167 Gang Members Arrested in New York Crackdown

NEW YORK — In an effort to stop the expansion of Los Angeles-style street gangs, police here said Wednesday that 167 members and associates of rival Blood and Crip gangs were arrested.

New York is the latest metropolitan city to experience problem with street gangs modeling themselves after Los Angeles’ African American street gangs. Since the 1970s, Los Angeles has had scores of gangs that affiliate with the Crips or the Bloods.

Arrests were made on charges ranging from the sale of narcotics to attempted murder. Police would not specify when the arrests were made, but said defendants were taken into custody in upper Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and at Rikers Island jail.

Police said the arrests “effectively dismantled” seven groups of Bloods and one group of Crips. The crackdown was part of a four-month, multi-agency effort called “Red Bandanna” for the Blood’s trademark.

Police Commissioner Howard Safir told a news conference that the gang required new members to commit a random act of violence as an initiation rite. He said police linked 135 “random slashings” with a box cutter to the rite.

Safir said the arrests were timed for just before the start of the school year because the gang is known to recruit schoolchildren.

The first reported movement of Los Angeles’ gang culture to other cities began in the late 1980s, when cities ranging from Portland to Seattle to Las Vegas experienced the emergence of gangs identifying with Crip or Blood sets.

Gang experts said some of that movement was the result of random moves by gang members whose families migrated to those cities. In other cases, young men in those cities simply created their own gangs and gave them Los Angeles names. In more troubling cases, older members of L.A. Crip or Blood sets banded together to sell drugs in other U.S. cities, using the notoriety of those gangs to intimidate rivals and recruit members.