“We Get All Hyped Up. We Do a Drive-by.”
A report from the front lines of the San Antonio gang wars.
norma says: my nephews were nds i would like to purchase this mazine i used to live in the alazan apache courts one of my nephews were interviewed by a writer. my nephew is in prison sinse 1994 and should be coming home soon. thank you very much. (September 16th, 2010 at 3:09am)
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There are approximately 2,000 hard-core gang members in the city—2 percent of the students in middle and high school—according to police department figures, and another 2,500 associates who engage in less-violent behavior. The names of the different gangs are as varied as the crimes they commit: Big Time Criminals, All Violent Boyz, Hispanics Causing Panic, Brothers Taking Over, Gangers Against Police, and Niggers in Charge, to name a few. On the Anglo North Side, the biggest gangs are the Northside Rollers, the Skinheads, and the Bad Boyz, Inc. Some gangs just go by the crimes they specialize in: Burglary Rape Crew, ATM Robbery, Church Burglars, and Dope Overthrowing Gangsters, who specialize in robbing street drug dealers of their money and narcotics.
There are no firm numbers on the thousands of “pee-wees” or “wannabes”—gang affiliates who are either too young or too unpopular to become full-fledged gang members but who may shoplift, help older teens sell drugs, or spray-paint private property with gang graffiti. Of the more than three hundred gangs the SAPD has documented, about one hundred are active at any one time and capable of doing drive-bys. Some of the younger gang members are the most dangerous, notes Riojas. They feel they have something to prove.
After three years of roaming the troubled streets of San Antonio night after night, Riojas has little sympathy for the hard-luck stories of the delinquent youths. “We’re not out to help them with midnight basketball games—that’s for PAL [the Police Athletic League],” he says. “By the time they come across our desk, they need to be put away.”
Cruising the East Side in his patrol car, Riojas deciphers the complex hieroglyphics of the gang graffiti that scar the walls of run-down shops and houses, translating the markings into a history of bloody turf battles and kids who fancy themselves young warriors. This is the part of town where the black gangs dominate, and where “BK 187” appears in blue on a street sign with a small x painted within the lower circle of the B. Riojas explains: “’BK’ means ‘Blood Killer,’ so you know it’s the Bloods’ rival, the Crips, who wrote it—meaning the kill Bloods. Plus, it’s painted in blue, which is the Crips’ color. The x inside the B is meant to show disrespect to the Bloods. The number 187 is the California penal code for homicide. A lot of San Antonio’s gangs trace their roots back directly to Califronia and Chicago.” Farther down the street is the graffito “CK,” for “Crip Killer,” with a small red x within the C.
Riojas points out kids wearing T-shirts and caps with sports-team logos. “Every athletic team there is gets adopted by the gangs,” he says. The Crips wear Chicago Bulls T-shirts, the NY Posse likes the Yankees, and the ND Posse wears Notre Dame T-shirts and baseball caps. Even Mickey Mouse and Tweety have become recognized gang symbols, and some San Antonio schools have banned clothing with images of the cartoon characters from their campuses.
Like the Hispanic gang members on the West Side, the African American gang members on the East Side strongly identify with the subdivision where they live. The ETGs, or East Terrace Gangsters, and the WCGs, or Wheatley Courts Gangsters, even take their names form their turf. However, says Riojas, the black gangs differ from the Hispanic gangs in some respects. “The Hispanics have a more traditional type of philosophy, where turf and familia, or the gang, are the most important forces in their lives,” he says. “The blacks are more individuals, and the gangs are more like a business venture—a way to sell crack cocaine and make money. They are more likely to do a drive-by on someone who is cutting into their business.”
It is a Friday night of the east side. In front of an elementary school, a gang unit patrol car stops a battered sedan with four teenage boys wearing white T-shirts and dark pants for failing to use the turn signal. A quick search of the car produces a Flock 9mm handgun under the back seat.
A law passed in 1990 makes possessing a handgun within one hundred yards of a school a felony. After the officers handcuff the boys and threaten to bring charge, one of them admits that the fun is his. “We got to protect ourselves from Little Joker and Al Capone,” says another, a sixteen-year-old. “They hate blue. Little Joker’ll shoot you for wearing blue Dickies. That’s why I wear black.” The minor with the gun is taken to a Texas Youth Commission detention facility for booking; the others are released. The only place a minor can be detained while awaiting trial is the Bexar County Juvenile Detention Center, which has 96 beds. Some 1,900 youths are currently awaiting trial in juvenile court. The overflow are usually sent home—and back to the streets.
Ten minutes after stopping the four boys, the officers pull over another car, this time for expired plates. The driver, a slight, smiling young man, turns out to be the infamous Little Joker—one of the Original Gangsters, or OGs, who started a gang under the Blood “set” called the Blood Stone Villains, or BSV. A veteran of the East Side gang wars, Little Joker, who is eighteen, has been shot nine different times.
Parts of Little Joker’s right arm look patchy and scarred where skin grafts mark gunshot wounds he received in 1993. The last time he was hit was the day after Thanksgiving, when he was washing his car with some friends and a shotgun blast shattered his left leg; it had to be amputated above the knee. “My friend got shot in the back,” he says. “I’m not afraid to die, but anyone who hangs out with me can’t be scared either.”
Little Joker, who has bee in gangs since he was ten, says he started off shoplifting and then moved on to burglary and stealing cars. “It was fun,” he says with a shrug. He has been in and out of juvenile detention several times over the years and has never held a job. Little Joker claims he has retired from gang activity but says he is still a marked man, since he can’t receive the ritual beating from fellow gang members that would let him exit from the gang. “I’m one of the OGs. No one touches me,” he explains. “I can’t get rolled out of a gang I started.”
To drive away, Little Joker has to start his car with a screwdriver; the ignition was cracked open when the vehicle was stolen recently. “I can’t really get too mad they stole my car,” he says. “I used to steal cars myself.” As soon as Little Joker gets the car started, he peels out. “Yeah, he’d better hurry,” says one officer. “Did you notice all the cars slowing down to check us out? Now they know where he is. He’s a moving target.”
BACK AT THE ALAZAN APACHE Courts, five girls with long dark hair and bright red lipstick walk the neighborhood streets wearing white T-shirts and baggy jeans slung low, with men’s boxer shorts peeking above the waistband. The girls call themselves the ND Chicks, a sort of female auxiliary to the ND Posse, whose sworn enemies are the LA Boyz. “We mostly have a good time and fight against other gangs, like the LA Chicks,” says thirteen-year-old Irene. “We don’t use guns—we just throw gang signs, and if they want to start fighting, we fight back.”
The girls say they honed their fighting skills by sparring with the NDs, but they fight only with female gang members. “We learned to take the pain from guys, so when we go up against the bigger girls, we can take the pain from them,” Irene explains, making a fist with a well-manicured hand. “First you hit them in the face to mess them up. We try to punch them so they fall, and we push them and we start kicking them. We make them kiss the rag.” The rag is the green bandanna that the NDs have adopted as their colors. The gang’s mascot, which shows up in tattoos and graffiti, is Notre Dame’s Fighting Irishman, but with a twist: His hands are wrapped around an Uzi.
“The NDs defend us—they back us up,” says Maria, also thirteen. “When other guys mess with us, the NDs get into it for us.” The girls attend Tafolla Middle School, but they say that since joining the gang, they have skipped a lot of classes and their grades have fallen. Their days are spent hanging with the NDs and smoking marijuana. “We get it from the NDs,” says Irene. “We have parties.” Irene lives with her aunt. “I got tired of my mom,” she says. “I left once, and she got made and said, ‘Get your clothes and get out.’”
San Antonio and its girl gangs were caught in the glare of the media spotlight last year after Planned Parenthood published its March newsletter. According to the newsletter, girls on the city’s West Side were being initiated into gangs by having sex with members who were HIV-positive. Reporters from all over the world—from Geraldo to the London Times—inundated San Antonio’s police department with calls.
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