L.A. Gangs Are Back

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Like many veterans who have put in jail time, Chino thinks the younger gang members don't know how to behave on the streets. "The neighborhood is more dangerous now because the young homeboys are not looking out for each other," he said. He mentioned Lucky, one of the dead Playboys, who was shot and killed on a street corner last summer while talking on a pay phone. "Nobody was there to watch his back, so this guy could just walk up to him from behind and shoot him," Chino said. The two gang members in the room nodded silently as he talked.

Chino went outside to smoke a joint. As he looked out over the roofs of the low-rent housing, his brow furrowed. "Sometimes I think I could have finished school and gone to college, but then I think, No--if I did it over again, I would be more careful, try not to get busted, make more money from drugs but have more organization. That's what I learned in prison." He has thought about getting a job, but the tattoos on his neck and face are an instant red flag to potential employers. "It's hard to change," he added. "Society pushes you back into the same pile of s___ you came out of. Back into the 'hood, drinking, kicking and selling drugs to a bunch of young kids, preparing them to take your place."

Chino's terms of parole barred him from returning to the Playboys' territory, around the intersection of Pico Boulevard and Fedora Street in L.A.'s Rampart district, but he quickly reappeared at his old haunts anyway. He set about goading some of the younger homeboys to "put some work in" for the gang. That usually meant getting stoned, then driving a car through a rival gang's neighborhood while shooting out the window. Word got back to the parole officer that Chino was out causing trouble, and the police did a parole search of his house and found a gun. In May, Chino was back in jail--but not before he had communicated the "rush" of shooting to other gang members.

For the younger gangsters, the shootings are like a game. And with the cops pulling back, the game has only one rule: Kill or be killed. On a Saturday night in the Playboys' neighborhood, three young gang members are hanging out--Rowdy, Spotter and Mad Dog. Spotter has taken a sniper's position with a rifle on top of a building overlooking Pico. Rowdy is down at the corner with a Beretta handgun in a pocket of his baggy pants, and Mad Dog is standing in the street, flashing gang signs at passing cars and looking to draw fire from any rival gangster who might be passing.

"That is what you call bait," says Spotter with a laugh, looking down the sights of the rifle. He whistles a warning to his homeboys on the street. A black-and-white comes into view, doing a slow lap around four or five blocks, up Pico, across Mariposa, down and back around. Then it leaves. The Playboys laugh at the departing cops. Two years ago, CRASH teams were all over them, jumping out of their patrol cars to search them for weapons and drugs, getting them to pull up their shirts to show their tattoos, pumping them for information about shootings. These days the cops barely engage. The night before, Rowdy had spray-painted a two-story design of PBS, the Playboys logo, on the front of a building on Pico. It took him nearly three hours--from 2:30 a.m. to past 5 in the morning--and in that time not a single police car came by to stop him.