Street Gangs, page 7

Hello.

When I was in my mid teens I lived in a suburb of Chicage (Aurora township). Despite not being directly in the city the gangs had spread out to our area, mainly the Latin Kings. It was clearly marked on the stop sign of the street I lived on, anyone from Chi-town knows that big LK mark.

As I was living in Aurora during the Bulls threepeat I spent most of my time playing basketball. Well, a couple of kids I played basketball with joined the Latin Kings as they got older.

From what I could tell the gang mostly sold drugs and defended their streets or whatever they called it. The neighborhood was actually decent and not ghetto, but they still had a presence. As everyone knew me from the courts I got along really well with everyone, lord help you if you weren't or were in another gang.

From what my fellow basketballers told me, how to get in varied except you had to prove your loyalty and be accepted by all the members. The loyalty would frequently be killing a rival member from another gang after all the members accepted you. Getting out required you to take a serious beatdown. One of the guys I knew got out and I helped put alcohol on his bruises, probably took a whole three weeks to start to functionally recover.

Personal experience...

I went and played on a caged court a couple blocks from my house one day. Apparently a couple members of another gang showed up and wanted to play basketball. I started to leave figuring this couldn't work out good, shots rang out and I swear I about cleared that 15+ft cage like spiderman. They did a driveby that hit so fast I couldn't hardly believe it. I swear I could actually feel the bullets passing next to me and I NEVER saw the vehicle, only heard it speed away.

A couple days later one of the guys I played ball with who was in the gang was like, "we were trying not to hit you", I was like, "umm thanks...give me 10 seconds to get out of their next time", he laughed. That was my only "direct" experience outside of them occasionally being like, "come play ball with us".

On the Bloods and Crips

I had never heard of the bloods or the crips till a few years ago but what I heard...When gang members went to prison they tended to organize into two competing gangs, as this practice originated in Cali, it was two of the big ones from their. The Bloods and the Crips. As members left prison, they would rejoin their old gangs and would declare themselves a part of the larger gang. From what I understand it is loosely organized so you can't go from one gang in one area to another and receive any type of benefits. Don't know if that helps out, just what I know and heard.