LA Weekly

It’s not unusual for a top-10 list to cause controversy. Top 10 movies of all time. Top 10 restaurants in the country. But recently the Los Angeles Police Department and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced with great fanfare a top-11 list of the worst and most violent gangs in the area. While movie buffs and foodies might lightheartedly argue their cases in bars and cafés, the LAPD list is being scorned and laughed at on gang corners, in patrol cars and in squad rooms.

When asked about the top-11 list, one Los Angeles officer and expert on gangs said, “It’s laughable. There was pressure from the [brass] to get out the list, but they didn’t ask the right people. They didn’t ask or listen to the experts.”

The lead homicide detective of LAPD’s deadly Southeast Division found the list odd. “I can’t imagine that those are the worst gangs in the city,” said Detective Sal LaBarbera. “I think they were trying to spread it out over the whole city, because we’ve got five gangs alone in Southeast — the PJs, Grape Street, the Bounty Hunters, Hoover and Main Street — that could be on that list.”

Southeast Division and neighboring 77th Street Division suffered 136 homicides in 2006, representing more than 28 percent of all killings in Los Angeles. Yet only two gangs from Southeast and 77th got onto the apparently geographically and politically correct list — Grape Street Crips and Rollin’ 60s Crips.

The list does contain some truly dangerous gangs. But it also leaves out very powerful gangs: the Hoover Street Criminals, East Coast Crips, Bounty Hunters, Florencia 13 and Quarto Flats — the old-time Boyle Heights gang with close ties to Mexican cartels.

“It’s a bunch of bullshit,” said Antony “Set Trip” Johnson, 17, a gang member with the Five Deuce Hoover, a subset of the notorious Hoover Criminals. “We should be on that list. Fuck it. We the most hated gang in Los Angeles.”

Johnson, who was very familiar with the list, scoffed at some of the gangs on it. “204th Street? That’s bullshit. That ain’t a rough neighborhood. What they got, 10, 20 members? And Canoga Park Alabama? You gotta be kidding me. That ain’t a gang hood. La Mirada Locos? Never in my life have I heard of them.”

A few miles away, in Rollin’ 60s turf on Brynhurst Avenue, a group of Crips studied the list of top 11 gangs set out on the hood of a battered dark blue Nissan Sentra. They had not yet heard about it until shown the list by the L.A. Weekly.

“I never heard of some of these gangs,” said Steven Smith, of the Rollin’ 60s. “This has got to be political. Where’s the Bounty Hunters? Where’s the Eight Treys? Who the fuck is 204th Street?”

The politics of this strange list, announced by LAPD Chief William Bratton and Villaraigosa as part of their crackdown on a purported explosion in gang violence, shows itself most vividly when it comes to 204th Street — a predominately Latino gang that is not considered among the city’s worst.

That gang apparently made the list almost solely on the basis of the racially motivated killing of black 14-year-old Cheryl Green, as a nod to angry black community leaders and intense media interest. Green’s killing put the gang on the map, but its members have attacked several black victims in recent years. However, the 204th is not active enough to be seriously considered one of the worst in L.A.

On 204th Street turf near Western Avenue and Del Amo Boulevard, a gang member who would not give his name seemed offended when it was suggested that 204th Street is not one of the 11 worst gangs. “No, cousin, there’s a lot of stuff that goes on around here,” he said as he walked away.

Two young men who live nearby, however, said the area was “all right.” Said Herman Galvez, 17, “It’s not that bad here.” Jesse Ortega, 27, his cousin, said, “Well, it’s politics and 204 is on the list because of that shooting of that little black girl. Now that was terrible.”



In the sprawling San Fernando Valley, while attempting to research the one Valley gang that made City Hall’s list — the Canoga Park Alabama (CPA) — I spent three hours driving and walking the streets. I was curious to see how the CPAs felt being on a widely publicized list with some of the nation’s most infamous gangs.

I struck out, unable to track down even one member.

An office manager of a pest-control business on Alabama and Gault streets in Canoga Park said he sees the gang often in the afternoon, but never has had a problem with them. “I’m not here at night, but they are cool to me,” said Preston Foster. “When I heard five years ago I was coming to work here, I thought it would be kinda dangerous, but it’s not like that at all.”

In the parking lot of Mission Hills Bowl on Sepulveda Boulevard in Mission Hills, a woman in a van was “shocked” to hear Canoga Park Alabama had been named the worst Valley gang. “I’m very surprised to hear that because it’s worse in Mission Hills and Pacoima than it is in Canoga Park,” said Pamela Saldy. “I would have thought it would have been the San Fers.”

Turns out, she was right — City Hall was wrong. Lieutenant Gary Nanson said that, when asked by LAPD brass to come up with a list of the worst gangs in the Valley, he and all six LAPD gang details in the Valley put the San Fers at No. 1.

The San Fers are a decades-old, 700-member gang based mainly in the Valley’s northern reaches — concentrated in Mission Hills and the tiny, heavily Latino city of San Fernando, which is encircled by Los Angeles.