Gang Killings Close to Home

The account of this killing never even made the daily newspapers. And why should it? It was just another Latino boy with a family who wanted to keep him away from gangs. A family who looked after him, kept watch over his schoolwork, even insisted on home schooling for a time in an effort to keep him safe.

He attended Victory Outreach each Sunday; he was a good kid. The aggressors shot at a group of kids. Bobby Guerrero was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was the one who was hit.

Most families, most individuals live in an area that has some gang activity, whether or not they realize it. They could be areas where a concentration of gang members can be found, or perhaps just a single residence where a gang member lives and attracts his gang associates.

Names of gangs and their colors change once people enter the prison system.Blue, which had been the historical color of Crips in the street, is the color of the Hispanic gangs in prison. That is where the valid comparisons end. Gangs on the streets of Southern California are as disorganized as they are organized in prison.

In the prisons there is a power structure, a hierarchy that does not exist on the outside. Many of the rules of the streets, including those that pertain to the sale of drugs come to the streets through the prison gangs.

The public, especially that segment of the public, which has migrated to California from New York and other East coast cities, has always believed that the West coast gangs are run in the same fashion as the organized crime or Mafia families have operated for more than a century. Those organizations have structured operations, and are tightly controlled from above. Nothing could be further from the truth in the black and Hispanic gangs of the West coast. These street gangs are as loosely structured as the prison gangs are tightly run. Another serious misconception is that these various Southern California gangs are interrelated, one with another. That, too, is a fallacy. These gangs are, for the most part, independent of one another and operating wherever in the area they are able to maintain some sort of control.

You can be comfortable that while walking on the street during daylight hours, you should have no problems whatsoever. After dark, taking a few precautions should serve you very well. Going out at night, it is important that no doors or windows be unlocked. For the most part, if you don’t bother them, they’ll leave you alone.