Michael Krikorian

It’s difficult not to notice the man lying flat on his back along Wilshire Boulevard with something rotating over him like a mini helicopter blade. Is the guy dead or merely passed out? And what the hell is that thing spinning over his fallen body? It’s just Josh Hoskins doing......

THIRTY-TWO PEOPLE showed up in Councilwoman Janice Hahn’s field office in Watts to talk about the surge in street violence. There were gang members, mothers of fallen sons, city officials, residents, the commanding officer of LAPD’s Southeast Division, community organizers, clergy and even some outsiders. They stressed the importance of......

UNLESS GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER’S recent motorcycle accident jarred him into a different mentality, a 75-year-old blind and feeble man will be pushed in his wheelchair into the death chamber at San Quentin and, on January 17, become the second man in five weeks to be executed at the infamous prison......

Photos by Ted SoquiThousands of Crips — Rollin’ 60s, Grape Street, East Coast, Hoovers, Nine-0s, Eight Trey Gangsters — have had their praises sung in mournful tones at churches throughout Los Angeles. Most of them never made the papers. And none of them had the stately farewell that was orchestrated......

Photo by Ted Soqui The founder of the Crips was not lethally injected minutes after midnight Tuesday morning in the sterilized death chamber of San Quentin State Prison. There was no news of his death. There were no Oscar winners or rap stars urging that his life continue. Fifty-year-old white......

Photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP I would have risked my life for them, but I lacked the humanity to mourn their deaths — even as I recognized that death would one day visit us all. —Stanley “Tookie” Williams, talking about fallen Crips gang members in his autobiography, Blue Rage, Black......

Photo by Gregory Bojorquez This is the second part of Michael Krikorian's story. To read the first part of War and Peace in Watts, click here. Ronald “Kartoon” Antwine is sitting in his garage, looking out at the Union Pacific railroad tracks near 114th and Wilmington Avenue. Kartoon is one......

Photo by Gregory BojorquezPresident 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......