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Crips

The Crips are a primarily African-American alliance of street gangs that are based in the coastal regions of Southern California. Founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1969, mainly by Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams, the Crips began as an alliance between two autonomous gangs, and developed into a loosely connected network of individual "sets", often engaged in open warfare with one another. Its members have traditionally worn blue clothing since around 1973.

For "Crip theory", see Disability studies.

Founded

1969 (1969)

Los Angeles, California, United States

1969–present

41 U.S. states,[1] Canada[2] and Belize[3]

Predominantly African American[1]

30,000–35,000[4]

Drug trafficking, murder, assault, auto theft, burglary, extortion, fraud, robbery[1]

The Crips are one of the largest and most violent associations of street gangs in the United States.[23] With an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 members in 2008,[4] the gangs' members have been involved in murders, robberies and drug dealing, among other crimes. They have a long and bitter rivalry with the Bloods.


Some self-identified Crips have been convicted of federal racketeering.[24][25]

Membership

As of 2015, the Crips gang consists of between approximately 30,000 and 35,000 members and 800 sets, active in 221 cities and 41 U.S. states.[1] The states with the highest estimated number of Crip sets are California, Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. Members typically consist of young African American men, but can be white, Hispanic, Asian, and Pacific Islander.[23] The gang also began to establish a presence in Canada in the early 1990s;[39] Crip sets are active in the Canadian cities of Montreal and Toronto.[40][41]


In 1992 the LAPD estimated 15,742 Crips in 108 sets; other source estimates were 30,000 to 35,000 in 600 sets in California.[42]


Crips have served in the United States armed forces and on military bases in the United States and abroad.[43]

Crip-on-Crip rivalries

The Crips became popular throughout southern Los Angeles as more youth gangs joined; at one point they outnumbered non-Crip gangs by 3 to 1, sparking disputes with non-Crip gangs, including the L.A. Brims, Athens Park Boys, the Bishops, The Drill Company, and the Denver Lanes. By 1971 the gang's notoriety had spread across Los Angeles.


By 1971, a gang on Piru Street in Compton, California, known as the Piru Street Boys, formed and associated itself with the Crips as a set. After two years of peace, a feud began between the Pirus and the other Crip sets. It later turned violent as gang warfare ensued between former allies. This battle continued and by 1973, the Pirus wanted to end the violence and called a meeting with other gangs targeted by the Crips. After a long discussion, the Pirus broke all connections to the Crips and started an organization that would later be called the Bloods,[47] a street gang infamous for its rivalry with the Crips.


Since then, other conflicts and feuds were started between many of the remaining Crip sets. As well as feuding with Bloods, they also fight each other — for example, the Rolling 60s Neighborhood Crips and 83 Gangster Crips have been rivals since 1979. In Watts, the Grape Street Crips and the PJ Watts Crips have feuded so much that the PJ Watts Crips even teamed up with a local Blood set, the Bounty Hunter Bloods, to fight the Grape Street Crips.[48] In the mid-1990s, the Hoover Crips rivalries and wars with other Crip sets caused them to become independent and drop the Crip name, calling themselves the Hoover Criminals.

African-American organized crime

Gangs in Los Angeles

List of California street gangs

Crip Walk

Crips and Bloods: Made in America

PBS Independent Lens program on South Los Angeles gangs

– The origin of the name Crips

Snopes Urban Legend