Inside notorious LA gangs the Bloods and Crips bloody war that turned to peace (2024)

The infamous ‘Crips’ and ‘Bloods’ gangs were started by two brawling teenagers in the 1970s and eventually evolved into a historic rivalry steeped in bloodshed and chaos.

Raymond Washington grew up in South Los Angeles in the 1960s and saw his native black community ravaged by violence from white supremacists and police. He was 12 during the notorious Watts Riots of 1965, a six-day battle between his neighbourhood and authorities that turned his local streets into a war zone.

Known by his pals as a legendary street fighter, Washington decided to form his own gang as a way of protecting themselves against outsiders. This gang became known as the Crips, named by Washington himself from a time when his older brother twisted his ankle and had to walk with a limp, according to Grunge.

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In the late 1960s, Washington had met Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams, a teenage gang leader known all over town for surviving a stint at a juvenile detention centre. The pair decided to join forces and ruled the Crips into the 1970s, taking the mantle of ‘most feared Los Angeles gang’ from the Black Panthers who began to fade away mid-decade.

In 1972, after a Curtis Mayfield concert in Los Angeles, a group of Crips brutally murdered Robert Ballou Jr. for refusing to give them his leather jacket. As crowds fled the scene, nine gang members were arrested and later charged with murder - this was the first time gang violence had ended in murder.

After the killing, friends of Ballou Jr. banded together to form one larger gang in order to stand up to the Crips, naming themselves the Bloods. "In the way that the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria sparked World War I, the war between the Crips and Bloods was ignited by the killing of Robert Ballou Jr,” said journalist Michael Krikorian in a 2014 blog post.

Over the next ten years, the two gangs played out a bloody struggle for power of Los Angeles, with over 450 gang member deaths reported by police. The Crips largely governed the ‘east side’ of the city while the Bloods had dominance over the ‘west side’.

In 1979, Washington himself was killed by Bloods members in a drive-by shooting, the same year Williams was sent to San Quentin prison on four counts of murder.

The bloodshed continued however, and over time the gangs would lean into the drug trafficking industry as a way to finance an arms race that tore apart families and social groups.

This sparked a migration of Crips and Bloods members spreading out over the US in search of new markets. According to the Washington Post, by 1990 you could find young people affiliated as either a Crip or a Blood in most cities in the country.

However, peace eventually fell on the two warring factions in 1992. According to KPCC: “Hundreds of young black men from warring factions of the Blood and Crip gangs were gathered not to protest the Rodney King beating, but to declare a ceasefire."

This ceasefire became known as the Watts Truce and was helped by Williams who, while in prison, created the ‘Protocol for Peace’ - a treaty and outline for gangs to make peace agreements in their neighbourhood. The piece of writing was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and has been implemented in gangland territory all around the world including London.

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