My name is Tyrone White. I'm a former 65 Menlo Crip. Some of my rivalries were the Blood gangs and the Crip gangs. We were involved in drive-by shootings as well as drug dealing. And this is how crime works. Yeah, of course I've
participated in drive-bys. I've been a victim of
drive-bys plenty of times. When you're going against
war with one another, there's no winners. Now you can look at it and say, "OK, I shot more of they
homies than they shot of mine," or, "I killed more of they
homies than they killed of mine," but both sides are taking losses. So if you both are taking a loss of life, there's no winners. When I was coming up,
the guns that were used in gang bangings were the 9-millimeter, the .45s, Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun pump, AK-47s, TEC-9s. The first gun that I ever
got placed in my hand, given to me as a gift from
one of my homeboys, was a .25, a chrome .25, little small
.25 with the pearl handle. Had, like, seven shots, six shots in it or something like that. And as you got older and
you learn more about guns and elevate yourself, of
course, you get bigger guns. Guns are sold on the street
like dope is sold on the street. You can even buy guns from enemy gangs, because right now it's a business. It's about making this money. They come from everywhere.
Now, where they get them from, could be from the police force. It could be from the military. You can never be caught what
we call lacking or slipping. You gotta always be ready. You
gotta have enough firepower. You are ready for war at all times. From the early '80s all the
way up through the mid-'90s, those were the years of
heightened gang activities. So drive-by shootings were nothing. You could literally turn your news on every day during those years
and see a drive-by shooting. I mean, every day. We had a drive-by shooting
that I participated in. I walked in the house, and I
remember seeing it on the news. I must have been about 15 at that time. I remember my mom was on
the phone and she was like, "I'm so tired of these
kids shooting one another and killing one another," and I remember thinking to myself, like, "Man, she has no idea that I was just in this situation." She never found out about it, but I just remembered the
way that I felt listening to her on the phone,
telling her friend, like, "Man, these kids need to stop
this," and, "This is crazy." And there's another situation
to where we were getting ready to go out on what they
call Sunday fun day, when all the lowriders,
all the motorcycle clubs, all the car clubs, all the gang members, that's, like, the one day to where all the gang members, enemies, everybody can congregate in one area on Crenshaw Boulevard. I remember we seen a car
pull up to the corner, and usually when you see
cars pull up on the corner with no lights or anything like that, you know that's a sign of
something that's going to happen. And all you seen was
guns come out the window, and everybody just got to
shooting, shooting at everybody. And we all just scattered like ants, just everybody screaming,
hollering, running, scattering because no one had guns actually on their person at the time. One of my big homeboys, he was very known. He had got hit in the face because they shot with a 12-gauge and they had buckshots,
but it didn't kill him because they weren't shot at close range. Luckily nobody got killed. The Crips were founded in the '60s, and by Raymond Washington. He formed the Eastside Crips, which is on the east side of LA. Tookie Williams formed the Westside Crips. And through those two
different foundations, different sets start to
evolve, different areas. The Hoovers, the East
Coast, the Rollin' 60s, the Menlos, all these different sets. The object and the goal was
to keep this side of LA safe, but, as usual, things escalated, things multiplied, and violence became and s--- happened. When Raymond Washington got killed, that's what caused the division. That's what caused, that's
when cripping became divided between the east and the west, and different things start
happening in different subsets, and it just became like a disease. One Crip set betrayed this Crip set, and then it just caused
a never-ending feud. Bloods used to be the
main rivals of the Crips, but now, just as many Crips are against one another
than there are Bloods. A lot of Crips and
Bloods have become allies because they share the
same common Crip enemy. For example, the Eight
Tray Gangster Crips, they have a peace treaty going on with the Inglewood Family Bloods, and that's because their borderline is connected right next to one another. So since our neighborhoods
are so close to one another, you gotta come through my
neighborhood to get home. I gotta come to your
neighborhood to get home. Let's make this a blood-free
zone. No violence. Not saying that we're homeboys
or we're just a close hood, but let's keep the peace
between this dynamic, between this area. The beef between the 65 Menlo Crips and the Hoover Crips, it goes way back. We actually all grew up together and went to school together. We became one of the biggest
enemies to the Hoovers because our sets are so
close to one another. To get to the Hoover hood, you gotta come through our
hood, you know what I'm saying? And so for us to get to
other parts of the city, we gotta go through the Hoover hood. I was raised, born and
raised in South Central LA, all my life. Had a stepfather in my life that taught me how to be a
man and different things, but, for the most part, I was raised by a strong single mother. Usually in the Black neighborhoods when kids that come from
single-parent homes like that, they usually get caught
up in these streets because your mom is out working, trying to make a living
for you, provide for you. While she's at work, you're
out there running the streets, doing s--- that you know you're
not supposed to be doing. And that's really, that's
pretty much how I started it. I was about 10 when I first
started hanging around them. I knew them very well. It comes down to, "Hey, you've
been hanging around us a lot, been chilling a lot. You from the hood.
Let's make it official." And making it official
means getting jumped in or doing something to
be a member of the gang. Can be anything from
you fighting one person, sometimes four or five persons. It's to see how you handle yourself. It's to see what type of skills you have. If you get into one of
these type situations, can you stand your
ground and hold your own, whether you get beat up or not? You have to know how to fight back. You gotta be a monster to
be a member of any gang, but particularly the Crips,
you better be a monster. The word Crip really originally meant Community Resistance in Progress. It was a way to bring the community, to uplift the community,
to protect the community. Of course, they took on a moniker and the appearance of a gang because, according to the dictionary, a group of five or more
people is considered a gang. To be a Crip, you have to
carry yourself a certain way. You have to walk a certain way. But for me, the allure was
I loved the color blue. And they wore blue rags. They wore blue jeans.
They wore blue belts. They wore blue Chuck Taylors. The dress code for me back
when I was a active Crip in the '90s, in the early '80s, it was definitely 501 Levi Jeans, creased. I would go buy a can of starch and literally spend about
an hour ironing my pants, layering the starch to a point to where before I even put my pants
on, I could stand them up. Crips wore K-Swiss
because it was a acronym. It was actually a disrespectful
term towards the Bloods. It was called K-Swiss for
"kill slobs when I see some." Slobs is a disrespectful
term towards the Bloods. If you wasn't a Crip,
you couldn't Crip walk. If you wasn't a Crip, you
didn't know how to Crip walk. And so to learn how to Crip walk and to actually perfect
something like that was like a badge of
honor. It's a cool thing. It's when you look at
it, the feet movement, the way they dance, the way they do it, the way they incorporate certain moves along with the hand signs
and the hand signals. Words that Crips usually use which was part of the
lingo was, of course, cuz. Everything we say would start with a C. If you had to say
burger, you'd say curger. If you say b----, you say citch. It's just different things that you could replace the B with a C, you would do it. And that was the same
thing with the Bloods. Anything with a C they wanted eliminated. And it may sound strange,
and people be like, "No, that's stupid. Y'all sound stupid." That was our language. That
was the way that we talked. We understood it, and
that's all that matters. And if you disrespect us and
tell us it sounds stupid, you might get your ass whooped. Of course, they threw up the C. The C is, you just take your hands, you make a C with your hand. And now your set, your actual neighborhood, your Crip neighborhood, like the 60s, they have their signs. The Hoovers, they have their signs. The Menlos, they have their signs. You're going to throw up
that sign to represent, to let people know that
you're actually from that set. You're from that neighborhood. We threw up the M. It was just a M. You just take your hands across you, which is just how Ice Cube throw up the W when he's in concert and taking pictures. Snoop Dogg throws up the W. Just turn it upside down,
and you throw up the M. Gang graffiti is a big part of the Crips. People that are coming in there, they know when they see that on the wall, the Rollin' 60 Crips or the
Menlo Crips or the 55 Crips, they know, "We're entering this gang. This is their neighborhood." The gang structure is not so
much organized like the Mafia with underbosses and
bosses and stuff like that. We didn't give titles like that, but people automatically
knew who the OGs were, who the double OGs were,
who the big homies was, and who was ranked over who. The double OG is usually
one of the big homies that has put in more work
than you could imagine. He's done it all: killed, robbed, made money, been to jail. Everything. You name it, he's done it. Usually 50s, 60s, higher age. They were around in the '70s, in the '80s, when gang banging really just exploded. They were at the top of their game. An OG really falls not too much different from a double OG except that he may be a little younger. May have done a little less of the crimes. Then you have some of the OGs that have turned their lives around, and they just want to
live life, have a family, have a wife and kids, and
they're getting money. They're making money the legal way. So what makes them the OG is the fact that they're talking to the little homies, to the young homies, showing
them and explaining to them how they were able to do this. Street soldier is exactly
what that sounds like. A street soldier is going to go out there and put in that work for
the OG, for the double OG, for the little homies, or
just for the set, period. A street soldier has no limits. He's going to go out there and do what he has to do, no matter what. The little homies are usually, of course, what they sound like, the little homies that's
looking up to the big homies. They're going to imitate. They're going to copy everything
that the big homies do. And if the big homies is
constantly going to jail, robbing people, shooting
people, killing people, the little homies going to
follow suit at some point. My main thing was always to
look out for my big homie, whoever called me they big homie, and make sure that he was taken care of, and vice versa because
he does the same for me. He don't have to, but he does. I started out selling
weed in middle school and then moved to crack cocaine and robbing. I did robberies. That was my way mostly of making money and keeping money in my pocket. The big homies had the big dope, and they'll issue it out
to the younger homies. They'll issue it down to
the guys to the next level. It was a way for everybody
from the big homie, OG homies, all the way down to the homies in junior high school to make money. The homies in junior high school, they may be out there
selling crack on the corners, $5 rocks, $10 rocks, $20 rocks. The big homies, they moving big weight, ounces, quarter-pounds,
pounds, stuff like that. The drugs came from, a lot
of times from drug cartels and as well as the
government, believe it or not. I mean, there's a story
about Freeway Rick, one of the biggest Black dope dealers in the history of Los Angeles. And he was set up. He was caught up in that Iran-Contra stuff with Ronald Reagan, and come to find out that the DEA was supplying him with dope, the same dope that they gave
him 30 years for in prison. So it's like, that's just how it worked. They put it in our
neighborhoods to bring us down, to keep us down. Always a goal of Crips to make
a substantial amount of money and to open up your own business, whether it be a smoke shop, a liquor store, or a
foods place or whatever. That was the goal, to find
a way to take that money and make it somewhat as legal as you can. The LA riots happened in '92. I was 18 years old at that time. The LA riots was a result
of the Rodney King verdict. Those four officers that
were clearly guilty as hell on video beating Rodney
King half to death. When they were found innocent, that just sparked
something in the community. I didn't never think I
would see nothing like that. The ground zero of the riots happened five blocks from my house. I was sitting at home watching
the news. I seen the news. So we jump in the car,
we drive up to the riots. By this time, you got hundreds
and hundreds of people starting to migrate to
Florence and Normandie. So at this point, it just
kicked off everywhere. It was spreading like wildfire. Every car that came
through the intersection that had a white person in
it was getting attacked. I saw news reporters getting beat up. I saw cameramen getting beat up, getting their cameras taken from them. And at that time it really didn't matter what gang you were from
because now it's about, it's a Black-against-white thing now. So it didn't matter if
you was a Blood or a Crip or whatever you was. Even though it was such a messed-up day, it was such a f---ed up
day, it was also a day to kind of rejoice because
that was the first time in a long time that
you saw common enemies, Crips and Bloods and
Mexican gangs come together against this one common enemy, the LAPD. And so after days of rioting, some of the community leaders, like Jim Brown, the football player, a couple of popular gang
leaders from different gangs, from different areas,
different sets, had a meeting and decided that this was
the perfect opportunity to try to bring a peace treaty,
a truce between the gangs. Even though it was something bad that caused us to get to that level, it still was an opportunity for
us to bring things together. The peace treaty lasted, officially, maybe a good couple weeks, and it kind of continued to dissolve as weeks and months went on, to the point to where
it didn't exist no more. But for that little short
time, it was great to have it. When gangsta rap came out, it
introduced a lot of cripping, a lot of Crips. And when NWA came out, which is the group that
started gangsta rap, Eazy-E, rest in peace, Eazy-E
was known to be a Crip. And from him, you had
other pioneer rappers that were from Crip neighborhoods. You had Snoop Dogg, you had WC, all these popular gang rappers that was in the neighborhoods
representing their hoods that were blowing up on the mainstream. And so now you got people sitting at home watching MTV, "106 & Park." They're watching all these video shows, and they got these gang
members doing rap videos with the blue rags and
the '64s and the lowriders and wearing all the gang
attire and the gang uniform, but they're actually
artists making money on TV, and now it's being broadcast
all over the world. Aside from the UK and the Netherlands, I've heard about Crips in China. I heard there's some Crips in Africa, which I've actually seen
online, social media, people in Africa cripping and just loving this West Coast culture. And I think all these countries adapted onto these United States values and these United States ways just because of how it was glorified, not really understanding
the meaning of it, that people lost their lives
and people are killing. This is not something to play with. In 1994, I went to Oklahoma. I got a football scholarship to go to Oklahoma to play football. That's pretty much really what
saved me from being killed or anything else bad happening
to me on these LA streets. Played football there for two years at a historically Black college. In 1996, '97, I moved to Oklahoma City, and I started working at the
juvenile detention center. They needed a gang
advisor. A gang trainer. So of course I was qualified for that. Just volunteering my
time, talking to the kids and educating them on
gangs, and telling them — because I had no idea
Oklahoma had a gang problem. So I went and I sat down
with the chief of police to see exactly, where did
he want me to go with this? I did two years in the school system. They came to me and
asked me did I want to, interested into
transferring to the streets, basically running traffic,
pulling people over, writing tickets, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, "Yeah, just
f--- it. Let me do that. I'll do that. See what that's like." Because I actually wanted to see how they dealt with drug dealers with me being on the
other side of the law. And all the complaints that I had as a criminal, all the police brutality, all the mistreatment from the police, I got to witness that
firsthand working with them. And a lot of times I
would have to intervene or, like, "Hold on." Like, it was a couple times
where they had to have that conversation with me, "Look, either you with
us or you with them." So even in the training
of the police academy, I dealt with racism. I
dealt with discrimination. Because a lot of those officers felt like, "This dude is a criminal. This dude is from the streets. How in the hell are you guys
going to let him work with us?" Blah, blah, blah. That's why even after I
became a police officer and I moved back to California, I still ended up hooking
back up with my old homies and old gang members, and
I ended up going to jail. Even after being a police
officer, I went to jail. My experience with the LAPD, they still haven't found a way to deal with communities and cultures that they don't know nothing about. It's the same tactics. Dirty cops, bogus charges, planting drugs, mistreatment because of who
you are or what you represent. It's the same thing. It hasn't stopped. But one way the police can
bridge the gap with the community is to continue to work with those that want to work with them. Big U is an example, from Rollin' 60s. Guys like that, that are gang activists that are trying to do things
to stop the gang violence and help kids in the community and bring some positivity
to the community. The main thing is to save lives, and after you save lives, you
want to create opportunities. I went to jail in Oklahoma for robbery. Since at that time when I was out there, it was for a robbery that I did when I was living in Oklahoma. When I came back to California in 2006, I went to jail again in
2009 for another robbery, and they end up finding out about another robbery that I did,
and they combined the cases. I end up taking the three-year deal. When I first got arrested,
they took me down to the main LAPD headquarters, what they call the Parker Center. They transfer you the next
day to the county facility. So I left the Parker Center that morning. They put me on the jail bus,
took me to the county jail, which is known as the Twin Towers. You usually go into the tank. The tank is basically a holding area where a whole bunch of
other gang members are at. And I'm talking about mixed in. Crips, Bloods, Mexicans, everybody. And that's just a, that's like a box of
dynamite waiting to explode. And sometimes you get
put in those situations, and the officers just leave
you, and they don't care. Whatever happens in there, it happens. And you're going to always
find somebody in there that's going to challenge you, especially if you're from a rival gang. You listen for the lingo. You
listen to what they saying. Or you might see people that you haven't seen since elementary, and you lost contact with them. You wonder where they were at.
Well, this is where they at. And so you find out that
they from a Crip set, and so you guys gotta just connect on one. Now, if it becomes a racial thing, Bloods and Crips, they find a way to unite against whatever race
they have to go against. It could be some violence erupt in between the transportation into the different dorms
of the different units. But for the most part in the county jail, Crips was with Crips, Bloods with Bloods, or sometimes you get
the general population where it's a mixed dorm. Now, don't get me wrong. If I went in there as a
Menlo Crip or as a 60 Crip, or a 60 going in there and
they run into some Hoovers, it's bad blood automatically. No matter we're Crips and we're Crips, we're in the same unit, it don't matter. We need to settle this beef. So I might walk in here and
a Hoover Crip might say, "Hey, hey, hey, you from Menlo? I need that fade. I need that fade." So that lets you know that at some point, you and this guy have
to fight because y'all, both of y'all sets don't get along. Inside or outside of prison
with cripping is no different. The way you carry yourself on
the streets is the same way that you're expected to
carry yourself in the prison, except at a higher level because it's a little
more dangerous in prison than it is on the streets. The thing that made me
change my life was my kids. When I took the scholarship to the school, I was in the process of changing my life. I just didn't know it, but that was my start of changing my life. And when I started working with gangs and talking to the kids in the schools and at the juvenile jails, and I seen how I was
getting through to them and how much they respected me
from what I was telling them and trying to teach them, it
just made me want to change. It just made me want to
continue to do positive things, and that's what I've
been doing ever since. I met somebody one day, and
they told me I had this look. They was like, "You
should get into acting. You should think about acting." So I started doing acting
little gigs, doing extra roles. And so I've done several projects and been a part of several TV series and dramas and different things that have gotten my foot
into the door of acting. So there's definitely some
positivity that can happen from my past that was negative, yeah. I'm Andy Domingo Pellerano, former soldier of the Latin Kings. I used to run a drug-trafficking
network in New Orleans, and this is how crime works. So, it was in 1995 when I got involved. It was because of the name, because of the weight
that that name carried. When you say Latin Kings,
they're like, oh, you know, they thinking, like, "Man,
don't play with him." Like, "He's a Latin King." Initially, it's to uplift our people. This is not a gang, right? This is like a organization, just like you might have
the Knights of Columbus. First, it would be a validation of who you were in the streets. You just couldn't come from anywhere. "Hey, I want to be a Latin King." Who are you? What type of work you put in? Who knows you, you know what I'm saying? Are you violent? You know what I'm saying? Like, things gotta line up
with this specific lifestyle. So, when you have two or three people, they want you to be initiated, they'll have five men that jump you, beat you up in a circle,
two to three minutes. How you handle that
process allows you to know if you made the initiation
to become a Latin King. I remember specifically
when I got jumped in, I was 14, 15 years old, man, it felt like the longest
three minutes of my life. I thought they was giving me extra time. I'm like, "What time is it?" And it was like, "It's
only been one minute!" And I'm fighting, I'm
fighting for my life. But when you fall down,
they don't stomp you out. They let you get back
up and keep fighting, and that's part of the initiation because if you just stay
down, then you not ready. Then when the time is up,
it's all hugs and daps. "Amor de rey, amor de rey." Everybody's saying, "King
love, king love, king love." You hug, and now we're laughing about it. You feel a sense of worth. You feel like you have a sense of purpose. Now you a part of something
that is so great that you a part of something
that's bigger than you. You get in a gang, they give you a name. They change your name.
They called me Paco. I eventually turned into
Paco, the pope of the streets, and I became a slave to my own name. So whether if I had to kill you, if I had to steal from
you, if I had to rob you, if I had to hurt you, you're
not going to shame this name because my identity was in this name. And I went hard behind that name. So, they had the peewee
when you first got in. That was the trial period just to see your character, see if you a man, if you're willing to fight,
if you're willing to die, if you ready for war. If you're a juvenile, you're
a peewee for two years, and then from there a soldier, and then from a soldier
you could rise in ranks. So, in the ranking, they had
the first Inca, president, they had the vice president,
they had the warlord, which is basically the enforcer. They had the council that would see, it's just like a counselor. Somebody that had a lot of
wisdom, a lot of knowledge that you would have access to. And then they had the treasurer that would control the finances to allocate where the funds would go. So basically that was
the chain of command. So, the first Inca, you
gotta think, Inca: Power. You know what I'm saying? So that was a position of authority. And the one that had rank
over the New Orleans chapter in that period was Paco, and I think in New
York, it was King Blood. So, they had some people
that would not rise in ranks because they just simply
didn't put in enough work or didn't take it seriously. And then there was cases where some people would get demoted, then somebody else would
rise in that position. And there was instances where
some people switched sides and there was a green light on them that if they seen them, smash on sight. I kind of skipped the peewee stage because I was doing things
that soldiers was doing that peewees shouldn't have been doing. When I was in prison, I
had a guy, he was a Piru, he was a Blood, and I was a King, so then we just joined it together and was able to run the whole compound. Now, in that organization, I
was the Inca, I was the crown. I was the president of that, and in Blood, he was the vice president. And I took that from the
prison to the streets and was really, that's where I
just got into the drug trade. Just really transporting
and just dealing with a lot. When you in poverty,
you aspire to make money because you think money is
going to solve your problems. We would steal cars. We had the keys to the Camrys. We had the skeleton keys. You could just go unlock the
car, just start it right up. I was selling drugs, I was robbing people. By any means necessary, whatever I had to do to get
that money, I was getting it, because I was deluded by my own vanity. It was whatever came along the way that you was able to get money and put your hands on, you would do. I used to run a drug-trafficking network. One point in time I was going to Houston to bring bricks back from the cartel. We going out to Houston,
$48,000 cash money. It takes a long time to count 20s and fives and ones of $48,000. And then dealing with the clubs, we would deal with the
dancers, the strippers. I'd give it to them wholesale to where they'll break it all the way down, and they're making money off of that so then I'm making money off of them, but they're making money too. They had a lot of strip clubs. Like, they had Visions. A lot of them was in New Orleans East. One of the clubs on Bourbon
Street was just a club that we frequented where we
would get the VIP section every time we were there, popping bottles, throwing money in the air. All of this a part of that life. But the more money I was making, the more money I was spending,
the more money I was wasting. I just think about how
ignorant and foolish I was, throwing money in the air. I can remember everybody
following us to go to the club, and I'm hanging out the window throwing money out the
window on the interstate just so everybody could see money flying down the interstate. So, when the Latin Kings
started, like Chicago, it started in Chicago, which
they deemed the motherland. So the Latin Kings was formed
to uprise the Latin race so they could combat the
influences that was around them based upon the Aryan Brotherhood and the other Black gangster disciples and these other factions, so they came together
because they were being oppressed in that time. There was a lot of Puerto
Ricans and Mexicans, but then it was just
anything from Latin descent, you know what I'm saying? Chicago, New York. Those were the main chapters, and Miami, and then it filtered to kind
of Metairie, New Orleans, and I remember just at the parades, we would be over 100 deep at the parades. Every King, regardless of where you at, you would fly those colors. The gang signs were still the same, when they would throw up the crown. And every greeting would
be, they would dap up and they would touch the
points of their hands to unite the crown, and
they would bring the crown to their heart, tapping their heart. And they would say, "Amor de rey." They would throw that up. That's why I don't,
like, still to this day, like, people do that
sign language as "love," and I don't do it because to me, that brings me back to that place. Like, they would do that.
They would touch the points. They would bring it
and then bring it down. Like, that ain't, you
know what I'm saying? So it's a lot with that. But the points, they stood for something. And you gotta think, I'm thinking that in the mind of a child, because I was a child. Like, love, honor, respect,
obedience, loyalty, these are good attributes, right? The five-pointed crown is
basically like the royalty. They go into the religion of Kingism. The colors black and gold, the black symbolizing the darkness, the gold being the king
out of the darkness, rising out of the darkness
to uplift the people. So, the five points in
love, honor, respect, obedience, loyalty. In other factions, it was righteousness that
was added into there. And then they would have a tattoo where they have a crown,
a five-pointed crown, and they'll have five points. I got five points up here. I got the five-pointed crown right here. I got the five-pointed
star coming all up here. That's how you could identify one another. You would see that on the arm, you would know that's a King. They had Banks Street
Posse, they had Hoover, 31st Hoovers, they had Folks and Crips. All of that was rivals. And that's why basically the
Latin Kings and the Bloods ride under the five,
under the People's Nation, because they have the same rivals. When you think about gangs
in California and Chicago, everything was segregated within blocks, within demographics. So
this block banged this, so you knew not to go on that block if you was part of a
different sect, right? So that was based upon demographics. And then also it's territorial, so like, who's going
to run this territory? So if you're selling
drugs in this territory, this other section can't come in and make money on your street
because this is your street. You had a force behind you. It was like a machine.
You know what I'm saying? Like, this is what you're doing, and these people are here
to help validate that. Like I said, in the street life, when you in the streets,
you need street cred. When you in the streets, you
need to have power behind you. If not, the Jungle Creed states, "The strong must feed on any prey at hand. I was branded a beast and sat at the feast before I was even a man." That's the creed that they go by. It's taking. You know, I
want it, I'm going to get it. And if you want to go to
war, we can go to war. You know, it's just not having no concern, no appreciation for life. It was all about you. You gotta think, you're in New Orleans, you in the murder capital. So obviously you're going to carry a gun because people are not
always fighting, right? So then you would take
situations as they come. If it's a fight, let's get in a fight. But if you pull out a weapon, I'm not going to let you kill me, so I need to have a weapon. You don't go to a gunfight
with a knife, right? And you just had to be
ready for whatever came. There's consequences to actions, right? Because there's a certain
manifesto in the constitution that you're to honor and live by. Think about the points
that I talked about. Love, honor, respect, obedience,
loyalty. Obedience, right? So, when you're dealing with streets, you're dealing with rebellion. So anytime people are
in a state of rebellion, there must be built-in pressures. There has to have rule;
there has to have order. You wasn't supposed to
touch nobody's girlfriend, even sisters. Family was off limits. Homosexuality, that was not permitted. No, it was once a King, always a King. So there was no walking away. When you leave, you had to go through a protocol so you could leave. You paid dues also, and
there was no running. Another rule was, "One moves, all moves," so basically, if we
together and I pop off, you better pop off too. And if you don't, then you're
going to have a violation. Now when we have a meeting, you're going to get beat up for that, so you either take the
beating with everybody else or you're going to take it aside. When I was a part of it, like, even a guy, he would tell everybody to turn around. Like, nobody was to take pleasure in seeing their brother get beaten. It wasn't entertainment. It's certain degrees of it. There's certain infractions that will enable you to get a violation, then you proceed to move forward, but there was certain infractions to where you would have a green light and it would be smashed on sight. Like, that's it, you're out of here. You're not a part of this. You'll never be a part of this again. And if they see you, it's up. The religious aspect of the Latin Kings is the gravitation
towards the linguistics. Oh, you talking about "amor de rey." All right, Jesus Christ
is the king of all kings, so when you think of
rey, you think the king, amor, you think of love. God is love. How can this be bad, right? The Bible says we're a chosen generation, a royal priesthood. That's Kings. The initiation process to be jumped in, they would call it the baptism. We would have meetings,
they would call it mass, and we would meet in a cemetery. Think about that, right? But we would meet in the cemetery. And then the New Orleans
chapter and the Kenner chapter, now, basically they
had the same manifesto, the same constitution from Chicago. So when we would have meetings, they would open up in prayer. Everybody would get on their
knees, put their head down, they'd open up in prayer, and they would address certain
things that were going on. This is what needs to be handled. This is what needs to be seen at. This what needs to be done
in this area, in this area. I would put my money in
the basket, in the hat, you know what I'm saying,
as a part of my dues, and that was supposed to go to other Kings that were incarcerated or to look out for
everybody else, you know? But ultimately, I don't
know where that went. You know what I'm saying? We didn't meet as much as they probably should have. When I was in prison and I joined the Latin
Kings with the Bloods, because they both run
under the People's Nation, they both ride under the five, we would meet on the big yard. And when we'd meet on the big yard, it would be to address
what needs to be done, any new recruits, you
know what I'm saying? What's going on in this dorm? Where's this money going?
When's this coming in? We've written up and making sure everybody's going to abide by this so we can have a structure
and we could run this yard. The connection between the
Latin Kings in the streets and the ones in jail is
based upon influence. If you're just a peewee
or you're just a soldier, nine times out of 10, you're
not going to see a penny, unless it's your close comrades that was running with you head up. The Latin Kings, to be
dominant in a prison was based upon recognition
of you being about that, like you already having a name and you proving yourself in that prison. So when things came your way, you would handle it with violence. You'd be ready for
violence at any given time. You would form connections
within the prison based upon your street connections to really get influence on the guards. Now you got influence on the guards, you have access to things of the world. The more people I would have,
I understand chain of command. I understand how an organization works. So at this point, I'm
coming in at a high level, so this was based upon my security because I wouldn't really
be touching this stuff, but I would capitalize off of it. So the more people, the
more structure I have, so the less things I have to
do, putting myself in jeopardy, because I have people
under me that I could say, "Look, go do this, go do
that, move this, move this." And then I reap the benefits of it. So then I started going
to war with the tactical. By this time I'm on extended. I'm bored. I have nothing better to do. "All right, let's fight.
Let's fight, let's go to war." I'm going to get respect from
my comrades, other prisoners, and then on top of that, you get the respect from
the correctional officers because now they know
if you mess with him, you're not going to be able
to go home at shift change because you're going to
have so much paperwork that you gotta do. You been here 10 hours, 12 hours. You might not make it home for 17 hours if you mess with this prisoner. So guess what they do?
They stop messing with you. For me, prison, it made me worse. I didn't get saved in prison. The only thing I got from prison is how to be a better criminal. Man, my breaking point, bro, I didn't care about the fighting. Like, pain don't last long, you know what I'm saying? It was really my kids, man. When I did that five-year bid
and my little girl, Hailey, she was 2 years old when I went. I had been locked up, like, four years, and I was on maximum security. This instant, the officer
that was working the dorm, he was cool with me, so
he's working visit this day and he lets me hold my little girl, even though I'm non-contact. I got a belt, I got
handcuffs, and I got shackles. I'm holding my beautiful baby girl. She's like, "Daddy, what is this?" I said, "That's my bracelet, baby. Daddy's shining, you
don't see they brand new?" And she looks and she
said, "Well, what is this?" And she grabs my shackles,
and I start doing like this, and I'm making them jump like a jump rope. I was like, "Oh, that's
my jump rope, baby." And she looks, she said, "You look stuck. You look like you stuck." I told you, prison didn't make me better. I'm about to start this
empire when I hit the streets. But all of this stuff was breaking me. So getting out, for me, it wasn't even a thought because I didn't care what they would do or what they was going to say. I started going to prison at 12, 13. It was stealing clothes and selling them on the block and then possession of a stolen weapon. They kicked my mama's door
in and they found the gun. Then we was all at a parade. We was really going to
fight another rival gang. We had a eight-ball in a bandana. One of the guys had a knife. But, man, God intervened. We ended up getting caught
smoking weed in the car before we could get out and
do what we was going to do. At 16, one count of
first-degree attempted murder, three counts of aggravated assault, one count of aggravated criminal damage. It was gang-related. Got locked back up, and I was in there 17, and I got a five-year suspended sentence. Then I ended up getting
charged as an adult. I was on the streets two years, and then I got locked back up. I came home 26, 27, I got
locked back up 28, 29. I come home 30, 31. Then 32 I overdosed on
heroin for the third time. I was dead on the floor. And I say the paramedics, awesome. They did their job, but
they didn't bring me back. He brought me back
because I got a purpose. It's like I didn't care about my life. I'm putting myself in jeopardy. You living that life not knowing
that you hurting everybody that loves you in the process. When I overdosed on heroin,
I ended up getting sentenced to the church, mandated by the court with a suspended sentence
saying if he gets kicked out, if he leaves, we vacate
the sentence, take him back to trial on the initial
charge, and multi-bill him. So it's either complete
this one-year discipleship rehabilitation program or go
do 15, 30 years in prison. I went, because I'm like,
I'm going to face this. I said, "Paco's dead. I'm a new creation in Christ." That's where rebirth come from. I'm in the process of
opening up a facility to where we rehabilitate
men and we disciple men. Some people look at me and
be like, "You're a pastor?" Well, what's a pastor
supposed to look like? Older men need to take accountability to be there for the younger men. They want to see you love them. You gotta give your time
to this younger generation. Don't just tell them what they need to do, show them what they need to do, right? So how are you going to do that? By proximity, by inconveniencing yourself and going into these neighborhoods,
going into the projects. I go hood to hood, block to block, prison to project to juvenile facilities, and I share my testimony,
and I make it tangible because I make myself transparent. I don't get cleaned up
like I never been dirty. So, I used to rap for the world. I opened up for Kevin Gates, opened up for VH1 "Love & Hip Hop." I had a beat from Mannie Fresh with Mannie Fresh on the
chorus with Cash Money Records. I got a new single out with my wife and our sister Roxy coming out
as part of the worship team. It's called "Amazing Grace." It's like a 2023 rendition. It's no coincidence, like I'm here talking
about God's amazing grace, you know what I'm saying? My name is Alex Sanchez,
I was involved with MS-13, and this is how crime works. Gang violence comes in
all shapes and forms. I ended up going to prison. I got shot at. I got deported. The crimes that I committed
took me to a place that's ugly, but I learned and came out strong. I came to the United States in 1979 and experienced a culture shock and then a culture clash
with other ethnic groups, especially even Mexican,
amongst Latino groups. I started seeking ways in
which to defend myself, and in middle school I was introduced to the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners 13. The initiation into the gang, it always is through a beating. They call it "jumping in" in English, or in Spanish "brincado," which is getting beaten
up by four or more people. This is part of what you expect in the warfare, is that
you will get beat up, you will suffer violence, right? And that's the initiation of
getting jumped in, is violence. I ended up joining what's called the Normandie Locos clique. Initially, it was all about protection, being there for each other. It was seven of us, two
women and five guys, and we were all homeless. Shortly thereafter, we have our first friend that was killed. We called him Rocky, from
the Normandie Locos clique. And that basically brought
in this element of vengeance, of getting back to those that hurt us. Around '85, '86, there
was an influx of weapons coming into the United States, especially Los Angeles,
with the crack epidemic. It was the first time you
saw the Uzi, the AK-47. MS-13 didn't have the funds
to get those type of weapons. So for us, the cheapest
thing that we could use was the machete. It was something
culturally relevant to us. It was a tool for
harvesting in our country. And eventually, we were known as a gang that used the
machete in gang warfare. We would go and fight in rumbles
in the park, in the street. Some of us would carry knives. Back in the day, a chain, right? I myself got arrested for crimes, carrying a concealed weapon. I was on my way to shoot somebody, and I got stopped by the
police, and they found a gun. I will say divine
intervention. I don't know. But I probably would've killed somebody or probably would be in prison doing life, like many of the folks that I go see. The violence that I used was the way that I used to release
that pain that I felt inside. I was that angry boy,
and I became an angry man, and it took me a long time to realize that I could make a change. I had tattoos on my body,
on my fingers, on my arms. I ended up getting three dots,
which was "la vida loca," "the crazy life." Then I ended up getting the gang name tattooed across my chest. For more traditional gangs, they would put their gang name or a girlfriend's name on their eyebrows. But to start getting
tattooed all your face, for the MS-13, was something different. The more tattoos you had on is the more committed you
were to letting people know that I'm here, I'm in your face. I went through the painful process of getting tattoo removal. It was difficult for me, because I felt like a coward doing it, that I was letting go of so
many things that I have done and things that I believed in, but that was part of the process. The relationship that MS-13 with the Barrio 18th Street goes way back to the '80s. We, for the most part, were in the same blocks
as their neighborhood was, but we also maintained close relationship. It was mostly because the
18th Street neighborhood in the area was composed
from a lot of immigrants, mostly Central American and Salvadorian. But in 1992, Shaggy from the Western Locos was shot and killed by
members of the 18th Street, and that's what severed the relationships. Many people started dying, primarily because everybody
knew each other's hideouts. 18th Street was a lot bigger than MS-13. Still is in the area. And so they were more connected with other gangs as well. They brought in other Chicano
neighborhoods to target us. I got called in and said, "Hey, Alex, be ready because
you can't trust them anymore, because they're going to
want to kill you guys." It was a cruel war.
It was a difficult war. There have been points
where they're being called temporary troops and whatnot,
especially in El Salvador. But also in 1993 in Los Angeles, there was a truce amongst
all the Latino gangs that actually reduced violence. But the violence has not gotten back to the levels we saw prior to 1993. If you just live on the
sides and do what you're told and represent the neighborhood well, then you'll be OK. If you break the rules, right, then there is punishment. There are some that are judged to death, especially those that
collaborate with law enforcement, those that become snitches
or tell on their brothers. But I have not seen that there's, like, a task force of gang members that are going around and looking at every
address that you lived in to go target you and kill you. Most of the time,
folks that die that way are because they come back to the block. MS-13 is known as Mara Salvatrucha. You could say MS-13, MS, La Mara. You can have different references to it, even alluding to la garra, or the claw, which is
the gang sign, right? While you have the devil's
horn, the two fingers, that is used too, also in
the heavy-metal rock scene. People have transformed it. They put both hands to make
an "M" or an "S," and so on. MS-13, or MSS-13 during the time, was into that heavy-metal scene, whether it was Slayer,
Iron Maiden, or Megadeth. That music really was how we let out. It wasn't that we were
evil devil worshippers. There were some individuals
within the gang structure that were into la Santa
Muerte, for instance. You have people from all the
denominations in the gang, some people that believe in Christ. So it's a community overall. That's what you call the barrio. So in some ways, being in the gang is like being in some sort of religion. In '86, I ended up getting arrested and went to central juvenile hall. Once you're in prison, you
have to defend yourself, and you're known by
other rival gang members as somebody that stood up for himself. So it became a rite of passage to rise up through the ranks like that. Eventually, I made it to prison in 1991, and went back to prison
at least three times. And in 1994, I ended up getting deported. After 12 years of a civil war, the war was over in El Salvador. So many people were getting deported. My first thought was, "I'm
going to start fresh." I don't have a criminal
record. I speak English, so maybe I could get
into the tourist business or something to that nature, right? I wasn't planning on going
over there and gangbanging or getting caught up or dying down there. But that changed immediately
once I got to the airport. As I was going to the terminal, I saw the gang writing on the hillside, and it said "MS-13." But as we go down the highway, I ended up seeing on the
wall, on the brick wall, the Roman numerals "XVIII," which means 18th Street. And then I realized,
"Wow, they're here too. So the rivalry must continue." And I started to start looking around and being more alert as to where I was at and who was beside me. So, shortly after arriving in El Salvador, I ended up getting death threats. A death squad came out
called la Sombra Negra, or the Black Shadow. And their mission was to
eradicate the gang violence that was rising. I had two people with me, two
gang members that were young. They had been child soldiers in the war, and they were looking up to me. I had two grenades,
and I gave them to them. I'd never used a grenade, and I said, "I'll probably blow myself up, but these two guys, they
know how to use a grenade." So I carried my gun, and
they carried the grenades, and that's how we went
to different places, because I was under the
threat that I could be killed or shot at or even try to be kidnapped from these death squads. The level of violence
was probably quadruple from whatever I had experienced
in the United States, and that was residue from the war. So you would see gang members using that type of in-your-face violence that was used during the war. I couldn't go to my home
anymore, so I was on the run. I ended up eventually
deciding to flee El Salvador because I felt death around me. Coming up as another immigrant, I got kidnapped in Oaxaca by the federales and almost died in the desert crossing Matamoros into
Brownsville, Texas. So I have this knowledge of tragedy, of what I saw of other migrants coming up all the way from South America. It's not something that
I would wish on anyone, to be targeted, kidnapped,
held for ransom, and possibly killed just for
coming into the United States. But the desperation of what
our countries go through forces people to have to put
themselves in such an ordeal. The only place that I could
go back was to my old block. I was tired of going to prison. I was tired of a life of violence
and looking over my back, and I was able to talk
to the neighborhood, and they gave me a pass. Because they seen that I was working and taking care of business, and I still lived in the block, but I wasn't getting involved in none of their gang activities. There isn't a specific, I would say, leadership structure, but it's whoever fills
that void in that moment in the neighborhood where
there's no clear individual. Most of the time, nobody really wants to
take leadership of a gang because you become a prime
target by law enforcement. They're not a secret group
of people that are trying to make millions and millions of dollars. They're disorganized structures that work on what crimes
they could benefit from. In Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, you have individuals that might take on, you know, into a criminal entity, such as being part of a cartel or getting involved in human trafficking. But it's not something that's
a direct goal of the gang, to be something like that. So, what El Salvador has done right now with creating the biggest
prison in the continent in the smallest country in the continent is that it fits over 40,000 people in a place called Tecoluca. The prison's called Cecot, and they have been transferring
all these people there that they have designated as gang members to be incarcerated for life. These individuals will never
set foot out of those prisons but in a coffin, and that's what the message
has been from the president. We have seen this before. El Salvador has had
zero-tolerance initiatives with the Cero Tolerancia,
Mano Dura initiatives. That created mass incarceration, and it didn't reduce violence. This prison is basically going to be holding all these people that
have been judged unjustly. Based on just their affiliation, they're being sentenced to life in prison. In the history of mass incarceration, especially in California,
that has over 33 prisons, this has been a failure in
regards to reducing violence. So we know that mass incarcerating people is not going to bail
us out of the problems that created all this
problem in the first place. At this moment, we have the military of El
Salvador tackling the problem. They're arresting, they're on the streets, they have roadblocks every
other mile to see who goes by. You have local police,
the national civil police, but you also have
underground organizations, such as the death squads, the exterminators that
they call themselves. Before it was the Black Shadow; now it's these exterminadores that are social-cleansing groups that target a specific people
for assassination, basically. So I think that politicians
really need to start thinking, what is the exit strategy out
of this mass incarceration and having the country
militarized, as they do right now, and start really focusing
also in the prevention piece that has always been
neglected by every politician, every presidency before that. The Mara Salvatrucha
started in the late '70s into the early '80s in what's considered the Koreatown, Pico-Union
area of Los Angeles. And it started because
of the mass migration of immigrants coming from Central America, unaccompanied minors and
children who came here and suffered this culture clash with different ethnicities, right? The migration flow started
impacting other states, into, like, Long Island in the 2000s; the Washington, DC, metropolitan area; places like Houston, Texas, where there's a big Salvadorian community. And in the United States, prison became part of the continuation of engagement of the gang. It didn't stop the gang by
incarcerating all these people, but it influenced the gang
now to grow and connect. Once the war ended in El Salvador, the government of the United States started mass deporting people
to not only El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, and that's what started
the expansion of MS-13 in those countries. Homies Unidos started
in El Salvador in 1996 by members of gangs that had
been deported to El Salvador. Many other members, I knew
them from the neighborhood, from the gang, or I had done
time in prison with them. They invited me to a
conference in Santa Cruz, and that's how we
started creating programs in the Pico-Union and, well,
in Koreatown, initially. It wasn't easy in the beginning. We really didn't have the
trust of law enforcement. In 2000, I became part
of the Rampart scandal, which, they had arrested
a gang-unit officer stealing kilos of cocaine
out of the evidence room. And then he flipped, and then he told about all the crimes that the gang unit was committing, things that we were saying that they were doing in the courtrooms, but the jury didn't believe us over a cop. I became part of the Rampart scandal behind being a key witness, an alibi for a 14-year-old kid that was being charged with murder, in which he was at the
church during our program during the time that
the murder took place. So it couldn't have been him. And that's when the same
officers that arrested him came after me, and they arrested me for the sole purpose of
turning me over to immigration to be deported. So that developed into this new scandal within immigration during
that time and the police of how they used immigration as a tool to get rid of people
they didn't want around. And then eventually I was released and won political asylum in 2002, but the LAPD had not forgotten me and were not happy that I sued them, and they settled. And in 2009, they came after me again. They put me in a federal RICO case. The charges were dismissed, and I was able to restart again, because Homies Unidos lost everything. We lost the office, we lost
the funding, we lost the staff. So I organized again. And now, we have 11 staff doing a lot of work in the community. Having been part of that myself, it's like, I know that I'm on a hit list, on a target list by the
federal government, the LAPD, and they're just looking for ways in which they can get me indicted. So I have to walk a thin
line everywhere I go. I have to watch everything I say. Well, the media has really
given a lot of publicity to the MS-13 gang. That comes down through the state, especially when you have a president that directly names a particular gang like MS-13, and the repercussions
that that has behind it. Because once a president
mentions something, it's telling their departments to go after this particular group. MS-13 is one of the most
vulnerable gangs to go after because they're targeted by the immigration rhetoric. The "bad hombre." One individual commits a
crime, it's in every newspaper. While other gangs such
as the Crips, the Bloods, 18th Street, the Latin Kings, who in some cases are
bigger than the MS-13, are not — have coverage like this one, because they're mostly either Puerto Rican or Mexican American or African American, which
makes them US citizens. And nothing feeds gangs as labeling them as "the world's most dangerous," as "the city's most dangerous." The mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa at one point said that they put out a list of the top 10 worst gangs in Los Angeles, and every gang wanted to be part of it. It was like, "Hey, I'm dangerous too." So it creates this system of trying to see which gang is No. 1. And every gang wants to be No. 1. You get to a point where you get tired of being
chased by the police. You get tired of being called
by your mother and saying, "Hey, I'm raising your children. When are you going to
raise your own children?" So you start trying to figure out, like, I'm getting too old for this, or I want to be more responsible. People age out. People, some of them become Christians, some of them try to study
and get a degree or something and start their own businesses. You have many, many gang members
from MS-13 that are pastors that have turned their lives around, and now they're preaching. I'm still called a gang member, right? And I say, well, I am. I am part of it. I work in those communities. So I am. I cannot say that I'm
no longer a gang member, because that's how society has labeled me, that I'm a gang member for life. But am I a gang member that's calmed down? Yes. I'm somebody that's looking
out, helping out now the children of many of my
friends that are in prison. Yes. In my life, I've done a lot of things, a lot of good things, but also bad things. And I regret those things that I've done. But what I'm doing is trying to give back to the
community what I once took. The organization, Homies Unidos, we're not stopping gangs,
we're reducing violence. Law enforcement is incarcerating them. We're trying to save as many as we can by helping them once they're
ready to do their lives. Having a nonprofit, you don't have that two-bedroom, two-story house with a pool. No, you're not going to have those things. I'm able to support myself and my family and the little, humble place that I have that's not even mine. I'm renting. But I think that a nonprofit
is always struggling with day-to-day costs. I would love to have
folks that are well off that have the funding be able to give us what we need to expand. My name is Omar Sharif, I was formerly involved in
gang activity in London, and this is how crime works. I was involved in gangs
from 2005 until 2011. I'm grateful that I'm still alive, although I've come very close to losing my life inside of gangs. I've had a bunch of knives
put to my neck, stomach. I've been stabbed twice in my right leg. I've had guns put to me. The structure of a gang is
almost like being in employment. OK? You have the newbies
that come involved. You then have management. You then have senior management. I got involved in a gang when
I was around 13 years old, actually from selling sweets in school. I was approached one day by
someone who said, you know, "How would you like to make more money?" And initially I knew what
he was talking about. I was scared, but when he
started mentioning things about, you know, you can be a man, you can provide for, help
your parents at home. And when you come from
a council flat estate and sometimes things are not easy, that kind of languaging
is enough to make you say, "Well, OK, can I actually do this?" When you join at the age that I did, you're considered a younger. A younger is the street soldier. A younger is the person who just gets employed into the gang. As part of the gang
initially as a younger, we're to hold certain things, we're to make deliveries,
we're to be on call. You're told where to go, what to do, not to look into bags,
not to look into boxes. It's just, you're a yes-man. And we look up to our olders. So our olders are the
people that we aspire to be. The ones that have the money, you know, at a time, that had the
Gucci belts, the Rolexes, the gold teeth, the nice cars. In a gang, the older is
not always in charge, but he is almost like middle management. So he takes control of what gets moved in and out of the area, who's selling what on certain streets, money management, distribution, and he'll have the -- he or
she. It can be a she as well. They'll have the connections
to the people at the top. So it's kind of a chain of command. So they're the ones who normally even groom people into a gang. They're the ones who,
when things go a bit sour and people get hit on, beaten up, sometimes kidnapped, sometimes threatened, it's the olders that they call. But I know from experience that even the olders, who we looked up to, they are speaking to people above them. I've seen people who are above the olders who look nothing like us, who don't sound like us at all. I can guess the jobs that they do, and they are very embedded into society, which was quite an eye-opener for me. Because I thought, even as
a young Black guy in London, it's only guys like me
that do this kind of stuff. But actually, we're just
their foot soldiers. So even our olders, who
we wanted to become, they're still the
yes-man for someone else. The people who are above
our olders in the gang, the highest on the hierarchy, from what I understood, this couple, they were massive on the
real-estate scene in the UK. They were not involved
themselves in the dirty work, but a lot of the money that
went going into their businesses came from the money that a
lot of the foot soldiers, the youngers like myself, would be making and passing up the food chain. It's scary to think that
when you go to a bank or you're speaking to a lawyer or you're walking into greater
London and you're talking to someone that's quite high
up in business, for example, they have interesting habits on the side, or hobbies on the side, because I've seen it with my own eyes. The way that street gangs make
their money here in London, there are things like kidnappings; there are hits, where
someone wants someone to be hurt or killed;
but the most common way, which I'd say is what you hear of or see most of day to
day, is by selling drugs. Gangs normally have things
called trap houses or bandos. Trap houses are places where
drugs will be sold from, where there could be stored weapons. Gang members will be living there or looking after the place, for example. And these are acquired
in a number of ways. So these could be places where squatters have been for a while. It could be someone else's
home that belongs to the gang. And these are safe spots for the gang. So if anything happens,
we'll get a call saying, "Right, meet us at the trap
house." We know where that is. The address is never texted over a phone. It's never spoken over a phone. It's always told verbally, so there's no traces to where it could be. And if they're in the
area the gang belongs to, the police initially will, immediately will make a connection. Gang wars can start over the smallest things or the biggest things. Smaller things could be they
were at a club or a rave, and from there someone gets stabbed, and then it's a whole,
we need to retaliate, we to send a message, we
need to show them who we are. So they rang up everyone, and then it's now not just
one person versus one person, it's actually a gang versus
gang, postcode versus postcode. And now we're talking
50 to 100 people plus. It got to a point where we
were having postcode wars, meaning it was my block, NW1, versus NW5. These gang wars started because people started to become greedy. People were looking for power. People were looking for,
just to be significant. And also people wanted to rise up. Postcode wars are also
named interstate wars. This is something that started
even in the '60s, '70s, which areas became smaller or bigger. And it's a way of protecting territory. Now there are things called
block wars, estate wars, which are, even within the same postcode, there is such rivalry. There is such demand for
who is more important. So it goes from area, postcode, now to blocks, which creates further division. Years ago, there was, it seemed to be more of a reason as to
why they're going to war, because something big happened. Even recently, I was mentoring about 10 young boys from a school, and one of them said to another one something offends him about his mom. And that spilled out from school. And because it was filmed
and put on social media, one of them actually
ended up getting stabbed. There was a video of around, to me, like, 60 people having a fight. I could see weapons. I
saw machetes coming out. What are they fighting over? Essentially it's nothing, really. Those fights are not happening over drugs, not happening over a threat
from someone outside. It's just two male egos that
can't have a conversation, and it has to result in violence, and then sometimes even death. Although guns are easy to source, knives are still the bigger problem. We hear more deaths happening from knives than gunshots for sure. Maybe because the laws around
knives aren't that regulated. Because they say if you carry a knife, you go to prison for four years. But then I hear people getting
three, four, five warnings. So people aren't really
taking the law seriously. And nowadays, when you hear
about someone being stabbed, it's a younger against a younger. Olders don't get involved
with stuff like that. And these youngers are
not going to be able to get a hold of a gun unless
they steal it from someone or steal it from the
trap house, for example. For any under-18-year-old to get a knife, it's as easy as going onto Amazon and clicking something
for next-day delivery, and it gets delivered. It's not regulated. I know even on Snapchat, there are accounts on Snapchat
every day where they say, "Hey, we have five machetes. We have five army knives
with knuckle dusters attached to it. Who wants this?" I've seen axes with chains. Why are they making these things? Why are they not asking for proof of ID? Some of them might say, "You
must be over 18 to buy this." That has never deterred anyone under 18 to say, "OK, ooh, I shouldn't do this." They don't know that by making that sale and then delivering it to that house, that young person goes
and kills someone here. They're part of that cycle. But they're so far attached from that. In the UK, there is a law
around carrying a knife, around the size, the blade itself being less than 3 inches.
It has to be foldable, and you shouldn't be carrying
it for the wrong reasons. I mean, I've been stopped
and searched before, and sometimes I did have a knife on me, but I did have a foldable knife and I wasn't in a state of anger. So the guy said to me, actually, if he caught me and I
was in a state of anger, then he would've arrested me. And that made me realize actually they don't have a correct
way of policing this. Because I know so many, well, I knew so many guys who would carry bigger blades on them,
ones that you can't fold. And they'd be walking with those on high streets, for example. I've never heard of someone going to prison for carrying a knife. So, I grew up in Marylebone, which essentially is a
very, very nice area. However, there is a division, because there's one side of
Marylebone where you have very nice mansions and
nice flats with nice cars. That's not where I lived.
I lived on the other side. I lived on the other side,
where it's council flats, it's block towers. Even though it's on our doorstep, we're brought up with a
mindset and a belief system that we're not good enough for that. It's easy for anyone to be
interested in joining a gang, for many reasons. For young people normally,
it's to do with money. The other main reason is that belonging. It's having a family, having
that brotherhood, a sisterhood. We don't go to private schools, right? We go to just public schools, and that's where it all starts. I didn't run to a gang and say, "Hey, I want to be in
your gang to make money." I tried to go down the proper route. You know, I borrowed some
clothes to go to interviews. I applied for 50 jobs when I left school, and no one said yes to me. If society's not allowing
me to make money in this way but there's a lifestyle
which could, where do I go? The first thing they do is befriend you, is they welcome you in. So they make you feel a part of a family. The second thing is to spoil you somehow. You know, if they know you need money, they give you some money. If they know you're
hungry, you get some food. Then they test you somehow. They may ask you to
hold something for them. They may ask you to be
somewhere at a certain time. And normally they've set something up to get you robbed on purpose. They set you up in some
way to see what you say, because that's them checking in on, "Oh, can we trust this person?" It's really bad the way
they make you trust them and actually love them as a family. But you're just a pawn in a bigger game. In a gang, it's almost
like putting together a fantasy football team. Different strengths.
Someone could be fast. Someone could be a good driver. Someone could be a good fighter. Someone could stab and not care about it. Someone could steal. So when
they recruit for a gang, I would say there are
qualities that they look for. The No. 1 thing they look for is loyalty, but they also look at, how
can they strengthen the gang? What can that person bring to the table? New gang members are recruited
on a geographical basis. So the local recruitment is, I think, the priority for a gang, because they need to have numbers high. They need to have a
certain amount of people on road doing certain things, a certain amount of people
moving, distributing, managing. So, in the UK, we have
something called county lines. And this is where a lot
of the inner-city gangs, there's no more territory,
everything's been divided up, so they're now thinking, "All
right, how can we expand?" So county lines are where
these gangs want to operate in smaller towns, smaller
cities, rural areas. And they normally use
young people for this. So you may have heard
of a term "going OT," which is going out of town, and they're facilitated by the olders. So the olders would have someone in place who may live in a smaller town. They may have someone who
has a farmhouse somewhere. Train tickets, everything is
paid for for the young person. They're given a budget, they give them money for
lunch and things like that. They'll tell them to dress
how they dress normally. They'll give them a backpack, say, "Look, don't open the
backpack. Here's the address. Go here, wait here, or call
this number," for example. The whole point of doing that
is so that police will say, "Well, it's a young person.
We don't have to search them." I think in some way, the
UK is influenced by the US, not just on the rap scene. I know the drill scene came out, but also there's always
a bit of competition. For example, the USA, the Bloods versus Crips, that
also came here in the UK. And that was a massive scene for a while. There was a period where
it just became colors. So there was just the bandana, which represented which color
or which gang you're from. That's really why we
started to see, you know, music videos become more grimy. We started to see more killings. We started to see more
weapons on the street. So, in the US, we have
gangs like VMF and GD, been going on for 30
years plus. Latin Kings. I feel that in the UK,
gangs are more divided. Here in the UK, you can
have an estate, a block. And even within that block, it's divided. You know, from block to
block, street to street. That's what I experienced, and nowadays I'm sure it's even worse. So the main difference for me
is the size of the operation. But also, it seems that
they have more stability and more structure in the way
that it creates longevity. I believe social media
plays a massive role in the rise of gang violence because of the exposure that they get. I've interviewed a young person in prison, and he said the reason why he
killed the people he's killed is because of songs that he'd listened to. He said he wanted to
recreate that in real life. And I'm focused on young people because they're the vulnerable ones. They're the ones who aren't
able to make a decision for themselves yet. I know for sure that there's going to be some collateral damage from these things. Because when you listen clearly, if you can understand what they're saying in these drill songs, it's scary. What's allowed to be sold
and listened to publicly and shared on radios for example, because young people will listen to that, and they want to replicate
that because they think, "Ah, OK, he is now my role model, my idol. For me to be deemed as someone successful, I need to do what he's doing." For children to avoid
being targeted for gangs, it comes down to discipline for me. It's really understanding what
you're getting yourself into. I think the way gangs
are policed nowadays, it's difficult, because it
made me feel so embarrassed, you know, to be stopped and
searched in front of my mom. And, you know, she cried at home, saying, "Why do they think my son
is this kind of person?" And I hated seeing her upset. But if I put their hat on, I think, "Right, well, if we
stop and search everyone that looks like the criteria stereotype, we could find another weapon
and take it off the streets." For me, that's the wrong
approach, because not everyone who looks a certain way
belongs in that stereotype. I think stop and search should
be reviewed as a policy, because if you find one young person and he's carrying a knife
that's under 3 inches long that is foldable, they'll take it away, slap on the wrist, "Have a good day." Next day, he'll go find
exactly the same knife from somewhere else, carry it again. Instead of creating or
deepening that hate, you should try and create a relationship by doing things like going into schools. I've always said that you
need to speak their language. If you want to police them,
sit down and talk to them. A brother of a friend of mine, a while back he was caught on the streets. He didn't have a lot of drugs
on him, but he had enough, and he was arrested and went
to prison for a short while. If someone said to him, "Hey, listen, we know what you're doing out here. How about we offer you an opportunity to earn money with us or
we'll find you a job?" And you've got to think of it like this: Prison is a business. Every single person that
gets put into prison, someone's getting paid. It's a good deterrent for some people, because some people might
take that as a lesson, saying, "Well, oh, I know a friend of mine was carrying something and got arrested. I shouldn't do it too." But for the most people, it's not enough. In prison, there's more going
on there than on the streets. This is what we don't
hear about on the news. There's people dying in prisons. The gangs are still doing
the same thing in prison. I believe wealth inequality definitely contributes towards
gang activity, gang violence. The way these gangs make their money, and also from personal experience, is through drugs, predominantly. If 90% of the money comes from drugs and you make it legalized,
one thing can happen, that there's going to be
too much demand for it, so either the gang will
start fighting even more because now they've got an
open market, for example, or it could destabilize them, because the second that companies hear, pharmaceutical companies
will start getting involved, and they're massive players. That will completely eliminate the gangs. So, will they have money to buy weapons? Will they have money to
even fund gang wars anymore? It probably wouldn't happen. For many young people who carry knives, one of the reasons, and
one of my initial reasons, was because we feel unsafe or we've heard about people being stabbed and we want to be able
to protect ourselves. I don't think there's a quick fix to trying to make a
young person feel safe. The way to solve the issue
and deter them from it isn't by fear, because that doesn't work. It's by reeducating them on the consequences of these things and actually giving people opportunity, showing people more love. These people that are involved in gangs, they did everything they did just because they wanted
to feel love from people. They didn't get love from home. They didn't get that affection at home, but when they did something,
the gang showed them a respect, and that's what drawed
them in even deeper. One thing I know that's
changed over the years and that would still help
other people feel safe in gang-led areas is the
presence of youth centers. And these were places where
you could have rival gangs come to the same building,
make music together, play pool together, play
basketball together. And it was a place of safety. When you have something
that you're passionate about and have something that you care about, it removes the amount of
time you spend with the gang. It removes the amount of time
you spend on the streets. Schools do have a big part
to play in gang culture. And it works both ways,
because I've seen how if you have a school that's in the middle of three areas that are
having a war, for example, then you have a big issue
because then you have, just like in prison, you have gang activity
happening at school. It will take a community
approach to remove or reduce gang violence and gang activity. But I think it has to be
a complete united front from all levels of society. If I have to look at London
gangs 10 years from now, I can see the problem becoming deeper. I can see a culture which is being even more embedded into society. I think London gang
culture will become almost like a standard for other
gangs in other countries. There are young people who don't look at the seriousness of this. They
will see it as, it's cool. They will see it as, it's a thing to be, just like I did when I was young. So, yeah. 10 years from now is a scary
place, especially as a parent. Trying to get out of a gang is one of the hardest things you can do. I didn't have a choice. It got to a point where I
had to go out of the ends. So leaving the area where I was from. I had to move to a different area. And this is because I'd seen people die. This is because I got attacked. I had been stabbed myself,
and I just knew in my mind there were two directions
for me, there was prison or there was being
stabbed or ending up dead. But it was in that moment of darkness where I realized I need
to make a bigger decision. I need to make a decision of what I'm going to do with my life. But it took me going and
speaking to the people who were my olders and
exactly telling them what I'm telling you right now on camera, is that I've had enough
and that, you know, my mental health at the
time wasn't in a good place. I wasn't able to speak to
any of them ever again. I wasn't welcomed. I was actually advised
to stay out of the area. Because I was actually able
to get out of the situation, I feel a responsibility to
be a voice to other people. Since leaving the gang, my No. 1 priority was to work on myself to
become a better person. So right now I'm a mentor and a coach. As a mentor, I work with young
people in schools, prisons, universities, helping them
understand their mindset, helping them to make better decisions. And as a peak-performance coach, I'm working with individuals
to do exactly the same thing but also to help them understand
what drives them as humans. There are definitely aspects of being around the gang activity that I do regret. But right now what I'm
doing with young people, adults, and people in
all levels of society, I wouldn't be able to
have those conversations if I didn't go through
what I've been through. My name is Jay Dobyns. I'm a retired undercover federal agent, and I infiltrated the Hells Angels. This is how crime works. With all the hatred from me in that gang and from their supporters, they can take some satisfaction of that they ran right over the top of me. All that battle damage,
all those things happened, the failed prosecution, all
that blood, sweat, and tears, they ran right over the
top of me and kept going. I was just a speed bump. I was part of the Hells
Angels investigation, which we named Operation Black Biscuit, from 2001 to 2003. I
answered to a case agent. We were both ATF agents. My false persona, I went by the name of Jay Davis. The gang members knew me as Jaybird, and I portrayed myself to be a
gun runner, a debt collector. The Hells Angels don't have
to actively recruit members. They want people that bring them value. I had spent some time as an associate of the Hells Angels, so
getting to know them, getting to let them get familiar with me, and I was invited to the clubhouse. And the invitation, it
wasn't so much an invitation as it was an order. They believed
that I was doing debt collections and that I was running guns
within their territory. So I was told that if I intended
to keep doing that business, I had to come to their
clubhouse and meet their members and basically have them
sanction me to continue. I showed up at the Mesa clubhouse and was greeted in the street
by four or five Hells Angels. Some had guns, some had baseball bats. In Arizona, you can open carry firearms, and so I had guns that were exposed on me. Some of the members who
were basically working as security told me you can't bring your guns
inside our clubhouse. That's not allowed. And I told them, I'm
not taking my guns off, and I don't take them off for anybody, including the Hells Angels. You have people that you feel like you need to defend yourself against. So do I. If I allowed them to
start dictating everything to me, it was never going to end. And at that point, one of the shot callers from
the Hells Angels came out and put his arm over my
shoulder and he said, "Look, I make the rules, and you can
come in with your guns on." So right off the bat, from that very first critical interaction, I felt like I was winning. The Hells Angels call themselves a club, the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. There's charters, and within the charter,
the chapter, the group, there's a president, a
vice president, a warlord, which is in charge of weapons
and retaliations and defense. When I was associated with
the Mesa Hells Angels, which is where I started, their president was Bad Bob Johnston. And he was a very well-respected, feared longtime Hells Angel. If I could gain his trust, that his trust would be projected to other members and would open doors for me. In the biker gang, you
start off very slowly. The first step is that
you're an associate, which is, you're just
someone who's spending some time in the presence
of the gang members. Once you build a relationship, the gang will ask you to hang around. Then, after you prospect, ultimately, hopefully you're doing that
to become a full-patch member. From the date of your prospecting from, when it starts, there's a
minimum mandatory of 365 days. And that's to some extent
how they insulate themselves, because they know that a cop
can't keep pace with them and can't keep up with
them for that long of time. To be a full-patched Hells Angel, it is everything to those members. The patches that they wear and the formatting of their vests,
which are also called cuts, is very important in this hierarchy. I was a hang-around for the Skull Valley, Arizona,
charter of the Hells Angels. So I had a black cut that had nothing but Skull Valley on the front. When you become a prospect, you get your bottom rocker,
the bottom curved patch. So when I was prospecting, I
got an Arizona bottom rocker. When you become a member, then you get your top rocker,
the designator "Hells Angels," or whatever the gang is,
and your center patch, which, the Hells Angels'
is the "death head." To get full membership, you have to be voted on by the
members of your charter, and you have to receive a 100% vote. If one member of that charter votes against you, you're
prospecting phase continues. There's another rule in the land of prospects, is that
it takes as long as it takes. Territory is very important
to the biker gangs. The territory you control influences how much money you can
make within that territory. They're constantly trying to acquire territories
of competitive gangs. The rivalry that I became most aware of, or closest to, was the
Hells Angels' rivalry with the Mongols motorcycle gang. The Mongols were a
California-based biker gang. I was at the 2002 Laughlin
River Run, which, it was a major, major biker
run in Laughlin, Nevada. The Mongols' home base
was Harrah's Casino, which was a short drive up the main Laughlin drag, Casino Drive, to where the Hells Angels' home base was, which was the Flamingo Hotel. Some Hells Angels went down to Harrah's and started poking
the tiger and got surrounded, and it was on. And it was
every man for himself. I stepped outside of the Flamingo, and police cruisers and
police motorcycles and cars and police helicopters were all
screaming down Casino Drive. And I was with another agent, and I turned to him and I said, "Well, I guess we know where
the Hells Angels went." Because the police response was massive. The Harrah's Casino riot,
the Morongo Casino riot, the Twin Peaks shooting in Texas, those biker clashes are
taking place all the time. We typically don't see it or hear about it until it takes place in a
public venue where civilians, where just common man
citizens, are involved in it. There were fights that I was present for, that I knew the rules, and I
didn't want to blow my cover. But at the same time, I
didn't want to watch someone, some innocent civilian, get beat down. I would find the target
of the of the beating and throw some legitimate punches on them. Like, I wasn't faking throwing good, hard, solid punches on the
victim of this rat-packing. But in essence, what I was doing was
protecting that victim's head. I wasn't going to kill
anybody punching him in the head, but they
would have gotten killed if they take a steel-toed
boot in the forehead. I got a call from a Skull
Valley charter officer: "Get to the clubhouse right now, and bring all your hardware,"
which meant bring your guns. I was told the Bandidos
are coming to Las Vegas. Las Vegas is our territory, and they have not requested a hall pass. We expect you to shoot them before they get the kickstands
down on their motorcycle. And here's the kicker: We're going to be watching
you from a distance. If you don't shoot them,
we are going to shoot you. I was able to get in
touch with the case agent, Joe Slatalla, and tell
him what my orders were. Joe Slatalla found this pack of Bandidos, pulled them to the side of
the road, and stopped them. So I showed up at the target location with
the Hells Angels watching me, but the Bandidos never showed up. In the eyes of the Hells Angels, all they knew is we sent Jaybird to Las Vegas to kill Bandidos, and dang it, he was there,
ready to handle his business. I allowed the Hells Angels to
see me in criminal situations in order to hopefully avoid
some of those mud checks that I knew were coming. In biker land, a mud check is a test to see if you're going to s--- your
pants when you're confronted with a treacherous situation. So they would accurately see
me in a narcotics transaction. I would either receive or give
narcotics and either receive or give money in exchange,
all while being witnessed by a Hells Angels, like,
enforcer, bodyguard. What they didn't realize is
that the person that I was in the transaction with was
another law enforcement officer who was playing the role of a drug dealer. The local police departments, the local officers, they
weren't in on the scheme. I got stopped by the cops all the time. I got beaten up by the cops. I was never as good of a motorcycle rider as the Hells Angels were. They could perform tricks and do all kinds of crazy stunts that I couldn't do. And riding in a pack of Hells Angels, it takes an enormous amount of focus. You have to trust the person riding next to you, because they're so close. Like, one person makes a mistake in that conga line of motorcycles,
and everybody's going down. I was told when you meet a Hells Angel and you got your sunglasses on, you better lift your sunglasses up and look that person in the eye. That member wants to see your eyes. I was told if I had riding gloves on, you better take your riding glove off when you shake hands with a Hells Angel. Never touch a Hells Angel's patch. Never slap them on the back. I made those mistakes and
was reprimanded for it. I was smacked for it on occasion. With regards to women, there's a hierarchy that
takes place within the gang. There's old ladies who are the wives or girlfriends of
members, and they're off limits. You better not get caught trying to mess around with a member's wife or girlfriend, because there's
a violent price to pay. But there's also women who, they move from member to member to member. Members can leave the gang of their
own free will in good standing. Like, in essence, they can retire, and when they retire,
they're considered out good. They still have to relinquish all their Hells Angels property,
but if you're out bad, they will come and take
back their cut, their vest. They will take back your
motorcycle. That's their property in their eyes, and they'll
take back that tattoo. I was a part and a piece of the process of those reclamations of
Hells Angels property. Like basically, almost like the police doing a
search warrant, breaking into a guy's house, and
taking every single thing that said or looked like it
belonged to the Hells Angels. The Hells Angels operate independently in their charters, as far as how they make money and how
they conduct their business. So there's charters that
run a fairly clean business and that aren't involved
in a lot of crime. There's others that are involved
in narcotics trafficking, gun running, extortions,
protection rackets. There's no payday or no salary to be drawn by being a
member of the Hells Angels. There's no big universal bank
account that issues paychecks. There was Hells Angels members that I ran across that
were selling street drugs and putting those profits in their pocket and keeping at least the bulk
of that profit for themselves. And then they also, they have legitimate businesses that
they can push money through. Just the swag and paraphernalia of the Hells Angels is a
multimillion-dollar business. The Hells Angels hold toy runs and they conduct blood drives
and they do community service, and that shouldn't be
taken away from them. They make positive contributions to society with those things. Hells Angels parties could be as spontaneous as the drop of a hat. You could be at the clubhouse,
and the next thing you know, music's blaring and guests are arriving and women are coming in
and the booze is flowing. They could be inside, outside. They happened at parks, campsites. There's a myth that every
Hells Angel is a drug addict. There was Hells Angels
that were fitness freaks, that took care of themselves. They ate well. They got their rest. They didn't drink. They didn't smoke. So to decline those
things wasn't necessarily a false alarm, a red flag against you. I have a tattoo of St. Michael on my arm and St. Michael is the patron
saint of law enforcement. It signifies good triumphing over evil. There was times when I got pressed, where I would show my St. Michael tattoo and say, do you understand what this is? I got this when I graduated from rehab. The reason why I'm here, the
reason why you are interacting with me, is because I'm sober, because I have money in my pocket. All those things that
are attractive to you. As the infiltration
investigation that I was working on started winding down, we had two years under
our belts, lots of money, well over a million dollars
invested in this investigation, and I still had not received membership. I still hadn't gotten my
full patch. I was a prospect. To be quite honest, selfishly, I was trying
to accelerate the process. So I went back to one of those very early statements
that was made to me: What happens if I cross
paths with a Mongol? I was told it's your
responsibility to kill them. So I went to the Skull Valley
Hells Angels leadership, and I told them, "I've got a
line on a Mongol in Mexico." We found this Mongol. I dug a shallow grave in the desert, took some
Polaroid pictures of the murder. What they didn't know is that
it was the ultimate scam. The murdered Mongol was a
member of our task force that we had dressed up, concealed his face in the pictures, and then we'd used blood and guts from the butcher
shop to create a murder scene, a crime scene. They made me a member there of the Skull Valley charter,
gave me a cut to wear. Now, after the fact, they
have denied a couple things. They denied that they believed it. OK, I understand that. They denied that I ever became a member. Both sides of that
explanation are actually true. I was made a member of
the Skull Valley charter. I was given a cut and told
that I was a Hells Angel and that I was a member of Skull Valley. But I was also told because I was within the one-year
prospect probation period, that an international vote
would have to be taken to accelerate my membership,
which never took place. Our case ended before the
Hells Angels took that vote. So so they're correct in that, too. I've never tried to hedge that. I've never tried to dance
around that or deny that. So the operation concluded
for a couple reasons. We had a lot, a vast amount of evidence against our suspects, physical
evidence, thousands of hours of tape-recorded conversation,
criminal conversations. In the end, we indicted 55
Hells Angels and associates, and 16 of those were indicted
on racketeering charges, RICO charges. Some charges were dismissed. Some charges were reduced. In that discovery open-source process, the Hells Angels learned
that the person they thought to be Jay Davis,
the debt collector, the gun runner, the
contract killer, Jaybird, was actually Jay Dobyns, an ATF agent. And the threats against me and my family started stacking up. The Hells Angels held
murder contracts on me. They were farmed to the Aryan Brotherhood. They were farmed to the MS-13
through the prison system. So all these people had their fingers on a murder contract for me. My family was in jeopardy, and in the summer of 2008, my
house was burned to the ground. In the process of this Hells Angels case, I abandoned and betrayed my family. I made this investigation my priority. My wife and my kids weren't. I was trying to be a
great undercover agent, and in the process I
betrayed my own family. That's one of the things, is
that in this undercover role, I built real human relationships. Not every second was spent in the middle of some criminal activity or doing something violent
or treacherous or illegal. I spent time with members
riding, casually riding, not violently or threatening
riding, shooting pool, hanging out. Members slept at my house.
I slept at members' house. There's human relationships
that are built, and you can never undercover
out the human factor. There's people you like.
There's people you don't like. It's no different than any
other aspect of society. I wrote a book. It's titled, "No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels." Then, after I did that, and after I followed ATF's
instructions to defend myself, they ultimately sued me for the book. I coached high school football at the end of my career
and into my retirement, which I've got a lot of satisfaction from. That service before self,
trying to influence the lives of young men and teach them
some football along the way. My name is John Pennisi. I'm a former made member
of Lucchese crime family. [screen buzzes] This is "How Crime Works." [screen buzzing and Whirring] The biggest misconception
about Cosa Nostra and the people that are
involved in that life are people really believe
that there is honor, loyalty, and respect. These three principles, which
Cosa Nostra is based on, it no longer exists. Honor, loyalty, and
respect have been replaced by selfishness and greed. [screen buzzing and whirring] The rules for a member is
the rules of the family and the rules of Cosa Nostra. And those particular rules are: You're not to put your hand
on another made member. You're not to go with
another made member's wife, or even girl, for that matter. You would need to be
fully blooded Italian, your mother and your
father need to be Italian, your bloodline needs to be all Italian. But with every rule, there's an exception, and there has been people who slipped through the
cracks, so to speak. One of the rules is you shouldn't
get involved in lawsuits, you should not sue people. And I know that there was a rule where you're not to get
involved in stocks and bonds. I'm not 100% sure if that's
still in effect today. Specifically in New York, you were not to kill women and children or family members in the Mob. They were not allowed to
use explosive devices, such as bombs, because on the other side, in Italy and Sicily, they were known to use explosives to take out members during a war, or just to take a member out. They didn't want that kind
of attention in New York. So there's an exception to every rule. Frankie DeCicco, who was the underboss for the Gambino family,
had an explosive device put under his car, and he was blown up as a result of that. The "no drug dealing" rule applies to all the Five Families,
but all the Five Families have drug-dealing
activities going on in it. Every family is going
to have certain members that are involved in the drug business and kind of turn a blind eye to it because it brings in so much money. Cosa Nostra members today have no problem breaking the rules on a daily basis, whereas in Carlo Gambino's era, you couldn't break the rules. Breaking the rules meant
getting yourself killed. So all these rules that were put in place for reasons are now being broken. So when you have an organization that no longer follows its own rules, it weakens the organization. [screen buzzing and whirring] Before they created the Five Families, the head of each family
was called a father. So that's where they would
get the name godfather. And at some point, they broke
it down to five fathers, and there was Five Families. So the Five Families in New York are the Genovese family,
which, in the street, they were known as the Westside. That's how we refer to them. There's the Gambino family.
There's Lucchese family. There's the Colombo family
and the Bonanno family. And they're like the nucleus of Cosa Nostra for the United States. So as far as the Five Families
all being in New York, they controlled the
entire state of New York. It wasn't only New York City. And then you have the
creation of the Commission, which was the idea,
basically, of Meyer Lansky, who looked at it as a board of directors. The Commission consisted of the head of each of the families,
those Five Families, and they would basically make decisions on anything that went on between them. Territories were divided, obviously, by what family represented
which part of New York City. It's kind of — they
cut their own turf out. But if it overlapped,
that's where a Commission would come in and make a ruling. [screen buzzing and whirring] So when they created the
structure of the Five Families, they set it up more like a military. From the bottom of that pecking order, you have the associates, who
are considered civilians. Anybody that's not a
made member of that life is considered a civilian. Above them are the made
members of the family, which are called friends. We call them friends in that life. Above them are captains. As we say, caporegimes. They're the head of the crews. The family is represented by all the crews that are in that family. And then above them are the
administration of the family. The top of the administration is the boss, the underboss, and the consigliere. And that's the structure
of the whole family. The word Cosa Nostra means "Our Thing." And that basically
means that the structure of the Mob, or, as people
would call it, Mafia, belongs to them, the members of that life. [screen buzzing and whirring] The Mob picks you. That life, Cosa Nostra, picks you. You don't pick that life. So before someone becomes
an inducted member of a family, they become an associate. And usually how they become an associate is they're associated to someone who's already an inducted member. In order for an associate to be proposed, I think several factors take place. One is how good they get along with whoever it is that they're with, the soldier that they're with, you know, that they do what they're told to do. They keep their mouth closed. Once you're proposed,
a ceremony takes place. Who's conducting that
ceremony is going to be a member or members of the administration. Along with them is going to be, obviously, the captain that's going
to propose you that day. A pistol and a knife are on
the table during this ceremony, and it's mostly there
for symbolic reasons. Your trigger finger, whether you are a righty
or a lefty, is pricked. Your blood is dropped on a
saint, a picture of a saint. It just symbolizes that
the oath that you're taking the oath that you're about to take, you're taking it holding
that saint in your hand. And they ultimately
light that saint on fire, and you're moving that
saint from hand to hand, and you're repeating after whoever's conducting the ceremony. After which he is explaining
the rules of that life to you. [screen buzzing and whirring] My position within the Lucchese
family was as a soldier, but there was times that
I acted for my captain in the capacity of an acting captain, specifically for a sit-down. The administration would pick
the captains of the family. The requirement to be a captain, obviously, would be good leadership, so they would have to see
something in that person to feel that he could lead the crew. That captain is
responsible for each member of the crew, but he's also responsible for all the associates that
are associated to that crew. A consigliere position
is that of a counselor. So, he is specifically handling not only internal what we would call beefs or struggles inside of the
family, but external as well. The difference between
a boss and an underboss, there's not a whole big difference with the exception of the title. Obviously, the boss is
the head of the family, but the underboss holds
just as much weight in that family as the boss. Overall, a boss's position
is to oversee the family. He's really in charge of everything that goes on underneath him, which goes through the administration, all his captains, all the
soldiers in the family, all the way down to the associates. The way the life is structured, the boss is supposed to
abide by the same rules that the captains, his administration, the soldiers, and everyone
else in that life abide by. A boss of a family or family together could bring in hundreds of
millions of dollars per year. There's many reasons to
fill a boss position. One, obviously, would be a
boss is arrested, incarcerated. One would be a boss passes away through health reasons, and, you know, there is a void in the position. But then, there's also reasons like in the Paul Castellano situation, a boss that they felt was being greedy and the family turned on the boss. There's different scenarios where a boss can be taken out, replaced
or ultimately killed for that matter. [screen buzzing and whirring] I think years ago, when
it was first created, the Five Families, there
was a lot more corruption with having law enforcement on the payroll than as it is today. I think there's less of that going on, but that doesn't mean
that it doesn't go on. As far as political influence, obviously it would go
through putting money in people's pockets for political favors. In present times, I don't
think that they have the political power that they once had. I don't think they're able to corrupt the politicians as they were years ago. Initially, the Mob took
control of the unions by force. They would put people in. Those people would corrupt the union, take over the unions, and that's how they were able to control most of the unions,
specifically in New York City. But today, they have their
hand in it, you know, in little areas, but they don't control the
unions like they did in the past. [screen buzzing and whirring] Cosa Nostra came to be in New York sometime in the early 1900s. This was an organization and structure that came from the other side, which means Italy, Sicily. When the immigrants from those countries came here to this country, the Italians were almost
like second-class citizens, and they were discriminated
against when they came. So in the beginning, it
was to fight oppression. But naturally, that turned into
committing organized crime and criminal acts to gain a profit from. So when the average citizen
started to take notice of Cosa Nostra here, I believe that the first reactions were fear and intimidation. Because they feared and
they were intimidated over this group of Italians, they were also fearful
to go to law enforcement. They were fearful to
talk out against them. In turn, Cosa Nostra gained
its power because of this. [screen buzzing and whirring] So I joined Cosa Nostra because I came from a neighborhood, both Ozone Park and Howard Beach, which was replete with guys in that life. And I believe that I looked up to them at that time and wanted
to be just like them. If you are around people
that are in that life, inducted members, at some
point you become an associate. And we were associated, my cousin and I, to the Gambino family
through John Gotti Jr. And the time I'm talking about, I was around 14, 15
years old at that time. So sometime around 2012,
I became an associate and on record with the
Lucchese crime family. By 2013, I was an inducted
member in the family. I stayed an inducted member
in the family until 2018. I ultimately winded up leaving the life because the family that I was a member of falsely accused me of being an informant when it wasn't true. They now were laying on me, which meant that they sent
people to lay and get my pattern. Usually when that is done,
it's either to A, hurt you or B, kill you. I made my decision that
I would never go back to my former friends who turned on me. So obviously, my life has
took a dramatic change. I'm no longer able to see my
family as much as I like to. I'm not able to live as close
to them as I would like to. I have to watch every
place I go, you know, and be very careful at what I do. And my plans have to be mapped out of where I'm going and what I'm doing. So my life took a big change. [screen buzzing and whirring] In my opinion, in 20 years from now, Cosa Nostra is hardly
going to exist in New York. I don't believe that they're
going to be able to survive. Cosa Nostra now, compared to years ago, has definitely declined. And the reason is these sentences that are being handed out, the government and specifically the FBI have unlimited funds. They're able to go after them. They're able to take out
bosses with the RICO. As far as earning money
by committing crimes or doing various criminal
acts, it's limited today than it was. So now, once you limit moneymaking and money earning,
you're taking away power because money brings power, and the organized crime today
is definitely less powerful than it was in years past. In the past few years,
there's been an increase in arrests, and a large number
of arrests, in Cosa Nostra. Specific families are targeted, and the reason being is that it's hard for
members of Cosa Nostra to operate without law enforcement, specifically the FBI,
knowing what they're doing. There are more people that
are informants, cooperators. They have people that are
working inside families with the FBI, giving the FBI information. That's how they're dismantling families. Family by family, they dismantle them. Members of law enforcement
from the United States now work very closely with members of law enforcement from people outside of the United States,
like Italy and Sicily. They jointly create cases together. [screen buzzing and whirring] I made the decision to create a blog, and I started just writing
from my experiences. So the first podcast I created is also the name of the blog, which is called "Sitdown News," and that's all also the
name of the podcast. And I just recently
created a second podcast called "Unlimited Substance." My name is Jimmy Tsui. I have a nickname as Bighead. I'm a former high-level member of the largest triad, Sun Yee On. I decided to leave my life because I got sick and tired of it, and I almost got killed in 1992. I got shot five times. Do I know the person who shot me? Yes, I know the person who shot me. But I don't know why he
shot me at that time. How many triads in Hong Kong? I can tell you there's a lot of triads. Sun Yee On, 14K, Shing Wo, Shui Fong. My situation is a bit special
because I'm not in Hong Kong. I'm from New York. And in New York, I already have
a lot of soldiers under me. When I joined the Tung On
gang in Chinatown, New York, a couple of former members in Tung On, they are from Hong Kong. When they in Hong Kong, they already are triad.
Sun Yee On members. So after they come to the United States, they still have a connection
with a Hong Kong triad. Because some things happened,
I got arrested on ... 1985. Remember. OK? So, after I got out, the couple of members I mentioned before from
Sung Yee On, they asked me, "Hey, Jimmy, you want to
go to Hong Kong with us? Maybe you can go outside
and have some fun first because you were already
inside for two years." I went back to Hong Kong with them. They took me to a restaurant,
and then we wait over there. And then afterward, a guy come down, but he didn't look like
a triad leader, nothing. He looked like a businessman. They never mentioned this
guy is the leader, OK? So the leader asked me
a couple of questions, like, "What you do in New York? What's your position in New York?" And I tell him the whole thing. So he's saying that, "OK, because I already
have a lot of soldiers on my under level, all the kids who follow me, they will become a Sun Yee On too. For the ceremony, there's a
incense altar on the table. We have to swear a lot
to God or something, and we had to drink blood wine. And then the first thing,
they were saying that -- I will speak in Cantonese because I don't know how to
translate in English that one. The rule for the triad, the main rule is you obey
your boss, of course. You obey your main boss. There's only one main
boss for the whole group, so you must obey him. And never against each other, and never steal money from each other, and never lie to each other, and never take girl from each other. My boss give me, as I remember, two, two nightclubs to collect
money every month, which they call protection money. The shareholders must be,
like, one or two shareholders for the nightclub is our member. In America, you can say that's extortion, but they'd be willing to give out money for the protection in America. But in Hong Kong, you must be a shareholder
for this nightclub, and then you have your own
people to protect the club. I tell you -- honestly, I tell you -- we are there every night, at least 20 days a month. We got used to it, just like going to work. Just, like, every day
about time, we were like, OK, let's go to this nightclub tonight, let's go to that nightclub tonight. Every night is like that.
That's the gang life. For me, I got two nightclubs to collect. Every nightclub, they give
me 20 grand each month. So a month, I get, like, 40 grand, without doing something,
for two small nightclubs. But for the big ones, as
I know, they pay, like, 100 grand a month for each general. Back then, the triad business always production company, bowling alley. That's a legal business. And for the underground business, maybe money laundering, maybe drug money. They have business right
here, in United States. In New York, in LA. They
have business all over. Back then, I can say,
every gang in Chinatown, they have connections in Hong Kong. They all have connections in Hong Kong. The generals from the other group, they start a business of drug trafficking. Back then, it's very
easy to smuggle the drugs into United States. Maybe they have some
girl member in the gang. They tell the girl to go back to Hong Kong and pick up something
and bring it back in. At that time, it's very easy. It's not like right now. When the time I'm in Hong Kong, the movie business, I can say that is all controlled by triad. If you don't listen to triad,
you cannot get the spot. Not even a spot. You don't listen to them,
you will get punished. There's a movie star come
out saying that, like, "I'm not a triad," whatever. You believe them. You believe them. OK. But for me, I don't believe them. A lot of famous movie
stars which is female, they are triad members. A lot of people don't know. And we know. Every gangster got nickname because we don't want to use
our real name on the street. Easy to remember. I got big head, and my name's
Jimmy. It's too simple. A lot of people are called Jimmy. So they won't forget, they
always called me Bighead Jimmy. They have a nickname for monkey. They have a nickname for
"tiger boy," "fat boss." They have all kind of nickname. They have all different kind of handshake, like different position. They have different kind of handshake. Sometimes you do this, and then you show with your hand sign, and then they know what's your position. Maybe the guy who you're
talking to is a soldier, and then you show him the
hand sign is, you are general, and then he don't know
what is general hand sign because he's only a soldier, so he only can show the soldier hand sign. So if I show it, you're only a soldier, I don't want to talk to you. Tell your boss to come out, like this. They don't use that no more.
Only the old generation. The generation after the
2000s, they don't care. They don't care about this. They just care how many people you have, what kind of power you
have, how much you got. In Hong Kong, I'll never
go out with myself. If I go to this nightclub,
at least 20, 30 people will follow me, go into nightclub. So they knew. They knew you're triad. We got experience. We can tell who's a triad, who's a cop, and who's a businessman. We can tell. For triads, they have a couple levels. But for Sun Yee On, the
members on the top level, they are all controlled by one family. No other people can take their position. Every generation, they will pass down, like father and son,
son and son, like this. So it's all controlled
by one family until now. After the top level, the
second level is the general. We call it 426. After the 426 is the soldier. For the soldier, they call it 49. And after the soldier, that's the people who hang out
with the soldier every day, but they are not a member yet.
They call it blue lantern. This is the main structure of the triad. Of course, they have a lot
of different positions, like white paper fan. That's the guy who
controlled all the money. This other position is for passing out the message. A special guy doing that. Now, at this century, a
lot of position is gone. So only got left is
the top level, general, the soldier, and the blue lantern. I only saw my boss in Hong
Kong two or three times. But I know his family members. When I get to the general position, the boss will give you a couple places, like, couple of business places, for you to collect money every month. That's our salary. I just make sure they are
doing the right thing, they don't step out of the line. And that's what I did. If somebody step out of the line, OK, there's so many people in the group. So many people. Always, things happen, because you cannot control everybody. I never did that before, but what I heard, the worst thing, they got killed. That's the worst. If they did something against the company, against the group, they will get killed. After me, I have a couple of soldiers -- they are in the group for a long time, they have experience --
who control all the kids. They are doing all the management. So this thing won't happen. But sometimes in the other groups, this thing did happen. That's what I heard. Hong Kong's really small,
and too many triad members. They all have their own district. Like, you control this part, and 14K controls the other part. But you know how the gangster is. They always want to increase their power. So they step in. The district is controlled
by the Sun Yee On, and the war could've stopped. When I was in Hong Kong, I saw another general in Sun Yee On, they have something going
on with a general in 14K. They start a war. They want
to take their territory. Yeah, I saw that before. But this always happened
in Hong Kong back then. Back then, in Hong Kong,
they always start a war, but they don't use gun. They always use knife, because in Hong Kong the
firearm law is really strict. Even though they have a gun, they're hardly going to bring
the gun outside on the street. Almost impossible for people to get a gun license in Hong Kong. When the time in Hong
Kong, who used the guns, always the gangsters from
China, from mainland China. They bring the gun from China, then they use it in Hong Kong, and then they ran back to China. But for the original members in Hong Kong, they hardly use the gun. OK, maybe the lower-lower-level guy, but not the general. And if a fight starts,
we don't get involved, only the soldiers who start the fight. If we saw something and we know the war going
to start, we back off, and then the soldier forward. Our different triad members, they are together doing
something, yes, always. It's money talk. Easy, it's money talk. With one general, he thinks
he cannot take the whole cake and he want to share
out with another member or share out with different
group, he will do that. Hong Kong is real small, I tell you. So you have to friend
with other groups too. Back then, in Hong Kong
prison or Macau's prison, the whole prison is run by the triad. The triad got more power than
the correctional officer. In the '60s and '70s, all the police was corruption,
and with the triad. They worked together. Until now, no. The impossible. You can't. It is very strict right now. You do something they don't like, you will disappear forever, and people cannot find you. And you are not facing jail
time, you just disappear. I decide to quit my gangster life. I got shot five times, and after that, I say, "No more." I got sick and tired of that, because I'm getting old. The
way I think is different. So I want to return to my
normal life, so I quit. I know the person who shot me, but I don't know why he
shot me at that time. Afterward, I found out. Because my soldier, under me, who, people under me shot their member two weeks ago. So they know I'm the general of them. So he shot me. At that time, I was at home,
and I ran out of cigarettes. So I have to go down and try to buy a cigarette in the grocery. When I closed my driver's-side door and I check out the side mirror, I saw someone came out from a car behind, and then he started to shoot. And then the ambulance come, like, after at least 15 minutes, as I remember. They brought me to the Elmhurst Hospital, and they do a surgery, and then the doctor come by
and showed me all the bullets and tell me that, "We
took four bullets out, and there's still a
bullet inside your body." So I asked him, "Why don't you
just take the last one out?" And he was telling me that, "Because that bullet is
running into your bone, so that bullet's going
to stay there forever." That's what the doctor says. What do I have to do to leave? Actually, nothing. I just tell my soldiers. Because I have couple of soldiers, who control all the kids already. I just tell them that, starting
now, all the street money, the gambling house money, whatever, I'm going to give up everything. You guys take care of
the under-level people, and anything happens,
you don't have to ask me. Even though after I left, I start working, and the FBI come to me, ask me questions. I say, "I don't know
nothing. I left already." In the '90s, the FBI, all the leaders, all the gangsters got arrested
and thrown in the prison. Without our help, they cannot stand in the United States no more, and then they back off and now disappear. The first beginning of
triad, we call it a tong, Hung Mun. Hung Mun is the first one. After that, they split out from Hung Mun to all separate triads. They call it triad for
the three big rivers in the southeast area. So inside that area, they
call everybody a triad. Government people, they call them triad. And then they start to
call themselves triad too. Sun Yee On in Hong Kong
is the largest triad almost in all the Southeast Asian area. At my time, they have,
like, 200,000 member, and all over the world. They have a pretty long history. For all the high-level
members in Sun Yee On, they become a businessman now. They doing each business. All underground. It's only for the lower-level members. I was born in 1965 in Hong Kong. I born in the district called Yau Ma Tei. Inside Yau Ma Tei, there's a
street called Temple Street. At that time, the whole street
is controlled by the triad. So when I was real young, I
already know what is triad. And my father saw, like, I getting worse, my behavior's getting worse. So he decide to immigrate the whole family to the United States. At that time, there's a
gang called Ghost Shadows in Chinatown. Always waiting
outside the school every day, like after school. They try to do something to us and try to scare us and
tell us to join the gang. If we don't, we have to
pay them money every day for protection, but we keep refusing them. One of my classmates, he told us that we should go look for
his cousin, Clifford Wong, and he's the leader of the Tung On gang. My classmate got killed
because the Flying Dragons, they thought my friend
belonged to the Tung On gang, but which that time we are not. So we asked Clifford Wong
for help, and he said, "You guys just joined our gang." So officially we joined the Tung On gang. I'm stuck in Tung On
gang member when I'm 14. When I become a member
of Sun Yee On, I'm 22. So I was already in the gang life for, like, eight years already. We have a channel on YouTube,
Chinatown Gang Stories. We started telling the true
story about gangster life. We want to do the best we can to find every former gangster member, no matter what level they
are, to tell their true story, so that the world knows
what the gangster life is. I just want to say that,
for the new generation, don't trust anybody except your parents. Don't trust any movie story. You are not a hero in the gang life. If you're really in the
gang life right now, only two final ways out. First, you go end up in
the prison, doing time. Second, you're going to get killed. My name is Mike Moy. I was a former member of a Chinatown gang. I later became an NYPD cop. And this is how crime works. You had so many guns that's
hidden all over the place, secret tunnels, and you have
snipers up in the safe houses. A crazy person wouldn't even
dare to go to Chinatown, because even a crazy person, they feel pain, they fear death. So, as far as being in a Chinatown gang, you're either going to wind up in jail or it's going to be some outcome that's not going to be good. So, I was only 16 when I joined the gang, and it was one of the
notorious Chinatown gangs during that time. There
were a lot of rivals. In the 1970s, the Ghost
Shadows and the Flying Dragons, those were the two main gangs. Eventually, you had the White
Tigers, the Tung On gang, the Fuk Ching, the Green
Dragons, and the BTK. The violence between the gangs, I wouldn't say it's because of territory. I would say it's because of respect. Any form of disrespect warrants
a killing or a shooting. Remember, these kids are young. 13-, 15-, 16-year-old kids. All they want is for people
to show them a little respect. Maybe it's because they're
insecure about themselves or they have low self-esteem. It's all about respect. And a lot of people died
because of disrespect. When we were in a gang, most of us at one time or another had some sort of interaction
with the Italian Mafia. Even I, myself, in my early 20s, was dealing with guys
in their 40s and 50s. But these Italian, young
Italian teenage kids, they're the ones who were a problem to us. And there were some shootings where some of our guys
would kill some of them. They'd walk around with
their bats and canes and want to be tough, and they didn't know who they were messing with
because we were never afraid. You know, we felt like we were invincible. During my teen years,
we would do extortion, street robberies, petty
stuff, petty crime. But then as I got older, got into my 20s, started selling marijuana,
dealing with counterfeit money, credit-card fraud, stolen credit cards from a source that we
had in the post office. I opened gambling houses. A gambling house that we
hung out in on Canal Street right next to the Rosemary
Theater, in the basement. We would have poker
machines from the Italians. They would put the
poker machines in there. Sometimes we'd have poker tables, pai gow tables where we
collect the percentage. So that was one of the most profitable business I had. And also bootleg videotapes. Back in those days, the VCR tapes, those Shaw Brother kung fu movies, they made me a lot of money too. All we had to do was get a bunch of VCRs and copy those tapes. So we're talking about the,
probably around that time, probably the '80s and '90s. After the Italians lost
the heroin business in the "Pizza Connection" trial, yeah, there was a vacuum
and the Chinese took over. The Chinese were able to import high-quality heroin into Chinatown. They dominated that
business for a short while. Just imagine how much money
was circulating in Chinatown during those days in
just a few block radius. I mean, you had cab drivers, waiters, waitresses benefiting from all that money. Even factory workers. Because the gangsters
would spend that money into Chinatown. Yeah, they extorted from the stores, but they weren't out
there to put the stores out of business, how
the media portrayed us. All the business in Chinatown was flourishing during that time. Look at Chinatown back
then. It never sleep. It's open 24 hours. You get the gang members
go into a restaurant during the Chinese New Year's,
during whatever holidays, and the owner's going to give
them a little red envelope. It's just a little piece
of what they're getting. Less than what they probably pay for the garbage disposal, right? To the Italians. You know, we did protect the neighborhood. And I even have personal experiences protecting the businesses, you know, doing what I needed to
do back in those days to protect the business
owners from getting bullied by people who didn't even know better. Some of those people remember
me for the rest of their life. The person that you least
expect to be a gang member, that's the person that's carrying the gun. So, when we travel in a group, for example, we go into a pool
hall and we're shooting pool, there'll be a kid in the
corner of the pool hall watching over us, and that's
the kid that has the gun. There could be a targeted hit where, OK, you're going to go get this
person and kill this person, yes, but a lot of times
when they're in the streets, you can't control what they do. And it was very easy to get
a gun back in those days. I know in the '70s they had
a source with the Italians, getting guns from the Italians. In the '80s and '90s,
it wasn't that difficult to go out of state and buy a gun. Just show your ID in a flea market, and you just buy a bunch of antique guns. Safe houses are located all over. We had safe houses in Brooklyn, by Williamsburg, one by Midwood; Queens, by Woodhaven. So we had several places
where we hold our meetings. At any given time, there
could be as much as 10, 15 people in that apartment, sleeping there, living there. We kept it very low-key. A side entrance, so it doesn't appear to be a
lot of people going in and out. So the runners will go out there and buy whatever's necessary, whether it's food or drinks, whatever they need. Generally, the police wouldn't
even care about these things. What they care about are guns. But luckily we hid our guns in a way where the
police couldn't find it. One of the ways what we did was, we were on the second floor, so we would tie it in a string and lower it down to the first floor. So all you see was a string on the floor. But who would expect when
you pull up that string there's a gun there? And so many secret tunnels and
places for them to hide guns. As far as the tunnels, you
had them on Mott Street, Bayard Street, Canal Street, Pell Street, Doyers Street. These places. Those tunnels was used
as a form of escape. After you do a shooting,
you just run into a tunnel and just come out from the
other side of the street. That's why there's so many
cold cases in Chinatown. I was 16 years old when I joined a gang. I saw it as a way to
protect me from the bullies. During my years in school,
I was the only Asian kid. So I was a victim of bullying. How did I become a member of the gang? Initially, I started
hanging out with them, and when they started to trust me, they know I was able
to do things for them, that's when I got accepted. And they would give you a
nickname, such as Bighead, and say, "Hey, you have a big head, so we're going to call you Bighead." Onionhead nickname came
from his hairstyle. The newspaper and journals claimed that Onionhead's nickname came from, "If you betray him, he'll give you tears. That's why they call him Onionhead." But that is not true. He
looked like an onion head with his haircut back in those days. They tried to give me a nickname. I put a stop to it. I'm
that type of person. I like to stay under the
radar, keep a low profile. And I was firm about it,
and they respected that. But what they call me behind
my back, that's another story. And we did a initiation ritual together with two other members. We kneeled down and we lit up the incense. We poured wine in front
of the General Guan to give him an offering. In the wine was our blood. We pricked our fingers. After the initiation, we felt a certain bond, like a brotherhood. What the Italians would
call probably associate, we would call liang chai. What the Italians would
call a street soldier, we would call them ma chai. Like, a captain, a dai ma. Underboss, that would be a dai lo, which is big brother. The leader, dai lo dai. And that would be the guy at the top. So, how does one become a dai lo? Start out as a soldier, and if you have the qualities of a dai lo, such as the gift of gab,
you have the charisma, then you'll have these kids following you. You spend money on them,
and once you have a crew, you become a dai lo. The dai lo would give
the money to the dai ma. That goes to pay for everything
as far as entertainment, food, expenses, the safe
house, paying the rent. The money trickles down to us, unlike the Italians, where
the money trickles up. They have to pay for our loyalty. What we do in the streets, we basically enhance their reputation. A lot of people have
the misconception that tongs, triads, and gangs
are the same thing. It's not. The tongs were former
gang members in Chinatown who later tried to become a legitimate enterprise
association trying to help the new immigrants
coming into this country. But you have a handful of bad apples that associated themselves with the gangs, and they used the gangs
to do the dirty work. The Flying Dragons was under
the Hip Sing Tong Association, the Ghost Shadows was under
the On Leong Association, and the Tung On gang was
under the Tung On Association. The Flying Dragons had
control of Pell Street, Doyers Street, and later on they moved on to Canal Street and Grand Street. The Ghost Shadows had control
of Mott Street, Bayard Street. The White Tigers went to Queens, Elmhurst. Later on, the Tung On gang was created, and they took control of East Broadway. Do the Chinatown gangs still exist today? Yes, they do, but they
operate differently. A lot different than what I grew up with. There isn't a dai lo, so to speak. There isn't a big leader, like how we had. They keep it totally underground. Back in those days, we dealt
with a lot of federal crimes, crimes that warrant the
attention of the FBI. The NYPD didn't have the resources to take on the Asian gangs. They didn't even have the translators available to translate. They were just there to help the FBI. But it was the FBI that
cracked these cases. It was around 1993. The FBI started rounding
up a lot of people, and that's when it started falling apart. The people at the top
was getting locked up. So the people at the bottom
didn't know what to do. Most of the gang members
were arrested by the feds or they were killed or in prison. That's when I made the transition. And in order to make that
transition to go into NYPD, it had to be like a light switch. It was like a on-and-off switch. It was either all or nothing. You know, I grew up
watching "Baretta," "Kojak." What happened to Steven
McDonald, you follow his story, he forgave the kid who shot him. And when Steven McDonald mentioned that this kid was a product of his environment, did a lot of self-reflection, and I see that how I grew up, it made me who I am, and maybe I need to change. So I joined the NYPD in 1995. But the gang was always there
for me, up until that day. When I took the oath, I
left everything behind. I was assigned to work in Chinatown. So. I didn't expect to be
working in Chinatown, my old stomping grounds as a gang member, and that was a little bit nerve-racking, because what would happen if I bumped into my rivals or my fellow gang mates? And it did happen. I bumped
into my rivals in uniform. I bumped into my former
gang mates in uniform. Even when I was assigned
to the detective squad and I got promoted many years later, some of these guys came out from prison, and I was assigned to arrest them. Some of them couldn't make a living, so they started doing home
invasions and robberies, robbing stores and taxi cabs and whatnot. They started getting involved with different type of rackets now. They didn't get involved
with the heroin trade anymore because the feds were watching that. So they got involved with other things, like the transportation
business, the dollar vans, the bus going out of state. They still did their gambling houses, and the prostitution houses
were run differently. As opposed to back in those days, where you would go into
a prostitution house and you would see 10, 15, even 20 girls. So what they did was they broke it up into, like, an apartment, and they would only have
maybe one or two girls. The gangs were operating
a lot differently. Nobody wanted to call
themselves a dai lo anymore. I love the NYPD. NYPD gave me everything I
have, for all those years. It's just that I had a bad experience while working with some
bullies in the NYPD. That left a bad taste in my mouth. So it was time for me to leave. I left July of 2021. After over 26 years,
I started this channel called Chinatown Gang
Stories to get these stories from former gang members who lived a life. Because there's a lot of
misinformation out there. A lot of the information
came from non-Asians. Movies, authors, and documentaries. My channel will give you
an accurate description of what really happened in
Chinatown back in those days. What did I learn from being
in a gang? Just don't do it. Between social media,
like, the technology, cellphones, and plate readers, DNA, facial recognition, Big Brother's watching everything you do. So there's no place in today's society for gangs anymore.
