unskilled. Finding themselves living “gangland” that bordered the downtown business on the lawn of the funeral home.2 in the squalor of early American slums, some district on three sides, with Lake Michigan on the In Daytona Beach, Fla., dealers and users immigrants turned to crime out of desperation, fourth side. The area south of downtown included populate a park known for its drug deals and gangs formed as a result. This lack of the turf of the Ragen’s Colts, who claimed 3,000 while on the opposite street corner, families opportunity would raise its head often in the members. North and west of downtown, the and tourists stop in for a dozen Krispy nation’s history as a primary reason for gang gangs used river bridges to battle each other.9 3 Kremes. formation. By the Roaring ’20s, Chicago became the focus All across America, street gangs, and Although some early American gangs formed of gang activity in the U.S. as rival gangs sprayed their activities and violence, have become along ethnic boundaries, many sprouted in areas the streets with machine-gun fire. Young Mr. commonplace. News outlets are filled with daily that were not populated by a single ethnic group. Capone, having moved from New York, had recitations of the violence. No place is immune, Many gang members had jobs, although routinely perfected his craft and stood atop the heap. and even when performing as simple a task as in manual labor. Ethnicity often took a backseat The 1930s through the 1960s saw a second wave stopping off for a dozen donuts on the way to to territoriality with the early gangs. of Chicago gang formation, this time driven not Sunday school, Americans never know when they Forming after the War of 1812, the more serious by immigration but by a different engine, the might become the next innocent victim. gangs began appearing in New York City on the migration of Hispanics and African-Americans Although numbering far less than 1 percent of lower East Side. With mainly Irish membership to the North. Some of the largest gangs of this the American population, gang members, at these gangs, among them the Bowery Boys, era were the Disciples, P. Stones, Vice Lords and minimum, evoke a healthy caution from the were joined after the Civil War by gangs formed Latin Kings. As the 1960s dawned, gang violence average American if not a gut reaction of fear among the Italians and Jewish. However, the exploded again in Chicago as battles raged over over something that seems out of control. Log violence was still along the lines of turf warfare. drug distribution. onto any forum, blog or newspaper comments section on the subject and the American attitude It wasn’t until 1820 and the formation of the Meanwhile, Los Angeles had been gearing up is evident. Anger comes first, then bluster, then Forty Thieves Gang that America got its first with the formation of gangs in the 1930s and frustration and fear of a subsection of American dangerously violent gang that focused on 1940s that grew out of Mexican ethnicity. The society that mainstream America sees as out of criminal enterprise. The latter part of the century earliest Americans of Hispanic descent found control. saw the advent of what many still believe to be themselves left out of opportunities as the western United States grew, but in 20th century And when Americans turn to their leaders, they the most significant street gang in the country’s America, Hispanic Americans organized for see that the officials, too, are frustrated. There history, the Five Points Gang. Named after the different reasons. appears to be no single answer, no single act that area of Manhattan where five streets converged, the Five Points Gang graduated many of its best government, law enforcement or social services The Treaty of Hidalgo, Many gangs can take that will solve a problem allowed to into membership in the Sicilian Mafia, known which ended the Mexican- as La Cosa Nostra. One member in particular with a national fester and grow. Law enforcement, social workers American War in 1848, presence … can and ordinary citizens alike search for answers as learned the lessons well, a teen-aged recruit early created Americans out of in the 20th century named Alphonse Capone.5 trace their roots to the gang problem seems to escalate beyond their whole cloth by virtue of Los Angeles. ability to deal with it. The 2002 Oscar-nominated movie “Gangs of Mexico’s ceding land that Violence prevention coalition Where did these groups come from? Why did New York” told the story of the Five Points is now the Southwestern 6 they spring up? What is the extent of the danger? Gang. U.S. All Mexicans living in the region immediately became American citizens. But as And how do we combat it? In that late 19th century time frame, the Chinese America moved westward, these new citizens Tongs formed in New York, satisfying themselves This course will provide answers to those were treated as interlopers.10 questions, outline solutions that appear to be with running the opium trade and gambling working and offer links to resources for breaking enterprises. That period also spawned The As residents of these areas made their way into the vicious cycle of gang violence. Whyos, a gang that actually had a menu with the cities, and as immigrants crossing the border prices for various “violence-for-hire” activities.7 Elite CME Page 1 from Mexico arrived, they brought with them an some 40 years after being denied membership in the lessons of street life until he lies dead in the intense loyalty to their ethnicity and homeland. the Boy Scouts because of his skin color. street, holding a gun. Acknowledgement of the These loyalties, more than a lack of opportunity “vicious circle” of gang life is brought home “That’s the Boy Scouts of America.” he says, in the East, fueled the early gang movement in through the device of beginning and ending “a racist organization.” Kumasi echoes the the western U.S. the song with almost identical verses about a sentiment, brimming with remembered rage that tearful mother giving birth, sad instead of joyous As millions of Latinos moved into the region, seems to boil easily to the surface even now. because she knows what the child will face. most found their way to Los Angeles, allowing “We couldn’t be Cub Scouts,” Kumasi says. “We it to supplant Chicago as the nation’s second- couldn’t be Boy Scouts; we couldn’t be Explorer America so embraced the song that it became largest city. These immigrants brought with them Scouts. We couldn’t become involved in any kind Presley’s first Top 10 hit in four years. He also pride in their particular part of their homeland. of organization that would bear us good fruit.” made it a staple of his Las Vegas shows.

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