LA Weekly

Photo by Gregory Bojorquez

President Bush keeps saying America is safer now that Saddam Hussein is out of power. Prez hasn’t been to Watts lately.

The much heralded, often copied and never equaled Watts housing-project gang peace treaty of 1992 has officially imploded, leaving bodies, grieving families and shell casings scattered over the most infamous black neighborhood west of the South Side of Chicago.

The nights of mixing purple, blue and red are over. Gone are the days when the Grape Street Watts Crips from Jordan Downs (purple), the Bounty Hunter Bloods from Nickerson Gardens (red) and the Project, or PJ, Crips from Imperial Courts (blue) could encounter one another without fear of death.

During the wild year of 1989, in the LAPD reporting districts that cover the three main housing projects in Watts, there were 25 homicides. During the height of the treaty in 1997, there were four.

So far this year there have been at least seven killings in and around the projects, dozens of shootings, a reported 187 violent crimes and, with all that, the acknowledgment that there is no more treaty.

Long gone are the joyous parties and rowdy football games that homies from the projects threw and played together. Gone are the days when a gangster from the Jordans who had a child with a lady from the Nickerson could have a lazy Sunday-afternoon barbecue in peace.

“I can’t even go see my son,” says Grape Street member Dell (“like the computer”) Hester, 21. “I got a baby from a girl in the Nickersons, but I can’t even go there no more. It’s gonna be a real hot summer.”

While many in law enforcement say the treaty has been shaky for years, only recently have actual gang members themselves admitted it.

The 1992 treaty, which became official the day before the Rodney King verdict set the city ablaze, was born from older gang members who did not want their children to go through the dread they had long endured. It was marked by celebrations, by families and friends being able to visit each other in different projects without fear.

But in the last year or so, as a new generation of gang members came of shooting age, which is about 13 to 16, word began to spread that the treaty was on the ropes. And in the projects, words, rumors, truth and fiction get spread fast. Soon residents of Nickerson Gardens knew it wasn’t wise anymore to go to Jordan Downs, and folks from there knew they weren’t getting the royal treatment if they popped in at the Nickersons or Imperial Courts.

“We ain’t even thinking about a peace treaty right now,” says Bow Wow, a respected 26-year-old from Grape Street. “We’re just trying to get a cease-fire. Just trying to stop all the shootings.”

Thomas “Tuck” Graham Jr., 20, a Bounty Hunter who was so young when he started banging he doesn’t even remember how he got his nickname, says the days of peace with Grape Street are over. “We used to see Grape Street members come over here and we’d give them a pass,” says Tuck as he smokes a cigarette and sips on a small bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry juice. “But now things are different. I see a Grape Streeter, especially in the Nickersons, he ain’t getting no motherfuckin’ passes, especially since they killed my homey.” His homey was Dwayne “Sexy Wayne” Brooks, 22, a Bounty Hunter renowned as a smooth-talking ladies’ man.

The Watts peace treaty certainly did not stop all violence in the housing projects. Internal, in-house disputes were often settled with Mac 10s and Sigs. There were also gang member–vs.–rival gang member acts of violence, but for the most part this was done on an individual level, a personal dispute between, say, a Bounty Hunter and a Grape Streeter over a range of things, from drugs to, of course, women. But the peace treaty pretty much squashed one gang firing on another gang simply because they were from a different hood.

A tranquil moment at Nickerson Gardens Photo by Gregory Bojorquez

The killing of Sexy Wayne marked a clear return of killing someone just for that very reason.

On March 5, there is a minor conflict in Cerritos at a skating rink. For decades, such places have been magnets for many black gang members. Details of the incident are sketchy, but either words or a few fists are briefly exchanged. Bounty Hunters say Sexy Wayne is not involved in the incident. Later, a group of cars drives to the Artesia Transit Yard near Gardena, where there is a Park and Ride MTA station.

“Shortly before 2 a.m., a group of up to 70 cars that had been cruising just happened to stop there,” says Detective John Goodman of the LAPD’s Harbor Division. “There was some kind of confrontation, and there were a lot of shots fired. Brooks was shot and killed. A lot of people saw it. That may have started the escalation in the current violence.”

Street rumors quickly circulate that the shooter was from Grape Street. Brooks, decked out in Blood red, had been with members of the PJ Crips, who have become strange gang fellows of late with the Bounty Hunters.

Perhaps the most unusual result of the latest outbreak is that it has brought the Bounty Hunters, the city’s most notorious Blood gang, closer than ever to the PJ Crips of Imperial Courts, and that alliance against the Grape Street Crips is sending bewilderment throughout the black street-gang community.


Nine miles away from Watts, in Hyde Park, a long way in gangland L.A., Kevin “Big Cat” Doucette, a notorious shot caller of the Rollin’ 60s Crips, is telling his cohorts about that distant gang war.

“That’s about the craziest shit I ever heard,” says Big Cat, 45. “The PJs and the Bounty Hunters teaming up against Grape Street. Crips and Bloods teaming up to go at Crips.”