Warning, this podcast contains explicit language and details acts of violence.

Listener discretion is advised.

The streets were becoming more dangerous than Linwood.

Deputies at the Linwood Station began using their own gang-themed nickname for the station,

LVS-25, or Linwood-Vario Station 25.

Vikings spray-painted walls and power poles around the city with a tag to mark what they saw

as their turf.

Two deputies reported seeing LVS-25 carved into patrol vehicles.

The Vikings even adopted street lingo and started calling members of the

gang, homeboys, and longtime officers, OGs. Everyone at the Linwood station knew about the Vikings.

Most people went along with it, because if you didn't, you could be killed.

Racism was also on full display. A group of Vikings who covered the early morning shift

called themselves OG-C-F, or an acronym for original gangster crime fighter that later came to

incorporate a Spanish-language slur for black people. The Los Angeles Times reported that

the Linwood station had a,

quote, map of Linwood in the shape of Africa, racist cartoons of black men, and a mock ticket to Africa

on the wall. An anonymous Viking told the Long Beach Press telegram that, quote, it's the neighborhood,

the environment,

what we're up against that makes us Vikings.

You have to have a strong ID out there

because of the minority element.

It's like a war.

...