Crips: Profile

History
In 1969, a Los Angeles youth named Raymond Washington, 15, organized a group of other neighborhood youths and started a gang called the Baby Avenues. The Baby Avenues wanted to emulate a gang of older youths who had been involved in gang activity since 1964 and provided minor crimes for the Black Panthers of Los Angeles. This gang was called the Avenue Boys since they claimed their turf on Central Avenue in East Los Angeles. Raymond Washington, along with Stanley "Tookie" Williams and several other gang members from the Baby Avenues Gang, were fascinated with the hype of the Black Panthers and they wanted to develop the Baby Avenues gang into a larger force. The Baby Avenues Gang began using the name Avenues Cribs since members lived on Central. Crib members would wear blue rags or bandanas around their necks, on top of their heads, or across their foreheads. Blue became their “color” or uniform.

In the early 1970s, several members of the Avenue Cribs robbed an Asian women in Los Angeles and when she tried to identify her assailants, she was only able to explain their description, in broken English, as “crips,” meaning cripples since the Avenue Cribs had a distinct walk. A Los Angeles newspaper reported that the woman was robbed and beaten by a gang of Crips. As a result, the name had county-wide notoriety and the gang began calling themselves Crips. Raymond Washington and his collection of young gang members influenced other area youth gangs resulting in the formation of many other Crip sets, including the Avalon Garden Crips, Eastside Crips, Inglewood Crips and Westside Crips. Crips gangs became increasingly more violent and always sought to expand their territory. Crips gangs were heavily involved in the drug trade that was well underway by the early 1980s and they are often credited with the crack cocaine epidemic that spread throughout urban enclaves by the mid 1980s until the early 1990s.

Development of East Coast Crips
During the 1980s, several Crips gangs (and Bloods) developed in a Central American Country known as Belize (formerly British Honduras). These gangsters migrated heavily to the United States during the late 1980s, especially throughout the West Coast and East Coast States like New York, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. In 1989, several large Belizian families arrived in New York in the neighborhood of Harlem. The youth from these families, and some adults, were members of the Crips Gang in Belize. They created the Harlem Mafia Crips in New York City and helped establish several other Crips gangs such as the Rolling 30’s Crips, 92 Hoover Crips and Rolling 60s Crips by 1995. During the late 1990s, Crips gangs were well established in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Georgia, Connecticut, Florida, Pennsylvania and other East Coast regions.

Crips members initiate into the gang by committing a crime in front of gang witnesses. The initiation process is called “locing in.” Female members have the option to commit a crime or become “sexed in” (having sex with several older members). Crips on the East Coast wear blue and clear beads or blue and white beads around their neck but mostly blue jeans and a white shirt. East Coast Crips affiliate with the Folk Nation gangs and have adopted the Folk Nation Symbols. They are enemies with the Bloods.

Activities

Drive by Shootings
Drug Dealing
Extortion
Firearm Trafficking
Interstate Drug Smuggling
Robbery
Murder

Structure
Crips are usually less structured than other gangs and tend to be manned by brothers, sisters, cousins and close friends. Crips are less likely to indiscriminately allow membership to their gang. The leader is usually the oldest and toughest family member. The leader is usually a male in his late teens or early twenties. Younger members and recruits are made to sell drugs for the gang. Crips sets are loosely connected but will join forces against their enemies, especially the Bloods. Crip sets include 92 Hoover Crips, Grape Street Crips, Rolling 30s Crips, Rolling 60s, Crips, Sally Gangster Crips and Ace Deuce Trey.

Colors