The Bloods and Crips found by leather jacket wearing fist fighting high school teenagers.

Did you know that?

I did not.

The Crips were found by two high schoolers named Raymond Washington and Stanley Tooki

Williams who formed an alliance to protect their neighborhoods from other young people

who were harassing them and maybe so they could dish out some beatdowns and engage in

some petty theft as well.

Quickly what started out as teenagers getting into brawls to prove who was the king of the

block evolved into something completely different.

Then there's led to over 15,000 murders over a 50 year period.

Stanley Williams and Raymond Washington could not have known what their small street gang

was going to turn into.

Today the Bloods and Crips are known all over the country for their violent crimes like

drive-by shootings, committed against rivals and innocent bystanders alike but it wasn't

always like that.

For years they were not all over the country.

They were localized to South Central Los Angeles, the conditions in South Central Los Angeles

created a perfect breeding ground for gang violence.

Young black men growing up with a lack of community resources, police officers who hated

them, wanted to keep them out of white neighborhoods.

Many of the civil rights leaders and black panthers they once looked up to have been assassinated

or sentenced to lengthy prison terms, leaving an opening for youth street gangs to rise

...