How 9 Gangs And Mafias Actually Work — From The Crips To Hells Angels | How Crime Works Marathon

My name is Tyrone White. I'm a former Menlo Crip from '65. Some of my rivalries were the Blood

gangs

and the Crip

gangs

. We were involved in drive-by shootings and drug trafficking. And that's how

crime

work

s. Yes, of course I have participated in vehicles. I have been the victim of abuse many times. When they go to war with each other, there are no winners. Now you can look at it and say, "Okay, I shot more of them than mine," or "I killed more of them than mine," but both sides are suffering losses. So if both are suffering a loss of life, there are no winners.

When I was young, the weapons used in gang confrontations were 9 millimeters, .45s, the Mossberg 12 gauge pump shotgun, AK-47s, and TEC-9s. The first gun I held in my hand, given to me by one of my friends, was a .25, a chrome .25, a little .25 with a pearl grip. He had like seven shots, six shots or something like that. And as you grow and learn more about weapons and rise up, of course you get bigger weapons. Guns are sold on the street like drugs are sold on the street. You can even buy weapons 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, it could be from the police. It could be from the army. You can never be caught in what we call a fault or slip. You always have to be prepared. You have to have enough firepower. You are ready for war at all times. From the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, those were years of intense gang activity. So the drive-by shootings were nothing. You could literally turn on the news every day for those years and see a drive-by shooting. I mean, every day.

We had a drive-by shooting that I was involved in. I walked into the house and I remember seeing it on the news. I must have been about 15 years old at that time. I remember my mom was on the phone and she was like, "I'm so tired of these kids shooting and killing each other," and I remember thinking, like, "Man, she has no idea that I was just on the phone." this situation." She never found out about it, but I remembered how I felt listening to her on the phone, telling her friend, "Man, these kids need to stop this," and "This is crazy." And there's another situation 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 gangsters, that's the only day on the that all gang members, enemies, everyone can congregate in one area on Crenshaw Boulevard.

I remember we saw a car stop on the corner and usually when you see cars stop on the corner without lights or something like that, you know it's a sign of something that's going to happen. And all you saw were guns coming out the window, and everyone started shooting, shooting at everyone. And we all scattered like ants, all screaming, shouting, running, scattering because no one had weapons on their person at that time. One of my great friends, he was very well known. They had hit him in the face because they shot him with a 12 gauge and they had pellets, but he did not kill him because they did not shoot him at point-blank range.

Luckily no one died. The Crips were founded in the 1960s by Raymond Washington. He formed the Eastside Crips, which is on the east side of Los Angeles. Tookie Williams formed the Westside Crips. And through those two different foundations, different sets begin to evolve, different areas. The Hoovers, the East Coast, the Rollin' 60s, the Menlos, all these different outfits. The goal and goal was to keep this side of Los Angeles safe, but as usual, things escalated, multiplied, and violence escalated and happened. When Raymond Washington was killed, that's what caused the division. That's what caused the crisis to split between the east and the west, and different things started happening in different subsets, and it just became a disease.

A Crip group betrayed this Crip group, and then caused an endless feud. The Bloods used to be the Crips' main rivals, but now, there are as many Crips against each other as there are Bloods. Many Crips and Bloods have become allies because they share the same common Crip enemy. For example, the Eight Tray Gangster Crips, have a peace treaty with the Inglewood Family Bloods, and that's because their border is connected next to each other. So since our neighborhoods are so close to each other, you have to go through my neighborhood to get home. I have to go to your neighborhood to get home.

Let's make this a blood-free zone. Without violence. I'm not saying that we are friends or that we are simply a close neighborhood, but let's keep the peace between this dynamic, between this area. The feud between the 65 Menlo Crips and the Hoover Crips goes back a long time. In fact, we all grew up together and went to school together. We became one of the Hoovers' biggest enemies because our sets are so close to each other. To get to the Hoover neighborhood, you have to go through our neighborhood, you know what I mean? And to get to other parts of the city, we have to go through the Hoover neighborhood.

I grew up, born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, my entire life. I had a stepfather in my life who 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 black neighborhoods, when kids who come from single-parent homes are like that, they usually get stuck on these streets because their mother is

work

ing, trying to make a living, trying to support them. While she's at work, you're running around the streets, doing things you know you're not supposed to do. And that's really, that's how I started.

I was about 10 years old when I started hanging out with them. I knew them very well. It comes down to, "Hey, you've been with us a lot, you've relaxed a lot. You're from the hood. Let's make it official." And making it official means getting involved or doing something to be a member of the gang. It can be anything from you fighting one person, sometimes four or five people. It's to see how you handle yourself. It's to see what kind of skills you have. If you find yourself in one of these situations, will you be able to stand your ground and defend yourself, whether you get beat up or not?

You have to know how to defend yourself. You have to be a monster to be a member of any gang, but particularly the Crips, you better be a monster. The word Crip originally meant Community Resistance in Progress. It was a way to unite the community, to uplift it, to protect it. Of course, they adopted a gang nickname and appearance because, according to the dictionary, a group of five or more people is considered a gang. To be a Crip, you have to behave a certain way. You have to walk a certain way. But for me, the appeal was that I loved the color blue.

And they wore blue rags. They were wearing blue jeans. They wore blue belts. They were wearing blue Chuck Taylors. The dress code for me when I was an active Crip in the '90s, early '80s, was definitely 501 Levi Jeans, wrinkled. I would go buy a can of starch and literally spend about an hour ironing my pants, layering the starch to the point where, before I even put the pants on, I could lift them up. The Crips used K-Swiss because it was an acronym. It was

actually

a disrespectful term towards the Bloods. His name was K-Swiss for "kill lazy people when you see them." Slobs is a disrespectful term towards Bloods.

If you weren't a Crip, you couldn't walk like a Crip. If you weren't a Crip, you didn't know how to walk like a Crip. And so, learning to walk Crip and perfecting something like that was like a badge of honor. It's something great. It's when you look at it, the movement of their feet, the way they dance, the way they do it, the way they incorporate certain movements along with the hand signals and the hand signals. The words that the Crips often used and that were part of the slang were, of course, cousin. Everything we say would start with C.

If you had to say hamburger, you'd say curger. If you say bitch, you say citch. They are different things that you could replace the B with a C, you would. And that was the same with the Bloods. Anything with a C that they wanted to eliminate. And it may sound strange and people will say, "No, that's stupid. They look stupid." That was our language. That's how we talked. We understood it and that's all that matters. And if you disrespect us and tell us it sounds stupid, they can beat you up. Of course, they threw out the C.

The C is, you just take your hands, you make a C with your hand. And now your set, your real neighborhood, your Crip neighborhood, like in the '60s, has its signs. The Hoovers have their posters. The Menlos have their signs. You're going to throw out that sign to represent, to let people know that you're

actually

from that group. You are from that neighborhood. We threw the M. It was just an M. You just put your hands on yourself, which is the way Ice Cube throws the W when he's in concert and taking pictures. Snoop Dogg throws the W.

Just flip it over and you'll throw the M. Gang graffiti is a big part of the Crips. The people who walk in there, when they see that on the wall, the Rollin' 60 Crips or the Menlo Crips or the 55 Crips, they know, "We're walking into this gang. This is their neighborhood." The gang structure is not as organized as the mafia with underbosses and bosses and things like that. We didn't give titles like that, but people automatically knew who the OGs were, who the double OGs were, who the great friends were, and who was ranked above who. The double OG is usually one of the great friends who has worked harder than you imagine.

He has done it all: he killed, he stole, he made money, he was in jail. All. You name it, he's done it. Generally between 50 and 60 years old, or older. They existed in the '70s and '80s, when gangs really exploded. They were at the top of their game. An OG really isn't much different from a double OG, except that he may be a little younger. Maybe he's committed a little less

crime

. Then there are some of the OGs who have turned their lives around and just want to live life, have a family, have a wife and kids, and they're making money.

They are making money legally. So what makes them OG is the fact that they're talking to the little friends, the young friends, showing them and explaining to them how they were able to do this. Street Soldier is exactly what it sounds like. A street soldier will go out and do that job for the OG, for the double OG, for the little friends, or just for the set, period. A street soldier has no limits. He will go out and do what he has to do, no matter what. Little friends are usually, of course, what they seem, little friends who admire the big ones.

They are going to imitate. They are going to copy everything that great friends do. And if big friends are constantly going to jail, robbing, shooting and killing people, little friends will do the same at some point. The main thing was always to take care of my great friend, whoever called me a great friend, and make sure they were taken care of, and vice versa, because he does the same for me. He doesn't have to, but he does. I started selling marijuana in high school and then moved on to crack cocaine and robbery. I did robberies. That was my way mainly to make money and keep it in my pocket.

The big friends had the big drug and they will distribute it to the younger ones. They'll hand it off to the guys at the next level. It was a way for everyone from great friends, OG friends, to high school friends to make money. High school friends can be out there selling crack on the corner, $5 rocks, $10 rocks, $20 rocks. Great friends move great weights, ounces, quarter pounds, pounds, things like that. The drugs came, many times from drug cartels and also from the government, believe it or not. I mean, there's a story about Freeway Rick, one of the biggest black drug dealers in the history of Los Angeles.

And he was prepared. He got caught up in that Iran-Contra affair with Ronald Reagan, and discovered that the DEA was supplying him with drugs, the same drug for which he got 30 years in prison. This is how it worked. They put it in our neighborhoods to bring us down, to keep us down. Crips' goal is always to make a substantial amount of money and open his own business, whether it's a tobacco shop, a liquor store, a food place, or whatever. That was the goal, to find a way to take that money and make it as legal as possible.

The Los Angeles riots happened in '92. I was 18 at the time. The Los Angeles riots were a result of the Rodney King verdict. Those four officers who were clearly guilty in the video beating Rodney King to near death. When they were found not guilty, it sparked something in the community. I never thought I'd see something like this. Ground zero of the riots occurred five blocks from my house. I was sitting at home watching the news. I saw the news. So we got in the car and drove to the riots. At that time, hundreds and hundreds of people began to emigrate to Florence and Normandy.

So at this point it started everywhere. It was spreading like wildfire. Every car passing through the intersection that had a white person in it was being attacked. I saw journalists receive beatings. Sawhow they beat cameramen and took their cameras. And at that time it didn't really matter what gang you were in because now it's a black vs. white thing.now. So it didn't matter if you were a Blood or a Crip or whatever you were. Even though it was such a messy day, it was such a fucked up day, it was also a day to rejoice because it was the first time in a long time that you saw common enemies, Crips and Bloods and Mexican gangs unite against this 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 groups, got together and decided that this It was the perfect opportunity to try to achieve a peace treaty, a truce between the gangs. Although it was a bad thing that made us reach that level, it was still an opportunity to bring things together. The peace treaty lasted, officially, perhaps a couple of weeks, and continued to dissolve as the weeks and months passed, to the point where it no longer existed.

But for that short time, it was great to have. 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, may he rest in peace, Eazy-E was known for being a Crip. And from him, other pioneering rappers emerged who were from Crip neighborhoods. You had Snoop Dogg, you had WC, all these gangs of popular rappers that were out in the neighborhoods representing their neighborhoods that were exploding into the mainstream. And now you have people sitting at home watching MTV, "106 & Park." They're watching all these video shows, and they have these gang members making rap videos with the blue rags and the '64s and the lowriders and wearing all the gang gear and uniforms, but they're actually artists making money on the street. television. , and is now broadcast worldwide.

Apart from the UK and the Netherlands, I have heard of Crips in China. I heard there are some Crips in Africa, I've actually seen online, on social media, people in Africa

crips

and just loving this west coast culture. And I think all of these countries adapted to these American values ​​and customs simply because of how it was glorified, without really understanding the meaning, 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 really what saved me from getting killed or anything else bad happening to me on these streets of Los Angeles.

There I played football for two years at a historically black college. In 1996 and 1997 I moved to Oklahoma City and began working at the juvenile detention center. They needed a gang counselor. A gang trainer. Of course he was qualified for that. I just volunteered my time, talked to kids, educated them about gangs and told them, because I had no idea Oklahoma had a gang problem. So I went and sat down with the police chief to see exactly where he wanted me to go with this. I did two years in the school system. They came to me and asked if I wanted to, interested in moving me onto the streets, basically controlling traffic, stopping people, writing tickets, blah, blah, blah.

I was like, "Yeah, just screw it. Let me do that. I'll do it. See what it's like." Because I really wanted to see how they treated drug dealers when I was on the other side of the law. And all the complaints that I had as a criminal, all the police brutality, all the mistreatment by the police, I was able to witness it firsthand working with them. And a lot of times I had to intervene or say, "Wait." There were a couple of times where they had to have that conversation with me: "Look, you're either with us or you're with them." So even in police academy training, I dealt with racism.

I dealt with discrimination. Because a lot of those officers were thinking, "This guy is a criminal. This guy is from the street. How the hell are they going to let him work with us?" Bla bla bla. That's why even after I became a police officer and moved back to California, I ended up reconnecting with my old friends and old gang members, and I ended up going to jail. Even after becoming a police officer, I went to jail. In my experience with the LAPD, they still haven't found a way to deal with communities and cultures they know nothing about.

They are the same tactics. Dirty cops, false charges, drug planting, mistreatment for who you are or what you represent. Is the same. Has not stopped. But one way police can close the gap with the community is to continue working with those who want to work with them. Big U is an example, from Rollin' 60s. Guys like that, who are gang activists who are trying to do things to stop gang violence and help the kids in the community and bring some positivity to the community. The main thing is to save lives, and after saving lives, we must create opportunities.

I went to jail in Oklahoma for robbery. Since at that time when I was there it was for a robbery that I did when I lived in Oklahoma. When I returned to California in 2006, I went to jail again in 2009 for another robbery, and they ended up discovering another robbery I committed and combined the cases. I ended up accepting the three-year contract. When I was first arrested, they took me to the LAPD headquarters, what they call the Parker Center. He is transferred the next day to the county facility. So I left the Parker Center that morning. They put me on the jail bus and took me to the county jail, known as the Twin Towers.

Generally you enter the tank. The tank is basically a holding area where many other gang members are located. And I'm talking about mixed. Crips, Bloods, Mexicans, everyone. And that's just... it's like a box of dynamite waiting to explode. And sometimes they put you in those situations and the officers just leave you and don't care. Whatever happens there, happens. And you will always find someone who will challenge you, especially if you are from a rival gang. You hear the slang. You listen to what they say. Or you may see people you haven't seen since elementary school and have lost contact with them.

You wonder where they were. Well, this is where they are. And then you find out that they're from a Crip set, so they just have to connect into one. Now, if it becomes a racial issue, Bloods and Crips find a way to unite against whatever race they have to face. There could be some violence breaking out between transportation to different dormitories in different units. But in the county jail, for the most part, the Crips were with the Crips, the Bloods with the Bloods, or sometimes the general population was a mixed dorm. Now, don't get me wrong.

If I walk in there as a Menlo Crip or as a 60 Crip, or as a 60 and they run into some Hoovers, it's automatically bad blood. It doesn't matter that we are Crips and Crips, we are in the same unit, it doesn't matter. We need to solve this problem. So I could walk in here and a Hoover Crip could say, "Hey, hey, hey, are you from Menlo? I need that fade. I need that fade." That lets you know that at some point, you and this guy are going to have to fight because you two don't get along.

Inside or outside of prison, cripples are no different. The way you behave on the streets is the same way you are expected to behave in prison, except on a higher level because it is a little more dangerous in prison than on the streets. What made me change my life were my children. When I took the scholarship to school, I was in the process of changing my life. I just didn't know it, but that was the beginning of changing my life. And when I started working with gangs and talking to kids in schools and in juvenile halls, and seeing how I was communicating with them and how much they respected me for what I was telling them and trying to teach them, it just made me want to change.

It just made me want to keep doing positive things and that's what I've been doing ever since. One day I met someone and they told me that he looked like this. They told me, "You should go into acting. You should think about acting." So I started acting in small jobs, doing additional roles. So I have done several projects and I have been part of several television series and dramas and different things that have put me in the door of acting. So there's definitely something positive that can happen in my past that was negative, yeah. I am Andy Domingo Pellerano, former soldier of the Latin Kings.

He used to run a drug ring in New Orleans and that's how crime

works

. So, it was in 1995 when I got involved. It was because of the name, because of the weight that name carried. When you say Latin Kings, they say, oh, you know, they think, "Man, don't play with him." Like, "He's a Latin King." Initially, it is to uplift our people. This isn't a gang, is it? This is like an organization, like the Knights of Columbus. First, it would be a validation of who you are on the streets. You just couldn't come from anywhere. "Hey, I want to be a Latin King." Who are you?

What kind of work you do? Who knows you? You know what I'm saying? Are you violent? You know what I'm talking? Things need to align with this specific lifestyle. So when you have two or three people who want you to be initiated, they will have five men who will jump on you and beat you in a circle, for two or three minutes. The way you handle that process lets you know if you took the initiation to become a Latin King. I specifically remember when I was released, I was 14, 15, man, it seemed like the longest three minutes of my life.

I thought they were giving me extra time. I say, "What time is it?" And it was like, "It's only been a minute!" And I'm fighting, I'm fighting for my life. But when you fall, they don't trample you. They allow you to get back up and keep fighting, and that's part of the initiation because if you just stay down, then you're not ready. Then, when time is up, it will be all hugs and pats. "King's love, king's love." Everyone says, "King love, king love, king love." You hug and now we laugh about it. You feel a sense of worth.

You feel like you have a sense of purpose. You are now part of something that is so great that you are part of something that is bigger than you. If you join a gang, they give you a name. They change your name. They called me Paco. Over time I became Paco, the pope of the street, and I became a slave to my own name. So if I had to kill you, if I had to rob you, if I had to rob you, if I had to hurt you, you are not going to be ashamed of this name because my identity was in this name.

And I put a lot of effort behind that name. So, they peed on you when you first came in. That was the testing period just to see your character, to see if you are a man, if you are willing to fight, if you are willing to die, if you are ready for war. . If you are a minor, you are a pipi for two years, and then from there a soldier, and after being a soldier you can rise in rank. So, in the ranking, they had the first Inca, the president, they had the vice president, they had the warlord, who is basically the executor.

They had the advice that I would see, it's like a counselor. Someone who had a lot of wisdom, a lot of knowledge that you would have access to. And then they had the treasurer who would control the finances to allocate where the funds would go. Basically that was the chain of command. So, the first Inca, you have to think, Inca: Power. You know what I'm talking? So that was a position of authority. And the one who had rank over the New Orleans chapter in that period was Paco, and I think in New York, he was King Blood.

So, they had some people who didn't move up the ranks because they just didn't work hard enough or didn't take it seriously. And then there were cases where some people would get demoted and then someone else would move up in that position. And there were cases where some people changed sides and there was a green light on them that if they saw them, they would crush them on sight. I kind of skipped the pee-wee stage because I was doing things that soldiers did that pee-pees shouldn't have done. When I was in prison, I had a guy, he was a Piru, he was a Blood and I was a King, so we came together and were able to run the whole complex.

Now, in that organization I was the Inca, I was the crown. I was the president of that, and on Blood, he was the vice president. And I took that from prison to the streets and that's really where I got into drug trafficking. Really transporting and dealing with a lot of things. When you are in poverty, you aspire to earn money because you believe that money will solve your problems. We would steal cars. We had the keys to the Camrys. We had the master keys. You could just open the car and start it right away. He sold drugs, he robbed people.

By any means necessary, whatever I had to do to get that money, I was getting it, because I was deceived by my own vanity. Whatever came your way and you could get money and get it, you would do it. He used to run a drug trafficking ring. At one point, he was going to Houston to bring bricks from the cartel. We're going to Houston, $48,000 cash. It takes a long time to count the 20 bills, the five bills, and the $48,000 bills. And then when dealing with the clubs, we would deal with the dancers,to do that? For proximity, for bothering you and getting into these neighborhoods, getting into the projects.

I go from neighborhood to neighborhood, from block to block, from prison to project, to youth centers, and I share my testimony, and I make it tangible because I make myself transparent. Don't clean yourself like I've never gotten dirty. So, I used to rap for the world. I opened for Kevin Gates, I opened for VH1 "Love & Hip Hop." It had a Mannie Fresh beat with Mannie Fresh on the chorus on Cash Money Records. Got a new single out with my wife and our sister Roxy as part of the worship team. It's called "Amazing Grace." It's like an interpretation of 2023.

It's not a coincidence, I'm here talking about the amazing grace of God, you know what I'm saying? My name is Alex Sánchez, I was involved with MS-13 and that's how crime

works

. Gang violence comes in all shapes and forms. I ended up going to prison. They shot me. They deported me. The crimes I committed took me to an ugly place, but I learned and came out strong. I came to the United States in 1979 and experienced culture shock and then culture shock with other ethnic groups, especially even Mexicans, among the Latino groups. I began to look for ways to defend myself and in high school I met the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners 13.

Initiation into the gang is always through a beating. They call it "jumping in" in English, or "brincado" in Spanish, which is receiving a beating from four or more people. This is part of what you expect in war, to get beaten up, to suffer violence, right? And that is the beginning of being attacked, it is violence. I ended up joining what is called the Normandie Locos clique. At first, it was about protection, about being there for each other. There were seven of us, two women and five men, and we were all homeless. Shortly after, we have our first friend who was killed.

We called him Rocky, from the Normandie Locos clique. And that basically brought in this element of revenge, of going back to those who hurt us. Around '85, '86, there was an influx of guns 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 did not have funds to obtain those types of weapons. So for us the cheapest thing we could use was the machete. It was something culturally relevant to us. It was a tool for collection in our country. And finally, we became known as a machete-wielding gang in gang warfare.

We were going to fight in the park, in the street. Some of us would carry knives. A chain back then, right? I myself was arrested for crimes and carrying a concealed weapon. I was on my way to shoot someone, the police stopped me and they found a gun. I will say divine intervention. I don't know. But I probably would have killed someone or I would probably be in prison serving a life sentence, like a lot of the people I'm going to see. The violence I used was the way I used to release that pain 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. He had tattoos on his body, on his fingers, on his arms. I ended up getting three points, which was "la vida loca." Then I ended up getting the gang name tattooed on my chest. For more traditional gangs, they would put their gang's name or a girlfriend's name on their eyebrows. But starting to tattoo your entire face, for MS-13, was something different. The more tattoos you had, the more committed you were to letting people know that I'm here, that I'm in your face.

I went through the painful process of having a tattoo removed. It was hard for me, because I felt like a coward doing it, that I was letting go of so many things I had done and things I believed in, but that was part of the process. The relationship between MS-13 and Barrio 18 dates back to the 1980s. We, for the most part, were on the same blocks as their neighborhood, but we also maintained a close relationship. It was mainly because the 18th Street neighborhood in the area was made up of a large number of immigrants, mostly Central Americans and Salvadorans.

But in 1992, Shaggy from Western Locos was shot and killed by members of 18th Street, and that's what broke things off. Many people started dying, mainly because everyone knew everyone else's hiding places. 18th Street was much larger than MS-13. He's still in the area. And that's why they were also more connected to other gangs. They brought other Chicano neighborhoods to attack us. They called me and said, "Hey, Alex, get ready because you can't trust them anymore, because they'll want to kill you." It was a cruel war. It was a difficult war. There have been points where they call them temporary troops and all that, especially in El Salvador.

But also in 1993 in Los Angeles there was a truce between all the Latino gangs that really reduced the violence. But violence has not returned to the levels we saw before 1993. If you just live on the sides and do what you're told and represent the neighborhood well, then you'll be fine. If you break the rules, then there is punishment. There are some who are tried to death, especially those who collaborate with law enforcement, those who become snitches or betray their brothers. But I haven't seen that there is a task force of gang members that are going around and looking at every address where you lived to attack and kill you.

Most of the time, people who 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, even alluding to the claw, or the claw, which is the sign of the gang, right? While you have the devil's horn, the two fingers, which are also used, also in the heavy metal rock scene. People have transformed it. They bring both hands together to form an "M" or an "S", and so on. MS-13, or MSS-13 at the time, was in that heavy metal scene, whether it was Slayer, Iron Maiden or Megadeth.

That music was really our way out. It wasn't that we were evil devil worshipers. There were some individuals within the gang structure who were interested in Santa Muerte, for example. You have people from all denominations in the gang, some people who believe in Christ. So it's a community in general. That's what the neighborhood is called. So in a way, being in the gang is like being in some kind of religion. In '86 I ended up arrested and went to juvenile detention. Once you're in prison, you have to defend yourself and other rival gang members know you as someone who defended himself.

So rising through the ranks like that became a rite of passage. I finally went to prison in 1991 and went back to prison at least three times. And in 1994 I ended up being deported. After 12 years of civil war, the war was over in El Salvador. Many people were being deported. My first thought was, "I'm going to start over." I have no criminal record. I speak English, so maybe I could go into the tourism business or something like that, right? I wasn't planning on going there and gangbanging or getting trapped or dying there. But that changed immediately once I arrived at the airport.

When I was going to the terminal, I saw the gang writing on the hillside and it said "MS-13." But as we went down the road, 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 looking around and being more alert as to where I was and who was next to me. Then, shortly after arriving in El Salvador, I ended up receiving death threats. A death squad called the Black Shadow emerged. And their mission was to eradicate the gang violence that was increasing.

I had two people with me, two gang members who were young. They had been child soldiers in the war and they admired me. I had two grenades and I gave them to him. I had never used a grenade and I said, "I'll probably blow myself up, but these two guys 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 they would kill me or shoot me or even try to kidnap me from these death squads. The level of violence was probably quadruple what he had experienced in the United States, and that was a residue of the war.

So you would see gang members using that kind of direct violence that was used during the war. I couldn't go home anymore, so I ran away. I finally ended up deciding to flee El Salvador because I felt death around me. As another immigrant, the feds kidnapped me in Oaxaca and I almost died in the desert crossing Matamoros towards Brownsville, Texas. So I have this knowledge of the tragedy, of what I saw of other immigrants who came from South America. It's not something I would wish on anyone: to be attacked, kidnapped, held for ransom, and possibly killed just for entering the United States.

But the desperation of what our countries are going through forces people to have to undergo such an ordeal. The only place I could go back to was my old block. He was tired of going to prison. I was tired of a life of violence and being looked down on, and I was able to talk to the neighborhood and they gave me a pass. Because they saw that I was working and taking care of business, and I still lived on the block, but I wasn't involved in any of their gang activities. There's no specific leadership structure, I would say, but it's who fills that void at that moment in the neighborhood where there's no clear individual.

Most of the time, no one really wants to take on the leadership of a gang because you become the authorities' main target. They are not a secret group of people trying to make millions and millions of dollars. They are disorganized structures that work on crimes from which they could benefit. In Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, there are people who could become a criminal entity, such as being part of a cartel or getting involved in human trafficking. But it's not something that is a direct goal of the gang, to be something like that. So what El Salvador has done now by creating the largest prison on the continent in the smallest country on the continent is that it fits more than 40,000 people in a place called Tecoluca.

The prison is called Cecot and there they have been transferring all these people who have been designated as gang members so that they will be imprisoned for life. These individuals will never leave those prisons except in a coffin, and that has been the president's message. We have seen this before. El Salvador has had zero tolerance initiatives with the Zero Tolerance, Strong Hand initiatives. That created mass incarceration and did not reduce violence. Basically, this prison will hold all these people who have been unfairly tried. Based solely on their affiliation, they are being sentenced to life in prison.

In the history of mass incarceration, especially in California, which has over 33 prisons, this has been a failure when it comes to reducing violence. So we know that mass incarceration of people is not going to bail us out of the problems that created this whole problem in the first place. Right now we have the military of El Salvador addressing the problem. They are arresting, they are on the streets, they have checkpoints every two kilometers to see who passes by. You have the local police, the national civil police, but you also have clandestine organizations, like the death squads, the exterminators they call themselves.

Before it was the Black Shadow; Now it is these exterminators who are social cleansing groups that basically aim to murder a specific people. So I think politicians really need to start thinking about what the exit strategy is from this mass incarceration and militarizing the country, as they are doing now, and start really focusing also on the prevention part that has always been neglected by all politicians. , all the presidencies before that. The Mara Salvatrucha began in the late 70s and early 80s in what is considered the Koreatown, Pico-Union area of ​​Los Angeles. And it started with the massive migration of immigrants from Central America, unaccompanied minors and children who came here and suffered this cultural shock with different ethnicities, right?

The migratory flow began to affect other states, such as Long Island in the 2000s; the Washington, DC metropolitan area; places like Houston, Texas, where there is a large Salvadoran community. And in the United States, prison became part of the gang's continuing commitment. He didn't stop the gang by imprisoning all these people, but he influenced the gang to now grow and connect. Once the war in El Salvador ended, the United States government began deporting people en masse not only to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and that is what began the expansion of MS-13 in those countries. Homies Unidos began in El Salvador in 1996 by gang members who had been deported to El Salvador.

He knew many other members from the neighborhood, from the gang, or had been in prison with them. I was invited to a conference in Santa Cruz and that's how we started creating programs in Pico-Union and, well, Koreatown, initially. It wasn't easy at first. We really didn't have the trust of the authorities. In 2000, I formedpart of the Rampart scandal, in which a gang unit officer was arrested for stealing kilos of cocaine from the evidence room. And then he went crazy and then he talked about all the crimes that he was committing in the gang unit, things that we said they were doing in court, but the jury didn't believe us over a police officer.

I became part of the Rampart scandal by being a key witness, an alibi for a 14 year old boy who was being accused of murder, in which he was in church during our program during the time the murder occurred. So it couldn't have been him. And that's when the same arresting officers came after me, and arrested me for the sole purpose of turning me over to immigration for deportation. So that became 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.

And I was finally released and granted political asylum in 2002, but the LAPD hadn't forgotten about me and they weren't happy that I was suing 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 funds, we lost the staff. So I organized myself again. And now we have 11 employees doing a lot of work in the community. Having been a part of that, it's like, I know I'm on a hit list, on a hit list from the federal government, the LAPD, and they're just looking for ways they can charge me.

So I have to walk a fine line wherever I go. I have to watch everything I say. Well, the media has really given the MS-13 gang a lot of publicity. That carries across the state, especially when you have a president who directly names a particular gang as MS-13, and the repercussions that that has behind it. Because once a president mentions something, he tells his departments to go after this particular group. MS-13 is one of the most vulnerable gangs to pursue because it is in the crosshairs of immigration rhetoric. The bad man". An individual commits a crime, it appears in all the newspapers.

While other gangs like the Crips, the Bloods, 18th Street and the Latin Kings, which in some cases are larger than MS-13, are not, they have coverage like this, because they are mostly Puerto Rican or Mexican-American . or African Americans, which makes them American citizens. And nothing fuels gangs more than labeling them as "the most dangerous in the world," as "the most dangerous in the city." Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at one point that they had published a list of the 10 worst gangs in Los Angeles and that every gang wanted to be a part of it. It was like, "Hey, I'm dangerous too." So you create this system of trying to see which gang is number one.

And every gang wants to be number one. You reach a point where you get tired of being chased by the police. You get tired of your mom calling you and saying, "Hey, I'm raising your kids. When are you going to raise your own kids?" Then you start trying to realize that I'm getting too old for this or that I want to be more responsible. People get older. Some people become Christians, others try to study and get a degree or something and start their own businesses. There are many, many MS-13 gang members who are pastors who have changed their lives and are now preaching.

They still call me a gangbanger, 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 am no longer a gang member, because that is how society has labeled me, that I am a gang member for life. But am I a quiet gang member? Yes. I am someone who is now caring for and helping the children of many of my friends who are in prison. Yes. In my life I have done many things, many good things, but also bad things. And I regret the things I've done.

But what I'm doing is trying to give back to the community what I once took. The Homies Unidos organization is not stopping gangs, we are reducing violence. The authorities are imprisoning them. We are trying to save as many as we can by helping them once they are ready to make their lives. Being 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 can support myself and my family and the humble little place I have that isn't even mine. I'm renting. But I think a nonprofit is always struggling with day-to-day costs.

I would love it if wealthy people who had the funds could give us what we need to expand. My name is Omar Sharif, I was previously involved in gang activity in London and this is how crime works. I was involved in gangs from 2005 to 2011. I am grateful to still be alive, although I have come very close to losing my life in gangs. They put a lot of knives in my neck and stomach. They stabbed me twice in the right leg. They have pointed guns at me. The gang structure is almost like having a job. OK? You have the rookies that come involved.

Then you have management. Then you have top management. I got involved in a gang when I was about 13, actually selling candy at school. One day someone came up to me and said, "How would you like to make more money?" And at first 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 support and help your parents at home. And when you come from council housing and sometimes things aren't easy, that kind of language is enough to make you say, "Well, okay, can I do this?" When you join at the age I did, you are considered younger.

A younger one is the street soldier. A younger person is the person who has just joined the gang. As part of the gang initially when we were younger, we have to put certain things away, we have to make deliveries, we have to be on guard. They tell you where to go, what to do, not to look in the bags, not to look in the boxes. It's just that you're a yes man. And we admire our elders. So, our elders are the people we aspire to be. Those who have money, you know, at one time, they had Gucci belts, Rolexes, gold teeth, nice cars.

In a gang, the oldest is not always in charge, but he is almost like a middle manager. Then he takes control of what goes in and out of the area, who sells what on certain streets, the management of the money, the distribution, and he or she will have the... he or she. It could also be her. They will have connections with the people above. So he's kind of the chain of command. So they are the ones who usually even prepare people to form a gang. They are the ones who, when things get a little bad and people are beaten, sometimes kidnapped, sometimes threatened, call the elders.

But I know from experience that even the elders, whom we admire, are talking to people above them. I have seen people who are above the elders who are nothing like us, who are nothing like us. I can guess the jobs they do and they are deeply rooted in society, which opened my eyes. Because I thought, even when I was a young black man in London, that only guys like me do this kind of thing. But in reality, we are just his foot soldiers. So even our elders, who we wanted to become, are still the man who says yes to someone else.

The people above our elders in the gang, the highest in the hierarchy, from what I understand, this couple, they were huge on the property scene in the UK. They weren't involved in the dirty work, but a lot of the money that went into their businesses came from the money that a lot of the foot soldiers, the younger ones like me, would earn and pass through the food chain. It's scary to think that when you go to a bank or talk to a lawyer or walk around Greater London and talk to someone who is quite high up in business, for example, that person has interesting habits on the side, or hobbies on the side. , because I have seen it with my own eyes.

The way street gangs make money here in London includes things like kidnapping; there are hits, where someone wants someone to be hurt or killed; but the most common way, which I would say is the one you hear or see most of the day, is selling drugs. Gangs usually have things called trap houses or gangs. Trap houses are places from where drugs will be sold, where weapons could be stored. There, for example, gang members will live or care for. And these are acquired in various ways. These could be places where squatters have been for a while. It could be the house of another person who belongs to the gang.

And these are safe places for the gang. So if something happens, we'll get a call saying, "Okay, meet us at the trap house." We know where that is. Address is never texted over the phone. They never talk on the phone. It is always told verbally, so there are no traces of where it could be. And if they are in the area where the gang belongs, the police will initially make a connection immediately. Gang wars can start over the smallest or most important things. Smaller things could be that they were in a club or at a rave, and from there someone gets stabbed, and then it's all in all, we have to retaliate, we have to send a message, we have to show them who we are.

So they called everyone, and it was no longer just one person against one person, but it was actually gang against gang, zip code against zip code. And now we are talking about 50 to 100 more people. It got to a point where we were having zip code wars, meaning it was my block, NW1, versus NW5. These gang wars started because people started getting greedy. People sought power. People were simply looking to be significant. And people also wanted to get up. Zip code wars are also called interstate wars. This is something that started even in the 60s and 70s, and the areas became smaller or larger.

And it is a way to protect the territory. Now there are things called block wars, property wars, where even within the same zip code, there is so much rivalry. There is such a demand of who is more important. So it goes from area, zip code, now to blocks, which creates further division. Years ago, there seemed to be one more reason they were going to war, because something big happened. Even recently, he was mentoring about 10 young boys at a school, and one of them told another that something offended him about his mother. And that spread from school.

And because it was filmed and posted on social media, one of them ended up getting stabbed. There was a video of about 60 people fighting. I could see weapons. I saw machetes come out. Why are they fighting? It's basically nothing, really. Those fights don't happen over drugs, they don't happen over a threat from someone outside. They're just two male egos who can't have a conversation, and that has to result in violence and sometimes even death. Although weapons are easy to obtain, knives are still the biggest problem. We surely hear more deaths from knives than from gunshots. Maybe because knife laws are not as regulated.

Because they say that if you carry a knife, they'll put you in prison for four years. But then I hear people get three, four, five warnings. So people don't really take the law seriously. And nowadays, when you hear about someone being stabbed, it's a young man against a younger man. Older people don't get involved in things like that. And these young people will not be able to get their hands on a gun unless they steal it from someone or steal it from the trap house, for example. For anyone under 18 to get a knife, it's as easy as going to Amazon and clicking on something for next day delivery, and they'll receive it.

It is 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 knives with knuckles attached. Who wants this?" I have seen axes with chains. Why are they doing these things? Why don't they ask for an identity document? Some of them might say, "You must be over 18 to buy this." That's never deterred anyone under 18 from saying, "Okay, I shouldn't do this." They don't know that by making that sale and then delivering it to that house, that young man goes and kills someone here.

They are part of that cycle. But they are very attached to it. In the UK, there is a law about carrying a knife, approximately in size and the blade itself is less than 3 inches. It has to be foldable and you should not carry it for the wrong reasons. I mean, I've been stopped and searched before, and sometimes I had a knife on me, but I had a folding knife and I wasn't in a state of rage. Then the guy told me, actually, if he had caught me and I was angry, then he would have arrested me.

And that made me realize that they don't really have a right way to control this. Because I knowmany, well, I knew many guys who would carry bigger swords, that can't be bent. And they would be walking with those on the main streets, for example. I have never heard of anyone going to prison for carrying a knife. I grew up in Marylebone, which is essentially a very, very nice area. However, there is a divide, because there is a side of Marylebone where there are 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 there are municipal flats and tower blocks. Even though it is just around the corner, we are brought up with a mindset and belief system that we are not good enough for. It's easy for anyone to be interested in joining a gang, for many reasons. For young people it usually has to do with money. The other main reason is that belonging. It's having a family, having that brotherhood, a brotherhood. We don't go to private schools, right? We only go to public schools and that's where it all begins.

I didn't run up to a gang and say, "Hey, I want to be in your gang to make money." I tried to follow the right path. 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 doesn't allow me to make money this way, but there is a lifestyle that could, where do I go? The first thing they do is make friends with you, they welcome you. So they make you feel part of a family. The second thing is to pamper yourself. somehow.

You know, if they know you need money, they give you some money. If they know you are hungry, they give you some food. They may ask you to hold something for them. They ask you to be somewhere at a certain time. And usually they have set something up for them to steal from you on purpose. They prepare you in some way to see what you say, because they are the ones who control: "Oh, can we?" Trust this person?" It's really bad the way they make you trust them and really love them as family. But you're just a pawn in a bigger game.

In a gang, it's almost like forming a fantasy football team .Different strengths. Someone might be fast. Someone might be a good driver. Someone might stab and not care. So when they recruit for a gang, I would say there are qualities they look for. The first thing they look for is loyalty, but they also look at how they can strengthen the gang. What can that person bring to the table? New gang members are recruited on a geographic basis. So, I think local recruitment. It is the priority for a gang, because they need to have a high number.

They need to have a certain number of people on the road doing certain things, a certain number of people moving, distributing and managing. So in the UK we have something called county lines. And this is where a lot of inner city gangs, there's no territory anymore, everything's been divided up, so now they're thinking, "Okay, how can we expand?" So county lines are where these gangs want to operate in smaller towns, smaller cities and rural areas. And they usually use young people for this. You may have heard of the term "going OT," which means getting out of town and is facilitated by seniors.

So, the seniors would have someone in their place who maybe lives in a smaller town. They may have someone who has a farm somewhere. Train tickets, everything is paid for for the young man. They give them a budget, they give them money for lunch and things like that. They will tell them to dress how they normally dress. They give them a backpack, they tell them: "Look, don't open the backpack. Here is the address. Go here, wait here or call this number," for example. The goal of doing that is for the police to say, "Well, he's a young person.

We don't have to search him." I think in some ways the UK is influenced by the US, not just in the rap scene. I know the drill scene came up, but there's always a little bit of competition too. For example, America, the Bloods versus Crips, who also came here in the UK. And that was a massive scene for a while. There was a period when they simply became colors. Then there was only the bandana, which represented what color or what gang you are. That's why we're starting to see, you know, music videos getting dirtier. We started to see more murders.

We started to see more guns on the street. So in the United States we have gangs like VMF and GD, which have been around for over 30 years. Latin kings. I feel like in the UK the gangs are more divided. Here in the UK you can own a property, a block. And even within that bloc, it is divided. You know, from block to block, from street to street. That's what I experienced and today I'm sure it's even worse. So for me the main difference is the size of the trade. But they also seem to have more stability and more structure in the way they create longevity.

I think social media plays a huge role in increasing gang violence because of the exposure they get. I interviewed a young man in prison and he said that the reason he killed the people he killed was because of the songs he had heard. He said he wanted to recreate that in real life. And I focus on young people because they are the most vulnerable. They are the ones who still cannot make a decision for themselves. I'm sure there will be some collateral damage from these things. Because when you listen clearly, if you can understand what they're saying in these workout songs, it's scary.

What can be sold, heard publicly and shared on the radio, for example, because young people listen to it and want to replicate it because they think: "Ah, he is good, now he is my role model, my idol." In order to be seen as successful, I need to do what he's doing." For kids to avoid being targeted by gangs, for me it comes down to discipline. It's really understanding what you're getting into. I think the way The way gangs are controlled today is difficult, because it made me feel very embarrassed, you know, being stopped and searched in front of my mother.

And, you know, she cried at home and said, "Why do you think. that my son is this kind of person?" And I hated seeing her angry. But if I put my hat on, I think, "Okay, well, if we stop and search everyone who looks like the criterion stereotype, we could find another gun and take it out." off the streets." To me, that's the wrong approach, because not everyone who looks a certain way fits that stereotype. I think the stop and frisk policy should be reviewed, because if you find a young man and he's carrying a folding knife less than 3 inches long, they will take it off, pat your wrist, and say, "Have a nice day." "The next day he will go get the exact same knife somewhere else and bring it back.

Instead of creating or deepening that hatred, you should try to create a relationship by doing things like going to school. I've always said to talk their language. If you want to watch them, sit down and talk to them. A brother of a friend of mine, a while ago he was caught on the street. He didn't have many drugs on him, but he had enough, and he was arrested and jailed for a while. Yes. someone would tell him, "Hey, listen, we know what you're doing here. How about we offer you the opportunity to make money with us or find you a job?" And you have to think about it like this: prison is a business.

For every person who is incarcerated, someone gets paid. It's a good deterrent to some people, because some people might take it as a lesson and say, “Well, I know a friend of mine was carrying something and he got arrested. I shouldn't do it too." But for most people, this is not enough. More happens in prison than on the streets. This is what we don't hear about on the news. People are dying in prisons. Gangs are still doing the same thing in prison. I think wealth inequality definitely contributes to gang activity, gang violence. The way these gangs make money, and also through personal experience, is through. drugs, predominantly.

If 90% of the money comes from drugs and you legalize it, one thing can happen: there will be too much demand, then the gang will start fighting even more because now they have an open market for example, or it could destabilize them, because the moment the companies find out, the pharmaceutical companies will start to get involved, and they are major players. That will completely eliminate the gangs. So will they have money to buy weapons? Will they even have more money to finance gang wars? 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 have heard of people being stabbed and we want to be able to protect ourselves.

I don't think there is a quick fix to trying to make a young person feel safe. The way to solve the problem and deter them is not through fear, because that doesn't work. It is re-educating them about the consequences of these things and giving people opportunities, showing them more love. These people who are involved in gangs, they did everything they did just because they wanted to feel the love of the people. They did not receive love from home. They didn't receive that love at home, but when they did something, the gang showed them respect and that was what attracted them even more.

One thing that I know has changed over the years and 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, play music together, play pool together, play basketball together. And it was a safe place. When you have something you're passionate about and something you care about, it eliminates the amount of time you spend with the gang. Eliminate the amount of time you spend on the streets. Schools have an important role 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 at war, for example, then you have a big problem because, just like in prison, you have to have gang activity in the school. .

A community approach will be needed to eliminate or reduce violence and gang activity. But I think it has to be a complete united front from all levels of society. If I look at London gangs in 10 years' time, I can see the problem getting deeper. I can see a culture that is becoming even more integrated into society. I think London gang culture will almost become a standard for other gangs in other countries. There are young people who do not see the seriousness of this. They'll look at it like it's cool. They will see it as something that must be done, just as I saw it when I was young.

So yes. 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 had no choice. There came a point where I had to go off the extremes. So I left the area where I was from. I had to move to another area. And this is because he had seen people die. This is because they attacked me. I had been stabbed too and in my mind I knew there were two directions for me: go to prison, or get stabbed, or end up dead.

But it was in that moment of darkness where I realized I needed to make a bigger decision. I need to make a decision about what I'm going to do with my life. But it took me going and talking to the people who were my elders and telling them exactly what I'm telling you right now on camera, which is that I've had enough and that, you know, my mental health at the time wasn't good. It's in a good place. I was never able to speak to any of them again. I was not welcome. In fact, they advised me to stay out of the area.

Because I was able to get out of the situation, I feel a responsibility to be a voice for other people. Since I left the gang, my number one priority was working on myself to become a better person. So now I'm a mentor and coach. As a mentor, I work with young people in schools, prisons, universities, helping them understand their thinking and helping them make better decisions. And as a peak performance coach, I work with people to do exactly the same thing, but also to help them understand what motivates them as humans. There are definitely aspects of being around gang activity that I regret.

But right now, what I'm doing with young people, adults and people at all levels of society, I wouldn't be able to have those conversations if I hadn't gone through what I've gone 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 I feel for me in that gang and from their followers, they can feel satisfied that they passed over me. All the damage from the battle, all those things that happened, the failed processing, all that blood, sweat and tears, passed over me and continued.

I was just an obstacle. I was part of the Hells Angels investigation, which we called Operation Black Biscuit, from 2001 to 2003. I responded to an agent on the case. We were both ATF agents.My fake persona, my name was Jay Davis. The gang members knew me as Jaybird and I introduced myself as an arms dealer and debt collector. The Hells Angels do not have to actively recruit members. They want people who add value to them. I had spent some time as an associate of the Hells Angels, so I met them, let them get acquainted with me, and they invited me to the clubhouse.

And the invitation was not so much an invitation but an order. They believed that I was collecting debts and that I was trafficking weapons within their territory. They then told me that if I intended to continue doing that business, I had to go to their clubhouse and meet their members and basically get them to approve me to continue. I showed up at the Mesa clubhouse and was greeted on the street by four or five Hells Angels. Some had guns, others baseball bats. In Arizona, you can open carry firearms, so I had weapons on display. Some of the members who basically worked as security told me that they can't bring their weapons inside our clubhouse.

That is not allowed. And I told them: I'm not taking my guns away and I'm not taking them away from anyone, not even the Hells Angels. You have people you feel you need to defend yourself from. Me too. If I let them start dictating everything to me, I was never going to finish. And at that moment, one of the Hells Angels shooters came out and put his arm on my shoulder and said, "Look, I make the rules and you guys can come in with your guns in your hands." So right next to it, from that first critical interaction, I felt like I was winning.

The Hells Angels call themselves a club, the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. There are statutes, and within the statutes, the chapter, the group, there is a president, a vice president, a warlord, who is in charge of weapons, retaliation 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 highly respected and long-feared Hell's Angel. If he could gain my trust, that trust would project to other members and open doors for me. In the biker gang, you start very slowly. The first step is that you are an associate, that is, you are simply someone who spends some time in the presence of gang members.

Once you establish a relationship, the gang will ask you to stay with them. Then after you prospect, you'll ultimately hopefully make it to become a full member of the patch. From the date of your prospecting, since it begins, there is a mandatory minimum of 365 days. And that's to some extent how they isolate themselves, because they know that a police officer can't keep up with them and can't keep up with them for that long. Being a fully patched Hells Angel is everything to those members. In this hierarchy, the patches they use and the format of their vests, which are also called cuts, are very important.

I was a bylaws marauder for the Hells Angels of Skull Valley, Arizona. Then I had a black cut that had nothing but Skull Valley on the front. When you become a prospect, you get your lowest point, the lower curved patch. So when I was prospecting, I got a bottom stop in Arizona. When you become a member, you get your top rocker, the "Hells Angels" designator, or whatever the gang is, and your core patch, which the Hells Angels are "death's head." To gain full membership, your charter members must vote for you and you must receive a 100% vote.

If a member of that charter votes against you, your prospecting phase continues. There is another rule in the land of prospects: it takes as long as it takes. The territory is very important for motorcycle gangs. The territory you control influences the amount of money you can earn within that territory. They constantly try to acquire territories from 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 motorcycle gang based in California. I was at the 2002 Laughlin River Run, which was a very important race for cyclists in Laughlin, Nevada.

The Mongols' base of operations was Harrah's Casino, which was a short drive down Laughlin's main street, Casino Drive, to where the Hells Angels' base of operations was, which was the Flamingo Hotel. Some Hells Angels went to Harrah's and started poking the tiger and surrounded them, and that was it. And it was every man for himself. I left the Flamingo and police cruisers, motorcycles, cars and police helicopters roared down Casino Drive. And I was with another agent, and I turned to him and 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 happen all the time. Normally we don't see it or hear about it until it takes place in a public place where civilians, ordinary citizens, participate. There were fights where I was present, I knew the rules and I didn't want to blow my cover. But at the same time, I didn't want to see someone get hit, some innocent civilian. He would find the target of the beating and land some legitimate punches. As if he wasn't pretending to throw good, hard, solid punches at the victim of this rat attack.

But in essence, what he was doing was protecting the head of that victim. He wasn't going to kill anyone by punching them in the head, but they would have been killed by taking a steel-toed boot to their forehead. I got a call from a Skull Valley officer: "Go to the clubhouse right now and bring all your equipment," which meant bring your weapons. They told me the Bandidos are coming to Las Vegas. Las Vegas is our territory and they have not requested a hall pass. We hope you shoot them before they lower their motorcycle stands. And here's the kicker: we'll be watching you from a distance.

If you don't shoot them, we'll shoot you. I was able to contact the agent on the case, Joe Slatalla, and tell him what my orders were. Joe Slatalla found this group of Bandidos, took them to the side of the road and detained them. So I showed up at the target location with the Hells Angels watching me, but the Bandits never showed up. In the eyes of the Hells Angels, all they knew is that we sent Jaybird to Las Vegas to kill Bandidos, and damn, he was there, ready to handle his business. I allowed the Hells Angels to see me in criminal situations to hopefully avoid some of those mud checks I knew were coming.

In the motorcycle world, a mud check is a test to see if you're going to fuck up your pants when faced with a treacherous situation. That's how they would accurately see me in a narcotics transaction. He would receive or give narcotics and receive or give money in exchange, all while being witnessed by a Hells Angels, such as an enforcer or bodyguard. What they didn't realize is that the person he was in the transaction with was another law enforcement officer playing the role of a drug dealer. Local police departments, local officers, were not involved in the plan.

The police stopped me all the time. The police beat me. I was never as good a biker as the Hells Angels were. They could perform tricks and do all kinds of crazy stunts that I couldn't do. And traveling in a pack of Hells Angels requires an enormous amount of concentration. You have to trust the person traveling next to you, because he is very close. One person makes a mistake in that conga line of motorcycles and everyone goes down. I was told that when you meet a Hells Angel and put on your sunglasses, you better lift them up and look that person in the eyes.

That member wants to see your eyes. They told me that if he had riding gloves, he'd better take them off for me when he shook hands with a Hells Angel. Never touch the head of a Hells Angel. Never pat them on the back. I made those mistakes and was reprimanded for it. Sometimes they beat me for it. In the case of women, there is a hierarchy that exists within the gang. There are old women who are wives or girlfriends of members and are prohibited. You better not get caught trying to mess with a member's wife or girlfriend, because there's a violent price to pay.

But there are also women who pass from one member to another. Members can leave the gang of their own free will and with good reputation. In essence, they can retire, and when they retire, they are considered good. They still have to give up all of their Hells Angels property, but if you go bad, they will come and take away their share, their vest. They will return the motorcycle to you. In their eyes, that is their property and they will get that tattoo back. I was part and parcel of the process of those recoveries of Hells Angels property.

Basically, almost like the police did a search warrant, broke into some guy's house, and took everything that said or looked like it belonged to the Hells Angels. The Hells Angels operate independently in their bylaws, in terms of how they make money and how they conduct their business. So there are charter schools that run a pretty clean business and aren't involved in a lot of crime. There are others who are involved in drug trafficking, arms trafficking, extortion, protection fraud. There is no payday or salary to earn for being a member of the Hells Angels. There is no big universal bank account that issues paychecks.

There were members of the Hells Angels that I encountered who sold street drugs and kept those profits in their pockets and kept at least most of those profits. And then they also have legitimate businesses through which they can drive money. The loot and paraphernalia of the Hells Angels alone is a multi-million dollar business. The Hells Angels hold toy drives, hold blood drives, and do community service, and that should not be taken away from them. With those things they make positive contributions to society. Hells Angels parties can be as spontaneous as the blink of an eye. You could be in the clubhouse and the next thing you know, the music is blaring, guests are arriving, women are coming in, and the alcohol is flowing.

They could be inside, outside. They happened in parks, campgrounds. There is a myth that every Hells Angel is a drug addict. There were the Hells Angels who were fitness freaks, who took care of themselves. They ate well. They rested. They didn't drink. They didn't smoke. So rejecting 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 means that good triumphs over evil. There were times when I was pressured, 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 I'm here, the reason you're interacting with me, is because I'm sober, because I have money in my pocket. All those things that you find attractive. When the infiltration investigation I was working on started to wind down, we had two years under our belt, a lot of money, over a million dollars invested in this investigation, and I still hadn't received membership. I still hadn't received my full patch. I was a prospect. To be honest, selfishly, I was trying to speed up the process.

So I went back to one of those first statements made to me: What happens if I meet a Mongolian? They told me it's your responsibility to kill them. So I went to the Skull Valley Hells Angels leadership and said, "I have a lead on a Mongol in Mexico." We found this Mongolian. I dug a shallow grave in the desert and took some Polaroid photographs of the murder. What they didn't know is that it was the ultimate scam. The murdered Mongolian was a member of our task force whom we had disguised, obscured his face in photographs, and then used blood and guts from the butcher shop to create a murder scene, a crime scene.

There they made me a member of the Skull Valley bylaws and gave me a cut to wear. Now, after the fact, they have denied a couple of things. They denied believing it. Okay, I understand. They denied that I had ever become a member. Both sides of that explanation are actually true. I was made a member of the Skull Valley charter. They cut me up and told me that he was a Hells Angel and that he was a member of Skull Valley. But I was also told that since I was within the one-year probationary period, an international vote would have to be held to accelerate my membership, which never happened.

Our case ended before the Hells Angels voted. So they are right about that too. I've never tried to hide that. I have never tried to dwell on that or deny it. So the operation concluded for a couple of reasons. We had a lot, a lot of evidence against our suspects, physical evidence, thousands of hours of recorded conversations, criminal conversations. In the end, we charged 55 Hells Angels and associates, and 16 of them were charged with racketeering, RICO charges. Some charges were dismissed. Some charges were reduced. In that open source discovery process, the Hells Angels learned that the person they thought was Jay Davis, the debt collector, the arms dealer, the hitman, Jaybird, was actually Jay Dobyns, an agent of the ATF.

And theThreats against me and my family began to accumulate. The Hells Angels had assassination contracts on me. They were raised for the Aryan Brotherhood. They were transferred to MS-13 through the prison system. So all these people had a murder contract in their hands for me. My family was in danger and, in the summer of 2008, my house was burned down. In the process of this Hells Angels case, I abandoned and betrayed my family. I made this research my priority. Not my wife and children. 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. We don't spend every second in the middle of some criminal activity or doing something violent, treacherous or illegal. I spent time with the members riding, riding casually, without violence or threats, playing pool, hanging out. The members slept at my house. I slept in the members' house. There are human relationships that are built and the human factor can never be hidden. There are people you like. There are people you don't like. It is no different than any other aspect of society. I wrote a book.

It's called "No Angel: My Heartbreaking Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of Hell's Angels." Then, after doing that, and after following the ATF's instructions to defend myself, they finally sued me over the book. I coached high school football at the end of my career and until my retirement, which gives me great satisfaction. That service before self, trying to influence the lives of young people and teach them some football along the way. My name is John Pennisi. I am a former member of the Lucchese crime family. That's "How Crime Works." The biggest misconception about Cosa Nostra and the people who participate in that life is that people really believe that there is honor, loyalty and respect.

These three principles on which Cosa Nostra is based no longer exist. Honor, loyalty and respect have been replaced by selfishness and greed. The rules for a member are the rules of the family and the rules of Cosa Nostra. And those particular rules are: You must not put your hand on another created member. You shouldn't go with another member's wife, not even a girl, for that matter. You should be of pure Italian blood, your mother and father must be Italian, your lineage must be completely Italian. But with every rule, there is an exception, and there have been people who slipped through the cracks, so to speak.

One of the rules is that you shouldn't get involved in lawsuits, you shouldn't sue people. And I know there was a rule that you weren't supposed to get involved in stocks and bonds. I'm not 100% sure if that's still in effect today. Specifically in New York, women, children or family members were not to be killed in the mafia. They were not allowed to use explosive devices, such as bombs, because on the other hand, in Italy and Sicily, they were known to use explosives to eliminate members during a war, or simply to eliminate a member. They didn't want that kind of attention in New York.

So there is an exception to every rule. Frankie DeCicco, who was the underboss of the Gambino family, had an explosive device placed under his car and as a result, it exploded. The "no drug trafficking" rule applies to all Five Families, but all Five Families have drug trafficking activities in them. Every family will have certain members who will be involved in the drug business and who will turn a blind eye because it makes a lot of 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 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 it. Before the Five Families were created, the head of each family was called father. From there they would get the name godfather. And at some point, they divided it into five parents and there were Five Families. So the Five Families of New York are the Genovese family, who, on the street, were known as the Westsides. That's how we refer to them. There's the Gambino family.

There is the Lucchese family. There is the Colombo family and the Bonanno family. And they are like the core of Cosa Nostra for the United States. As for the Five Families being all in New York, they controlled the entire state of New York. It wasn't just New York City. And then there is the creation of the Commission, which was basically the idea of ​​Meyer Lansky, who saw it as a board of directors. The Commission was made up of the head of each of the families, those Five Families, and they would basically make decisions about anything that happened between them.

The territories were divided, obviously, according to which family represented which part of New York City. It's kind of like... they cut off their own territory. But if they overlapped, that's where a Commission would come in and make a decision. So when they created the structure of the Five Families, they set it up more like an army. At the bottom of that hierarchical order are the associates, who are considered civilians. Anyone who is not a member of that life is considered a civilian. Above them are family members, who are called friends. We call them friends in that life.

Above them are the captains. As we say, caporegimes. They are the leaders of the crews. The family is represented by all the crews that are in that family. And above them is the administration of the family. The top of the administration is the chief, the deputy chief and the consigliere. And that is the structure of the entire family. The word Cosa Nostra means "our thing." And that basically means that the structure of the Mafia, or, as people would call it, Mafia, belongs to them, to the members of that life. The mafia chooses you. That life, the Cosa Nostra, chooses you.

You don't choose that life. So before someone becomes an incorporated member of a family, he becomes an associate. And usually the way they become an associate is that they are associated with someone who is already a built-in member. For an associate to be proposed, I believe that several factors come into play. One is how well they get along with whoever they're with, the soldier they're with, you know, that they do what they're told to do. They keep their mouths shut. Once you are proposed to, a ceremony takes place. The person who will conduct this ceremony will be a member or members of the administration.

Next to them will be, obviously, the captain who will propose to you that day. During this ceremony there is a gun and a knife on the table, and mainly for symbolic reasons. They prick your trigger finger, whether you're right- or left-handed. Your blood falls on a saint, an image of a saint. It simply symbolizes that the oath that you are taking, the oath that you are about to take, you are taking it by holding that saint in your hand. And finally they set fire to that saint, and you move it from hand to hand, and you repeat it after whoever is leading the ceremony.

After which he explains to you the rules of that life. My position within the Lucchese family was that of a soldier, but there were times when I performed for my captain in the capacity of acting captain, specifically for a sit-in. The administration would elect the family captains. The requirement to be a captain would obviously be good leadership, so you would have to see something in that person to feel that he could lead the crew. That captain is responsible for each crew member, but he is also responsible for all associates who are associated with that crew. The position of consigliere is that of counselor.

Therefore, he is specifically handling not only the internal, what we would call problems or struggles within the family, but also the external. The difference between a boss and a subboss, there is not a big difference with the exception of the title. Obviously, the boss is the head of the family, but the deputy boss has as much weight in that family as the boss. In general, the position of a boss is to supervise the family. He's really in charge of everything that happens under him, from the administration, all his captains, all the soldiers in the family, all the way down to the associates.

The way life is structured, the boss is supposed to abide by the same rules as the captains, his administration, the soldiers, and everyone else in that life. The head of a family or a family as a whole could generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year. There are many reasons to hold a boss position. One, obviously, would be to arrest a boss, imprison him. One would be a boss who passes away due to health reasons and, you know, there's a void in the position. But there are also reasons like in the Paul Castellano situation, a boss who felt he was being greedy and the family turned against the boss.

There are different scenarios in which a boss can be removed, replaced, or ultimately killed. I think that years ago, when the Five Families were created, there was much more corruption in having law enforcement officers on the payroll than there is today. I think that's happening less and less, but that doesn't mean it won't continue. As for political influence, it would obviously involve putting money in people's pockets to obtain political favors. In current times, I don't think they have the political power they once had. I don't think they are capable of corrupting politicians like they were years ago.

Initially, the mafia took control of the unions by force. They would put people. Those people would corrupt the union, they would 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 this, you know, in small areas, but they don't control the unions like they did in the past. La Cosa Nostra arrived in New York at the beginning of the 20th century. This was an organization and structure that came from the other side, that is, Italy, Sicily. When immigrants from those countries came to this country, Italians were almost like second class citizens and were discriminated against when they arrived.

At first, it was to fight oppression. But naturally, that turned into committing racketeering and criminal acts for profit. So when the average citizen started paying attention to Cosa Nostra here, I think the first reactions were fear and intimidation. Because they feared and felt intimidated by this group of Italians, they were also afraid to go to the authorities. They were afraid to speak against him. In turn, Cosa Nostra gained its power from this. So I joined Cosa Nostra because I came from a neighborhood, both Ozone Park and Howard Beach, that was full of kids in that life.

And I think I admired them at the time and wanted to be like them. If you are surrounded by people who are in that life, incorporated members, at some point you become an associate. And my cousin and I were associated with the Gambino family through John Gotti Jr. And at the time I'm talking about, I was about 14 or 15 at the time. Then, sometime around 2012, I became an associate and of record for the Lucchese crime family. In 2013, he was already an incorporated member of the family. I remained an embedded member of the family until 2018. I ultimately ended up leaving because the family I was a member of falsely accused me of being an informant when that wasn't true.

Now they were cheating on me, which meant they sent people to find my employer. Usually when that's done, it's either to A, hurt you or B, kill you. I made the decision that I would never return to my former friends who turned against me. Obviously, my life has taken a dramatic change. I can't see my family as much as I would like anymore. I can't live as close to them as I would like. I have to watch every place I go, you know, and be very careful about what I do. And my plans have to be drawn up based on where I'm going and what I'm doing.

Then my life took a big change. In my opinion, in 20 years Cosa Nostra will hardly exist in New York. I don't think they will be able to survive. La Cosa Nostra now, compared to years ago, has definitely declined. And the reason is that with these sentences that are being handed down, the government and specifically the FBI have unlimited funds. They are able to go after them. They can eliminate the bosses with RICO. As for earning money by committing crimes or performing various criminal acts, today it is more limited than before. So now, once you limit making money and making money, you are taking power away because money brings power, and organized crime today is definitely less powerful than in years past.

In recent years there has been an increase in arrests and a large number of arrests in Cosa Nostra. Specific families are targeted, and the reason is that it is difficult for Cosa Nostra members to operate without law enforcement, specifically the FBI, knowing what they are doing. There are more people who are informants, cooperators. They have people who work within the families with the FBI, giving information to the FBI. This is how they are dismantling families. Family by family, they dismantle them. Members of law enforcement in the United States now work closely with members of law enforcement from people outside the United States, such as Italy and Sicily.

They create cases together. I made the decision to create a blog and started simply writing from my experiences. So the first podcast I created isalso the name of the blog, which is called "Sitdown News", and that is also the name of the podcast. And I recently created a second podcast called "Unlimited Substance." My name is Jimmy Tsui. I have a nickname like Bighead. I am a former high-level member of the largest triad, Sun Yee On. I decided to leave my life because I got tired and I was almost killed in 1992. I was 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 are there in Hong Kong? I can tell you that there are many 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 many soldiers at my command. When I joined the Tung On gang in Chinatown, New York, a couple of former Tung On members were from Hong Kong. When they are in Hong Kong, they are already a triad.

Members of Sun Yee On. So after arriving in the United States, they still have a connection with a Hong Kong triad. Because some things happened, I was arrested in... 1985. Remember. OK? So after I came out, the couple members I mentioned before from Sung Yee On, they asked me, "Hey Jimmy, do you want to go to Hong Kong with us? Maybe you can go out and have some fun first because we were already in since "two years ago." I returned to Hong Kong with them. They took me to a restaurant and we waited there. And then a guy came down, but he didn't look like a triad leader, anything.

He looked like a businessman. They never mentioned that this guy is the leader, okay? Then the leader asked me a couple of questions, like, "What are you doing in New York? What's your position in New York?" And I tell him everything. Then he says, "Okay, because I already have many soldiers at my lower level, all the children who follow me will also become Sun Yee On. For the ceremony, there is an incense altar on the table. You have to swear a lot by God I heard something, and we had to drink blood wine. And then the first thing they said was that I will speak in Cantonese because I don't know how to translate it into English.

The rule for the triad, the main rule, is to obey your boss, of course. to your main boss. There is 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 girls from each other. to others. My boss gives me, as I remember, two, two clubs every month to collect money, what they call protection money. The shareholders must be one or two shareholders of the nightclub that is our member. In the United States, you can. say that this is extortion, but they would be willing to give money for protection in the United States.

But in Hong Kong, you have to be a shareholder of this nightclub and then you will have your own people to protect the club. I tell you, honestly, I tell you that we are there every night, at least 20 days a month. We get used to it, like going to work. Just every day, almost on time, we were like, okay, let's go to this nightclub tonight, let's go to that nightclub tonight. Every night is like this. That's gang life. For me, I have two clubs to collect. In every nightclub they give me $20,000 a month. So I get like 40 thousand dollars a month, without doing anything, for two small nightclubs.

But for the big ones, as I know, they pay like $100,000 a month for each general. Back then, the triad business was always a production company, a bowling alley. That is a legal business. And for the clandestine business, maybe money laundering, maybe money from drug trafficking. They have business right here in the United States. In New York, in Los Angeles. They have businesses everywhere. Back then, I can say that all the gangs in Chinatown had connections in Hong Kong. They all have connections in Hong Kong. The generals of the other group start a drug trafficking business. Back then, it was very easy to smuggle drugs into the United States.

Maybe they have some girls in the gang. They tell the girl to go back to Hong Kong, pick something up and bring it back. At that point, it's very easy. It's not like now. When I am in Hong Kong, the film business I can say is all controlled by the triad. If you don't listen to the triad, you won't be able to get the place. Not even a place. If you don't listen to them, you will be punished. There's a movie star who comes out saying something like, "I'm not a triad," whatever. You believe them. You believe them.

OK. But I don't believe them. Many famous movie stars who are women are members of the triad. Many people don't know it. And we know it. Every gangster has a nickname because we don't want to use our real name on the street. Easy to remember. I have a big head and my name is Jimmy. It's too simple. Many people are called Jimmy. Lest you forget, they always called me Jimmy Bighead. They have a nickname for the monkey. They have a nickname for "tiger boy", "fat boss". They have all kinds of nicknames. Everyone has different types of handshakes, like different positions.

They have different types of handshakes. Sometimes you do this and then you show it with your hand and then they know where you stand. Maybe the guy you're talking to is a soldier, and then you show him the hand signal, you're a general, and then he doesn't know what the general hand signal is because he's just a soldier, so he can only show the soldier's hand sign. So if I show it, you're just a soldier, I don't want to talk to you. Tell your boss to get out, like this. They don't use that anymore. Only the old generation.

The post-2000s generation doesn't care. They don't care about this. They only care about how many people you have, what kind of power you have, how much you have. In Hong Kong I will never go out alone. If I go to this club, at least 20 or 30 people will follow me and enter the club. So they knew it. They knew you are the triad. We have experience. We can know who is a triad, who is a police officer and who is a businessman. We can say it. For triads, they have a couple of levels. But for Sun Yee On, the members of the upper level, they are all controlled by a family.

No other person can take his place. Each generation will pass from generation to generation, like father and son, son and son, like this. So until now everything is controlled by one family. After the top level, the second level is the general level. We call it 426. After 426 is the soldier. For the soldier, they call him 49. And after the soldier, they are the people who hang out with the soldier every day, but are not members yet. They call it blue lantern. This is the main structure of the triad. Of course, they have many different positions, like a white paper fan.

That's the guy who controlled all the money. This other position is to distribute the message. A special guy doing that. Now, in this century, many positions have disappeared. So the only thing left is the top level, the general, the soldier and the blue lantern. I only saw my boss in Hong Kong two or three times. But I know his family. When you get to the general position, the boss will give you a couple of places, like a couple of trading places, so you can collect money every month. That's our salary. I'm just making sure they're doing the right thing, that they're not stepping out of line.

And that is what I did. If someone gets out of line, it's okay, there are a lot of people in the group. Many people. Things always happen, because you can't control everyone. I'd never done that before, but the worst I heard was that they were killed. That's the worst. If they did something against the company, against the group, they will be killed. After me, I have a couple of soldiers (they have been in the group for a long time, they have experience) who control all the children. They are doing all the management. So this won't happen.

But sometimes in the other groups this happened. That's what I heard. Hong Kong is really small and has too many triad members. Everyone has their own district. You control this part and 14K controls the other part. But you know what a gangster is like. They always want to increase his power. Then they intervene. The district is controlled by Sun Yee On and the war could have been stopped. When I was in Hong Kong, I saw another general in Sun Yee On, they have something to do with a general in 14K. They start a war. They want to take your territory.

Yes, I saw it 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 weapons. They always use a knife, because in Hong Kong the law on firearms is very strict. Even if they have a weapon, they are hardly going to take it out on the street. It is almost impossible for people to get a gun license in Hong Kong. When in Hong Kong, those who used weapons were always gangsters from China, from mainland China. They bring the gun from China, then use it in Hong Kong, then run back to China.

But the original members in Hong Kong barely use the weapon. Okay, maybe the lower level type, but not the general one. 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 is going to start, we retreat and then the soldier advances. The different members of our triad are together doing something, yes, always. It's talking about money. Don't worry, it's talking about money. With a general, you think he can't keep the whole pie and want to share it with another member or share it with a different group, he will do it.

Hong Kong is very small, I assure you. So you also have to make friends with other groups. Back then, in Hong Kong prison or Macau prison, the entire prison was run by the triad. The triad gained more power than the correctional officer. In the 60s and 70s all the police were corruption, and with the triad. They worked together. Not until now. The impossible. You can not. It's very strict right now. If you do something they don't like, you will disappear forever and people won't be able to find you. And you won't face jail time, you'll just disappear.

I decide to leave my gangster life. They shot me five times and then I said, "No more." I got tired of it, because I'm getting old. The way I think is different. Then I want to go back to my normal life, so I left it. I know the person who shot me, but I don't know why he shot me at that time. Then I discovered it. Because my soldier, under my command, who, the people under my command, shot his member two weeks ago. So that they know that I am their general. Then he shot me. At that time he was home and I ran out of cigarettes.

So I have to go down and try to buy a cigarette at the supermarket. When I closed the driver's side door and looked in the side mirror, I saw someone get out of a car behind me and then start shooting. And then the ambulance arrived, after at least 15 minutes, as I remember. They took me to Elmhurst Hospital, had surgery, and then the doctor came and showed me all the bullets and said, "We took out four bullets and there's still one bullet inside your body." So I asked him, "Why don't you take the last one?" And he told me that "because that bullet goes into your bone, that bullet will stay there forever." That's what the doctor says.

What do I have to do to get out? Actually, nothing. I only tell it to my soldiers. Because I have a couple of soldiers who already control all the children. I'm just telling you that from now on, all the money from the streets, the money from the gambling houses, whatever, I'm going to leave it all. You deal with people at lower levels, and if anything happens, you don't need to ask me. Although after I left, I started working and the FBI came to me and asked me questions. I say, "I don't know anything. I'm already gone." In the 90s, the FBI, all the leaders, all the gangsters were arrested and imprisoned.

Without our help, they can no longer remain in the United States, and then they regress and now disappear. We call the first beginning of the triad tong, Hung Mun. Hung Mun is the first. After that, they split from Hung Mun into separate triads. They call it the triad because of the three large rivers in the southeastern area. So within that area, they call everyone a triad. The government people call them triad. And then they start calling themselves triad too. Sun Yee On in Hong Kong is the largest triad in almost the entire Southeast Asian area. In my time, they have like 200,000 members around the world.

They have quite a long history. For all the high-level members of Sun Yee On, you now become entrepreneurs. They do every business. Everything underground. It is only for lower level members. I was born in 1965 in Hong Kong. I was born in the district called Yau Ma Tei. Within Yau Ma Tei, there is a street called Temple Street. At this time, the entire street is controlled by the triad. So, when I was very young, I already knew what the triad was. And my father saw that I was getting worse, that my behavior was getting worse. He then decides to emigrate with the entire family to the United States.

At that time, there was a gang called Ghost Shadows in Chinatown. Always waiting outside school every day, like after school. They try to do something to us and they try to scare us and tell us to join the gang. If we don't, we have to pay them money every day to protect us, but we continue to deny them. One of my classmates told us that we should go find his cousin, Clifford Wong, and he is the leader of the Tung On gang. My classmate was killed because the Flying Dragons thought my friend belonged to the Tung On gang, but that time we are not.

So we asked Clifford Wong for help and he said, "You guys just joined ourgang". So we officially joined the Tung On gang. I am trapped in the Tung On gang when I am 14 years old. When I become a member of Sun Yee On, I am 22. So I was already in the gang life for about eight years old. We have a channel on YouTube, Chinatown Gang Stories. We start telling the real story about the life of gangsters. We want to do our best to find every former member of a gangster, no matter what level they are, to tell his true story, so that the world knows what the life of a gangster is like.

I just want to say that, for the new generation, don't trust anyone except your parents. Don't trust any movie story. the gang life. If you're really in the gang life right now, there are only two last ways out. First, you're going to end up in prison, serving time. Second, they're going to kill you. My name is Mike Moy. former Chinatown gang member. I later became an NYPD cop. And that's how crime works. You had so many weapons hidden everywhere, secret tunnels and snipers in the safe houses. A madman would not even dare to go to Chinatown, because even a madman feels pain, he fears death.

So when it comes to being in a Chinatown gang, you'll either end up in jail or the outcome won't be good. So, I was only 16 years old when I joined the gang, and it was one of the most famous gangs in Chinatown during that time. There were many rivals. In the 1970s, Ghost Shadows and Flying Dragons, those were the two main gangs. In the end, there were the White Tigers, the Tung On gang, the Fuk Ching, the Green Dragons and the BTK. The violence between gangs, I wouldn't say it's about territory. I would say it's out of respect.

Any form of disrespect justifies a murder or a shooting. Remember, these kids are young. Children of 13, 15, 16 years old. All they want is for people to show them a little respect. Maybe it's because they feel insecure about themselves or have low self-esteem. It's about respect. And many people died because of lack of respect. When we were in a gang, most of us at one time or another had some type of interaction with the Italian mafia. Even myself, in my early 20s, was dealing with guys in their 40s and 50s. But these Italians, young Italian teenagers, are the ones who were a problem for us.

And there were some shootouts where some of our guys killed some of them. They walked around with their bats and sticks and wanted to be tough, and they didn't know who they were messing with because we were never afraid. You know, we felt invincible. During my adolescence, we did extortion, street robberies, petty crimes. But then when I got older, when I turned 20, I started selling marijuana, dealing with counterfeit money, credit card fraud, stolen credit cards from a source we had at the post office. I opened gambling houses. A gambling house we hung out at on Canal Street, right next to the Rosemary Theatre, in the basement.

We would have poker machines from the Italians. They would put the poker machines there. Sometimes we had poker tables, pai gow tables where we collected the percentage. That was one of the most profitable businesses I had. And also pirated video tapes. In those days, videotapes, those Shaw Brother kung fu movies, 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, 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 void and the Chinese took over. .

The Chinese were able to import high quality heroin into Chinatown. They dominated that business for a short time. Imagine how much money was circulating in Chinatown during those days within a few block radius. I mean, there were taxi drivers, waiters and waitresses who benefited from all that money. Even factory workers. Because the gangsters would spend that money in Chinatown. Yes, they extorted the stores, but they were not there to close the stores, as the media portrayed us. All businesses in Chinatown were flourishing during that time. Look at Chinatown back then. Never sleeps. It is open 24 hours a day.

You have the gang members go to a restaurant during Chinese New Year, during any holiday, and the owner will give them a little red envelope. It's just a small part of what they're getting. Less than you probably pay for junk removal, right? To the Italians. You know, we protected the neighborhood. And I even have personal experiences protecting businesses, you know, doing what I had to do in those days to protect business owners from being bullied by people who didn't even know any better. Some of those people remember me for the rest of their lives. The person you least expect to be a gang member, that's the person carrying the gun.

So when we travel in a group, for example, we go to a pool hall and we are playing pool, there will be a boy in the corner of the pool hall guarding us, and that is the boy who has the gun. . There could be a targeted hit where, well, you're going to find this person and kill them, yes, but a lot of times when they're on the streets, you can't control what they do. And it was very easy to recover a gun in those days. I know that in the 70s they had a source with the Italians and they got weapons from them.

In the '80s and '90s, it wasn't that difficult to go out of state and buy a gun. Just show your ID at a flea market and you'll buy a ton of antique guns. There are safe houses everywhere. We had safe houses in Brooklyn, near Williamsburg, one near Midwood; Queens, of Woodhaven. So we had several places where we held our meetings. At any given time, there could be up to 10 or 15 people in that apartment, sleeping there, living there. We kept it very discreet. A side entrance, so it doesn't look like there are many people coming and going.

So the runners will go out and buy whatever they need, whether it's food or drink, whatever they need. Generally, the police wouldn't even care about these things. What matters to them are the weapons. But luckily we hid our weapons so the police couldn't find them. One of the ways we did it was we were on the second floor, so we would tie him up with a rope and lower him down to the first floor. Then all you see was a rope on the ground. But who would expect that when you pull that rope there's a gun there?

And so many secret tunnels and places to hide weapons. As for the tunnels, there were on Mott Street, Bayard Street, Canal Street, Pell Street, Doyers Street. These places. These tunnels were used as a means of escape. After shooting, you simply run into a tunnel and exit on the other side of the street. That's why there are so many unsolved cases in Chinatown. I was 16 when I joined a gang. I saw it as a way to protect myself from bullies. During my years at school, I was the only Asian kid. Then I was a victim of harassment.

How did I become a member of the gang? At first I started hanging out with them and when they started trusting me, they knew I could do things for them and that's when they accepted me. And they would give you a nickname, like Bighead, and say, "Hey, you have a big head, so we'll call you Bighead." Onionhead's nickname comes from his hairstyle. The newspaper and magazines claimed that Onionhead's nickname comes from: "If you betray him, he'll make you cry. That's why they call him Onionhead." But that's not true. He looked like an onion head with his hair cut back in those days.

They tried to give me a nickname. I put an end to it. I'm that kind of person. I like to go unnoticed and 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 an initiation ritual together with two other members. We kneeled and lit the incense. We served wine in front of General Guan to make an offering to him. Our blood was in the wine. We prick our fingers. After the initiation we feel a certain bond, like a brotherhood.

What Italians would probably call associate, we would call liang chai. What Italians would call street soldier, we would call ma chai. Like a captain, a dai ma. Deputy chief, that would be a dai lo, which is an older brother. The leader, dai lo dai. And that would be the guy at the top. So how does one become a dai lo? He starts out as a soldier, and if you have the qualities of a dai lo, like the gift of gab, you have the charisma, then these kids will follow you. You spend money on them and once you have a crew, you become a dai lo.

The dai would give the money to the dai ma. That helps pay for everything, including entertainment, food, expenses, the safe house, paying the rent. The money comes to us, unlike the Italians, where the money comes. They have to pay for our loyalty. What we do on the streets, we basically improve their reputation. Many people have the misconception that clamps, triads, and gangs are the same thing. It's not. The tongs were former gang members in Chinatown who later attempted to become a legitimate business association to help new immigrants coming to this country. But there are a handful of bad apples who associated themselves with the gangs and used them to do their dirty work.

The Flying Dragons were under the Hip Sing Tong Association, the Ghost Shadows were 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 moved to Canal Street and Grand Street. The Ghost Shadows were in control of Mott Street, Bayard Street. The White Tigers went to Queens, Elmhurst. Later, the Tung On gang was created and took control of East Broadway. Do Chinatown gangs still exist today? Yes, they do, but they operate differently. Very different from what I grew up with.

There is no dai lo, so to speak. There is no great leader like the one we had. They keep it completely underground. In those days, we dealt with a lot of federal crimes, crimes that deserve the attention of the FBI. The NYPD did not have the resources to take on Asian gangs. They didn't even have translators available to translate. They were only there to help the FBI. But it was the FBI that solved these cases. It was around 1993. The FBI started arresting a lot of people, and that's when it started to fall apart. The people upstairs were being locked up.

So the people below didn't know what to do. Most of the gang members were arrested by the feds or killed or imprisoned. That's when I made the transition. And to be able to make that transition into the NYPD, it had to be like a light switch. It was like an on and off switch. It was all or nothing. You know, I grew up watching "Baretta," "Kojak." What happened to Steven McDonald, the story goes, he forgave the boy who shot him. And when Steven McDonald mentioned that this kid was a product of his environment, he did a lot of self-reflection and saw that the way I grew up 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, until that day. When I took the oath, I left everything behind. I was assigned to work in Chinatown. So. I wasn't expecting to work in Chinatown, my old place as a gang member, and that was a little stressful, because what if I ran into my rivals or my gang mates? And it happened. I met my uniformed rivals. I ran into my old uniformed gang mates. Even when I was assigned to the detective team and promoted many years later, some of these guys got out of 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 shops, taxis and all that. Now they started getting involved with different types of rackets. They didn't get involved in heroin trafficking anymore because the feds were watching that. Then they got involved in other things, like the transportation business, the dollar vans, the bus that left the state. They still had their gambling houses and the prostitution houses were run differently. Unlike those days, when you would walk into a house of prostitution and see 10, 15 or even 20 girls. So what they did was they divided it into an apartment, and they would only have maybe one or two girls.

The gangs operated very differently. Nobody wanted to be called dai lo anymore. I love the NYPD. The NYPD gave me everything I have for all those years. It's just that I had a bad experience while working with some thugs at the NYPD. That left a bad taste in my mouth. So it was time for me to go. I left in July 2021. After more than 26 years, I started this channel called Chinatown Gang Stories to get these stories from former gang members who lived a life. Because there is a lot of misinformation out there. Much 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 in those days. What did I learn from being in a gang? Simplydo not do it. Between social media, technology, cell phones and license plate readers, DNA, facial recognition, Big Brother watches everything you do. So there is no longer a place in today's society for gangs.