Crips

In 1969, fifteen year old Raymond Washington and Stanely “tookie” Williams started a new gang called the Baby Avenues (aka Avenue Cribs). At the time the Black Panther group was eliminated in Los Angeles, but they still wanted to continue on with the Panther movement and community control. Washington also was inspired by another 1960s gang called the Avenues. They formed the gang to battle other street gangs around their area. The name Cribs turned into Crips when the members of the gang started walking around with canes to show off their “pimp” life styles. People started to called them cripples, which eventually got shortened to Crips.

Eventually the gang became very popular and branched out to different parts of Los Angeles. By 1980 the gang was well known for being involved with selling Crack. By the 1990s they were well known throughout the United States and other countries.
Each set of the gang uses the term Crips along with their individual gang name. The street gang that started in a small part of L.A now has nearly 35,000 members.

Crips are associated with the color blue in different shades and usually wear a blue rag or handkerchief to identify themselves. They often wear professional sports team jackets and caps that have the names of Los Angeles teams.
To identify their territory the Crips use graffiti. The graffiti also tells what activities they are planning or ones that already happened. They also have different hand signals that they use to communicate with each other. Their biggest rivals are the Bloods.

The initiation into the Crips could be different for males and females. Males are required to commit some sort of crime in front of gang witnesses. Females have that option or they can be “Sexed In” which means that they need to have sex with several older members of the gang.

The Crips are one of the largest and most violent gangs in the United States. The gang is known to be involved in murders, robberies, and drug dealing, among many other criminal pursuits.

The gang has a special dance known as the “Crip Walk.” If someone that is not in the gang is seen doing this dance, a member is supposed to harm them. There are a few famous rappers who are known to be in the Crips. Snoop Dog is one of them. In one of his songs he says, “I keep a blue flag hanging out my backside
But only on the left side, yeah that's the Crip side”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5eA9A4lR90
- this is how the Crip Walk is done.

-kristina poggi