Cripplers In The War Zone

Frightening enough when they are alone or in pairs, youths in a gang are a formidable engine of mayhem. Today's urban gangs commit roughly 25% of the juvenile crime, and they are better organized than ever, more heavily armed and less queasy about the blood they spill.

Particularly in the ghetto, the gang gives a kid the structured life he has never had at home or anywhere else. The peer pressure to enlist is almost irresistible. Rico, 17, joined a Puerto Rican gang in Chicago for "protection, man, protection. I was a skinny little kid, and I was tired of having hassles. You don't last long if you don't belong to a club. You can always count on having someone stand up for you." A 14-year-old boy who committed frequent robberies in Central Falls, R.I., and once smashed 350 windowpanes in a factory says he was lured into crime because "I felt out of place. If you stand around when the other kids are doing that stuff, you feel like a pussy. I didn't want to be a pussy."

Nothing pussyfooted about the average gang or "click," as some kids like to call it. At the top of the heap is the "prez," who, if he wants to stay there, had better respond to every threat and challenge. The "veep" supervises internal affairs, especially dues and initiation rituals; the "war counselor" plans the "ripoffs" and "gang-hits" and commands the "gestapo" squads, which consist of the enforcers; the "armorer" keeps the weapons functioning in a safe place such as an abandoned building or a girl friend's apartment. Even automatic and semiautomatic firearms--like M-16s and M-15s--can be bought or stolen. Also available for bigger bashes are hand grenades many decibels above the zip guns of the old days.

The great numbers in a gang seem to suppress the last vestige of conscience. In New York City, members of a gang sat on either side of a man on the subway, stuck him with knives from both sides, robbed him and kept him propped up until they disembarked. To finish off rival mobs, gangs have invaded hospitals in The Bronx, and once were repelled from an operating room by a surgeon wielding a scalpel.

Seattle even has a one-family gang: seven brothers, eleven to 20, who have been arrested 192 times in the past nine years. Enough of the boys are always at liberty to keep up the family tradition. Says Seattle Police Sergeant Dick Ramon: "The frightening thing is that they're going to continue producing misery for years and years."

In Los Angeles one gang is called the Cripplers (with a special auxiliary for girls known as Crippettes), because a member is initiated only after furnishing evidence that he has physically injured somebody. In what is close to a war zone, ghetto residents often eat and sleep on the floor to avoid the stray bullets whizzing through their windows. Joe, 17, a former Crip who has gone straight because he is tired of "hustlin'," says he was always stalking a rival gang member or a potential robbery victim. "Whenever I was shootin' [had a gun], I had someone in mind. If I couldn't get him, I'd get his partner or a substitute." He regrets a murder for which he was never prosecuted. "I took someone's life," Joe reminisces. "He could be on the earth, makin' babies and havin' fun."

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