Why Do Crips and Bloods Beef

Names have been changed.

When I was in 8th class, all my friends started joining the Crips gang. They bragged about how cool they were, and they made gang life wait and then easy and fun. I hung out with them to learn more than and just to be able to say I hung out with gang members. I liked being friends with them—for protection and to be cool. But I besides made sure I didn't join the gang.

I realized what my friends were and what I was not. They'd been brought up in environments where they had to exist in a gang to survive. I grew up in a practiced habitation with my mom and brother, and I'd encountered fewer obstacles than they had. Though I wondered what information technology would be like to be in a gang, I knew I couldn't handle gang life. Some of the things gangs do, similar robbery, murders and hustling, just weren't for me.

None of my friends ever directly approached me nearly joining because I ever told them that hanging out with them was as far as I would go. My friends respected my refusal to join considering, except for actually beingness in the gang, I fit right in with them. I even fought with them whenever they got into a beef, so they knew I was a real friend and not just a tag-along. For a petty while I worried I was in too deep, fighting with the Crips against rival gangs, but I was careful not to go any further than that.

Security Guards in Gangs

Now I'm a junior in high schoolhouse and I'm still friends with gang members. I'm comfy with my role and my friends are too, then I don't confront much pressure to bring together. Merely I see a lot of my classmates beingness pressured in my high school. I see blue bandannas, the color of the Crips, all the time in my schoolhouse. I run across blueish chaplet effectually people'due south wrists and necks and the letter C (for Crips) thrown up in every direction in the hallways.

Virtually everybody in my school has some kind of gang amalgamation, fifty-fifty the security guards. Many of the guards are Crips and they greet students who are gang members by "piecing" them (doing the gang handshake). They even yell out the Crips calls, like "Co-rip" and "Blat killa" (a dis to the Bloods, a rival gang).

Usually the Crips and the Bloods hang out together at my school, and they don't have bug with each other. This is common in a lot of loftier schools, according to my friends who are gang members. Even though the gangs are sworn enemies, they're ordinarily about peace in the school building. They take the occasional rumble in the hallway, just for the most part they become forth.

Only that doesn't mean there isn't violence. One twenty-four hours during my sophomore yr, a freshman named Kellz transferred in from another schoolhouse. When Kellz noticed that our school was mainly Crips territory, he foolishly pretended to exist a Crip.

Trounce-Downwardly at Schoolhouse

A week after Kellz came, a Crip named Speed asked him what gear up he was with. A set is a division of a gang based on neighborhood or street, sort of like precincts to the police. They were in the lunchroom, and I joined the crowd of students that had started to build around them.

Kellz answered, "Original Gangsta Crip" and information technology just so happened that was Speed'southward set. Speed immediately knew he was lying. Kellz tried to apologize, but to no avail. He was and then scared I could come across information technology in his face up.

And so it got fifty-fifty crazier. The whole time he'd been challenge to exist a Crip, he was actually a Blood. Nosotros plant out when somebody from his neighborhood said they'd seen him effectually with the Bloods. The Bloods didn't take also kindly to the news either. Somewhen almost every gang fellow member in the school pummeled him. The Crips beat him up for being a Claret pretending to be a Crip, and the Bloods beat him upwardly because he'd been afraid to admit he was a Claret.

The Squaring In

That reassured me that I'd made the right decision not to join a gang. But what made me fifty-fifty more sure that gang life wasn't for me was when I witnessed my get-go and terminal initiation for a new Crips fellow member.

One day final yr, I was walking with some Crip friends and they told me they were well-nigh to foursquare somebody in. I didn't know what that meant. My friend explained that information technology's when the gang recruits a new fellow member past chirapsia him down to make him prove he'due south strong enough to be in the gang.

There was a dead end behind the park where the new recruit, Ramon, met up with the Crips to exist squared in. I was cool with Ramon, and I decided to watch to meet how it worked.

A Painful Initiation

Kickoff Ramon fought 1 of my homeboys for 20 seconds. Twenty seconds after, another gang member joined, and and then some other every twenty seconds later that. The dominion was that if Ramon vicious to his knees at whatever point, he'd have to start all over with the first guy.

Shortly there were three guys fighting Ramon at once. I could hear each blow connecting to various parts of his trunk, the worst of them on his head. Somewhen he fell to the footing in the fetal position, blood all over his face up and bruises everywhere on his arms and legs. He hadn't fifty-fifty made information technology to the fourth gang member, then they didn't bother to pick him upward and start over. They only began stomping on his head and all over his body.

Ramon'southward face was a mixture of regret, fright and pain. Even more terrifying were the looks on the faces of the Crips equally they beat him senseless. They were smiling and laughing like it was funny. They seemed to be enjoying it. "Get the f-ck upwardly!" they yelled at him as he brutal. One of the boys beating him senseless was his brother.

When it was all said and done, Ramon looked dazed. The gang members tried to help him upwardly, merely he kept falling. While they waited for him to become himself together, they congratulated each other and talked about who'd beat him the worst.

Ramon finally got upwardly and they all congratulated him for fighting his all-time and told him that he was downward with them. He couldn't even talk. I left later that and all I could do was recollect about it for the rest of the night. Any thoughts I'd had of joining a gang died then and there. I was so glad that I'd had the presence of heed to not join.

A Fine Line

The next calendar week, Ramon came to schoolhouse showing off his new lifestyle. He wouldn't stop talking near it, and he was walking effectually like nobody could touch him. It was as if he didn't even retrieve what had happened to him the week before. Afterwards that, he started hanging out with the absurd kids and getting into fights, and people respected him.

From what I see from my friends, the chief reason they turn to gang life is peer pressure level. I remember Ramon joined because he didn't want to disappoint his friends. Information technology can exist hard to say no to people you lot've known your whole life. My friend Jay told me he became Crip because he was pressured past his whole block and his neighborhood. He besides told me he felt uncomfortable by himself and wanted protection.

I understand wanting people to protect yous just in case you demand some help, just I don't know if joining a gang makes anything amend. Once you're in one, you probably demand even more protection than you did before.

I notwithstanding spend well-nigh of my fourth dimension with friends who are in gangs. I know there'south a pretty fine line between hanging out with a gang and joining i. Simply it's a line I've fabricated articulate to myself and my friends, and I'chiliad not going to cross information technology.

Any thoughts I'd had of joining a gang died then and there.

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Source: https://youthcomm.org/story/almost-one-of-the-gang/

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