Gang ViolenceGang violence in metropolitan cities such as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles have been a rising concern in the last few decades. Stemming from the 1920’s as groups began to form and to the present time, violence increased in cities, which made communities dangerous places to live, especially in Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles reached the peak of its violence and crime in the early 1990’s throughout the United States when riots occurred during the time of the Rodney King incident. Although gang violence in Los Angeles continues to increase, authorities strive for ways to diminish gangs from expanding. This paper will discuss gang’s origins, types, and its effects on society.
Gangs were groups that were formed and dated back to the 1920’s. They started as associations, and unorganized groups consisting of families and neighborhoods, thus not involving themselves in criminal activity. Between 1955 and 1965, the young African American population grew and gangs began forming for protection against other ethnic or rival gangs. In the late 1960’s, the Bloods and the Crips were formed as they became the two most violent and criminal gangs in South Central Los Angeles and Compton. The Bloods and the Crips were rapidly becoming known to commit armed robberies and assaults. By the 1970’s, the two gangs began to form smaller groups that claimed different neighborhoods since Los Angeles is a widespread area. Approximately 15,000, gang member had joined Bloods and Crips by 1980, and the age range was from 14 to 24 years of age. Initiation into the gang required a substantial amount of beating that often resulted in a black eye, or broken ribs, and for the crime to be committed. Each gang identified themselves with colors, graffiti, and markings. The Crips identified themselves with the color blue and the Bloods with the color red (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2009). Furthermore, riots and disorder began to get intense causing violence to increase.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica (2009), there are approximately 65,000 African American gang members, which ages that range from 12 to 35. Such crimes that are being committed are burglary, robberies, grand theft, assaults with a deadly weapon, drive by shootings, and murders. The gang members use weapons such as AK-47 rifles, large caliber handguns, and semi-automatic weapons. The worst civil disorder in American history were the riots that occurred in 1992. There were a total of sixty people that died, 2,500 injured, 750 fires, 14,000 arrested, and more than $700 million in damages. Despite the occurrences during the riots, Los Angeles continued to run itself as the metropolitan city it is with thousands
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One of the major issues is the perception of how people view blacks. African Americans historically have been regarded as ‘outcasts’ and ‘slaves.’ This attitude has been challenged by decades of work done in African American history: social science research on early-20th Century African American racial groups, ethnic studies, and cultural studies. In this study, we identify what role that African Americans played in social justice and the role that African Americans played in criminal behavior. While many scholars, commentators, and historians have sought to draw attention to the relationship between African Americans and the African-American community after the New Black movement, we found few compelling studies to link African Americans with criminal behavior. We focus instead on how they interacted with crime, the role that the African-American community played, and the role of police. Participants in our study were African American men, women, and youths with a history of criminal behavior that could be a direct cause of their violent outcomes when the participants were African American. In contrast to a recent study of African Americans in public housing, we have found such social justice research in many African American studies. By combining data for African Americans in public housing, a prospective study of black public order and black criminal behavior after the 1996 death of former Senator Lyndon Johnson (R), we found this to be a valid historical study when compared to the current study. We conclude that, by examining both the social and racial factors underlying the relationship between African Americans and the African community in a variety of criminal behavioral and police-reported situations, we have demonstrated that black African Americans in the public housing are, by an order of magnitude, more involved in the crime and police-reported misconduct of African Americans than their white peers. While we cannot say for certain how well the relationship between black African Americans and the police affects police-reported police-report crimes, we can attribute some of its strength to the fact that African Americans have a lower homicide rate and a similar level of violent crime. To support this thesis, we conclude that the most significant role that blacks played in community-specific criminal behavior after the 1996 death of Senator Lyndon Johnson—including violent offenses such as looting, robbery, and assault—was to protect the black community from black people. The findings of this study indicate that, although we were able to identify both the role of African Americans and police-reported criminal behavior on other groups of youths, we cannot determine how these actions actually influenced these others. The lack of the presence of African Americans in any of these neighborhoods was an unexpected finding in our study.
If these findings are replicated in the national study that we published earlier, it may be possible to replicate the results for other populations that were more affected by police brutality: children, teens, and young adults. If similar results are obtained among some other groups but not among all youths,