In The Brutal World of L.A.'s Toughest Gangs

By JANICE CASTRO LOS ANGELES Leon Bing

Q. You live in a comfortable part of Pasadena. You grew up wealthy, were once a very successful fashion model. What made you go into the projects of South Central Los Angeles and write about the Bloods and the Crips?

A. I'd heard a lot about the gangs and the drive-by shootings. But I'd never read anything about these guys as people. There are well over 100,000 of these kids in L.A. These are American kids! They're drifting into gangs at eight or nine, some becoming killers by the time they're 12. I wondered, What do they think? What makes them hate each other?

Q. What did you learn?

A. They're killing each other, and it's getting worse all the time. Their lives are so desolate, they have so little hope, and they are taking it out on people like themselves. Their parents, some of them, are on crack or other drugs. They have nothing you would recognize as family life, too little food, no future. Many of them are abused children. Nobody cares about them. They are afraid to walk to the store alone, or to go to their friend's house without protection.

Q. One of the most remarkable things about your book, Do or Die, is that you were able to get close to people who would kill each other on sight, yet they accepted the fact that you shared the confidence of their mortal enemies. Gang members knew that if you were talking to them one day, you might be visiting the homes of their enemies the next day. How could they confide in you?

A. They trusted me. I played fair. I had become their voice.

Q. Why did you trust them?

A. Instinct. They weren't looking to do me harm.

Q. And here you were, driving all over the worst possible neighborhoods in Los Angeles, alone in your BMW. You may have known the guy you were going to see, but weren't you afraid of all the other guys on all the other streets?

A. No. Maybe God takes care of fools.

Q. Why are the gangs at war?

A. Because they have nothing to live for, except their gang, their 'hood. They "claim their 'hood," -- pledge allegiance to their neighborhood gang -- and it becomes their whole world, their family. Their loyalty is fierce. The drive-bys are mostly "paybacks," revenge killings, sometimes for feuds that started before they were born.

Q. Some gang members talked to you about their lives with devastating clarity. One, Sidewinder, said that he does not want to have children, that he would rather kill his own child than live to see him killed by another child. Another, Hart, was so vulnerable, so sad, that you seriously considered raising him yourself.

A. Hart was 13, and he was so small. I could never have him living in my home now. He's 16, and he's big, and I couldn't handle him.

Q. Why do most of the conversations with gang members in your book take place in cars?

A. Because that's the only private place we could find. And it's safe.

Q. You described driving around with one homeless gang member named Faro.

A. There are a lot of homeless children in South Central. Their parents are on drugs, and they discard them. Or they have no homes, and the children drift away. I have seen eight-year-old girls alone by the roadside holding up signs reading I WILL WORK FOR FOOD. What do you think is going to happen to them? All the time, homeless children turn up in gang neighborhoods knocking on doors, saying, "I want to claim. I want to be from this 'hood." And the gangs let them in.

Q. The same gang members who will torture an enemy to death simply for being caught alone will take in homeless children?

A. Sometimes. They are not all the same. But even the most sensitive among them often have committed terrible violence.

Q. Like Faro. As pathetic and frightened and helpless as he seemed.

A. He's on trial for murder. He tried to steal a car from this guy, and when the guy resisted, he knocked him down and ran over him with the car. Then he backed up, ran over him again, then he drove around the block and came back and ran over him again. And then he put the car in reverse, and as he ran over the guy a fourth time, the police came along and saw it.

Q. When you decided to write about the gangs, you asked around until you found out where a big gathering of the Bloods was taking place.

A. It was a sea of red. They were all dressed in their gang color: red baseball caps, shirts, pants, scarves, shoes. That's what they call "flamed up."

Q. Why did these hardened kids accept a middle-class lady's curiosity?

A. I think my lack of fear had a lot to do with it. They dissed me at first, but I told them they were wasting my time, and I started to leave. One of the kids followed me and said he would talk to me. And then the word got around about this strange white lady who wanted to talk to them, who wasn't afraid.

Q. You treated them like people. And you changed their gang nicknames in the book to protect them.

A. Yes, so they could talk freely.

Q. You say they will attack people who are afraid of them?

A. Yes. Gang members have told me that when someone looks at them with terror in their eyes or reflexively locks the car doors as they walk across the parking lot, they want to hurt them. They see the women clutching their bags closer, the white men switching their briefcases to the other hand as they approach. They know that part of the reason for the fear is because they're black, or poor. Nobody wants to be an object of terror. Nobody wants to be insulted like that.

Q. You went to their homes. They took you places, introduced you to other gang members, to their parents, their parole officers. They showed you their AK-47s and Uzis. They told you their dreams. They told you about murders they had committed. Did you ever invite them to your home?

A. Sure, of course.

Q. How do your neighbors feel about that?

A. They don't mind.

Q. They're not frightened when they see a bunch of these guys walk in?

A. No.

Q. They're armed.

A. Of course. But look, gang members are among the quietest people you will ever meet. You know, gangs are like families. Little kids get disciplined in gangs. When a little kid drifts into a gang, he doesn't just get a gun thrust into his hands. He's gonna get homeboy love, which is pretty potent.

Q. After they knock him around? I mean, you described "jumping in," the brutal gang initiation rites where they beat up the new kid before accepting him as a member.

A. That doesn't always happen. These people share a bond that is beyond acceptance. It is a bond where someone will lay down his life for you -- or kill for you. I've seen gang members who are paraplegic being tended to more lovingly than they would be by their own families.

Q. These are the gang members who have been paralyzed as a result of being shot in the back during gunfights?

A. Yes. There are hundreds of them. I've seen these guys being lifted gently in and out of cars. It is never done with a sense of obligation. They are kept in the action, taken along.

Q. How?

A. They are asked for advice. Some of them coach Little League in South Central. They guide some of the younger boys who are too crazy, who are too quick to reach for a gun. I've seen them say, "Do you want to end up like me?" Some of them try to tell the younger boys to go to school, to get out.

Q. You described Rider as a 26-year-old, college-educated member of the Bloods who got out. He made a great deal of money dealing crack, invested it and now lives very well with his family in a nice neighborhood. He doesn't deal anymore. To most people, Rider appears to be a successful investor. He wears Armani suits, collects classic cars, owns a 40-ft. powerboat. He drives a four-by-four but keeps an Uzi stashed in the back, just in case.

A. Yes. And there are many gang members who got out. There is a player in the N.F.L. back East. There are homeboys who stopped running with the gangs because school was important to them, and in some cases, their gangs helped them pay for college. There are attorneys, doctors, professionals, military men. A lot of them fought in the gulf war. The guy who hands you your luggage at the airport or sells you a ticket at the movies may be a gang member. One of the Bloods manages a very popular rap group now. He just signed them with Atlantic Records.

Q. And yet when Rider heard that his childhood friend had been murdered, he went back.

A. He had to. A rival gang kidnapped his friend and tortured him to death. % They used electricity and white-hot knives, and they shot him in the face.

Q. Why were they so brutal?

A. Because he was an enemy. He wasn't special. It was simply an act of cruelty.

Q. So Rider grabbed his gun and went down there for a payback, a revenge killing. And then he faded back into his normal, upper-middle-class life.

A. Yes. But he had to do it. This was his friend, his homeboy.

Q. You still see the gang members socially.

A. They are among my best friends.

Q. How can you call them your friends?

A. I trust them. They are there for me.

Q. But you are talking about people who freely told you of torturing strangers.

A. I know. They're killers. But I separate deeds from individuals.

Q. Isn't that condescending? Don't you hold other people responsible for their actions?

A. I don't excuse them. I try to understand them.

Q. One gang member spotted an enemy on the street and machine-gunned him, along with his wife and baby. Yet he is such a good friend that you attributed the killing, in your book, to another gang member in order to protect him.

A. Because I knew his mother was going to read the book. It would have killed her.

Q. What about the baby?

A. It was a monstrous act. But these kids are not monsters. They are growing against all odds in poisonous soil. I cannot judge them. And I cannot fix it for them, this horrible world they live in. All I can do is describe it. And try to stop the denial.

Q. Whose denial?

A. Ours. Look. These are American kids. Nobody cares about them. We are so obsessed with the rights of the unborn, but we don't care about these kids after they are born. They are not just social aberrations. They are children, and they are being ground into dust.