In Los Angeles, streets, freeways, train tracks and the LA River form boundaries that many of us aren’t aware of. These are the boundaries of gang territories.īack in the 1970s through the ‘90s, just wearing red or blue was contentious. The colors were, and still are in some parts of LA, flags for the Crips and Bloods, LA’s two dominant gangs.Īnd back then, the neighborhoods of South and East Los Angeles could have drawn their gang territories. Things have cooled down a bit because of gang injunctions and safety zones. Lots of families have been priced out of their neighborhoods, moving further away from the urban core. Without clear markings, many LA residents don’t even know these barriers exist.īut these boundary lines are there and they carry a lot of weight for the residents who live among them.Īnd some of the action has moved off the street and gone online.īut, there are still certains parts of LA where gang borders form “invisible walls” that delineate who goes where and who does what. Skipp Townsend at a Southern California Cease Fire Committee gathering where community members come together to end violence. Skipp Townsend was born and raised in the West Adams neighborhood of South LA. For many years he was a member of the Rollin 20s Bloods. And he says people in the communities where he works are well aware of the gang boundaries. “You have to be aware of where you are at all times. That’s always how a person stays alive, you know, just having your head on a swivel,” Townsend said.Īnd how do you find out where those boundaries are? So knowing what area you’re in, knowing what gas station you stop at, knowing what liquor store you’re in, even watching the cars as they roll down the street and being able to identify certain people. “Well the way I found out is being born and raised in L.A., so for people were born and raised in L.A. It’s sort of like the deer and the gazelle that’s born in the wild, you know, they just know,” he said. Gangs used to demarcate their boundaries with graffiti, which was more popular back in the ‘80s but is less popular now. Instead, people who live in these communities need a mental map of where they are and aren’t allowed to go. ![]() ![]() “That’s why I say there’s a fear for parents and grandparents like, ‘man, do I even want you to come here? No, let me bring the kids to you.’” “But the perception is that we’re safe and sometimes we’re not,” Townsend said. (The original image is no longer available, please contact KCRW if you need access to the original image.) “I have 12 and 10 year olds, I have to think about where they live or where they go to school, how they’ll get home, will I pick them up, will they play sports, if they play sports what park will they play sports at - all these things are important.” This map from the LAPD shows all the city’s gang injunctions, from Venice to Harbor City to Highland Park. Townsend isn’t alone in being concerned with the price you pay for living within gang boundaries. “One of the really important things to think about is how the invisible borders or the claiming of space by a particular group can add costs we often don’t think about,” said George Tita, a gang criminologist at UC-Irvine. “If I’m a young person growing up in a particular neighborhood and the closest movie theater or the closest shopping mall is claimed by a rival gang, whether I’m a gang member or not, I’m not going to feel comfortable, I’m going to have to spend more time on a bus, put more gas in my car, to travel to other areas,” Tita said. “The turf basically serves as a warning to stay out of my area. You know, for forever and a day the quintessential gang homicide was the ‘where are you from?’ homicide, right. The answer came in the form of gunshots.” And this is where one individual would approach another and ask the question, ‘where are you from?’ In far too many instances nobody waited for a verbal answer. ![]() Tita co-authored a study looking at where gang violence happens within territories. He found that they mostly happen on the borders. “This is borrowed from the studies that are done on wolf packs and marking of territory. So we can think of marking the territory of a wolf pack similar to the graffiti and so you want to keep the rival outside the territory. ![]() You do it by patrolling these invisible walls,” Tita said.Īlex Alonso is an adjunct professor at Cal State University-Long Beach. He has mapped the overlay of gang boundaries on the map of Los Angeles.
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