Gangs 2

In my last chapter, I explained how some of the different gangs got started. Now, I want to continue explaining how they grew and expanded their gang. Like I said, they began by training men to leave prison and help them take their organization to another level. But, while grooming these men, they also continued to recruit other types of men, these men were much different than the ones they were getting ready to leave prison. Of course, they would always look for men that had life sentences, they knew these men would be less likely to turn informant. But, this type of men wasn’t exactly easy to find because most people don’t have life. So, they looked for prisoners that had some good qualities about them. Good qualities as far as prison standards go, they look at how each prisoner conducted themselves, were they able to walk around in prison by themselves and have respect from the other inmates? Did they work out? Naturally they needed men who were in good physical shape, so if something happens with another gang these men would be able to fight. Did this man have heart to fight? If the head of a gang saw someone they liked, but had never seen them fight, sometimes they would pay another prisoner to go start a fight with him just to see if he would stand up for himself. Once they saw he would, they would pull him to the side to ask if he was interested in joining their gang. If he said yes, they’d sit him down to explain what was expected of him if he did join. It was made clear to whomever that the day would come that they would have to commit a murder for their organization and ask if they had a problem with that. If he said no, they would make this guy what is called a prospect. Which means they would give him missions each day and see how well he does with following orders. Prison life is structured in many ways, even if a prisoner doesn’t work, there are times you will have to be at certain places at a certain time. Like chow time, counts and so forth. It’s during these times that contraband can be moved around the prison. So, let’s say they need to move some drugs to another cell block, they would give it to their prospect to move during chow time or rec time. Sometimes they needed to teach another prisoner a lesson because he owed the gang money and wasn’t doing anything to try and pay. So, they would send a few of their prospects to beat this guy or kill him. Now that these different gangs began to grow, they decided to do something else. Let’s say one of their prospects were doing really good and the head of these different saw he had what it takes to become a member, now they would send him on his final mission, which would be to kill someone. Once he accomplished this, they would hold a meeting with all the dudes and invite the guy who did the murder to let him know that from that moment he was officially made a member.

Now that they started adding more prospects, they decided to do something else to not only help themselves stay isolated, but to protect the prospects who they believed has a good chance in becoming a member. The different gangs started recruiting what was known as crash dummy. A crash dummy was some idiot who was always getting into trouble. Maybe this guy has a drug problem, maybe he was getting into trouble with others inside the prison fighting, maybe he hated all the guards because he had an authority problem. Whatever it is, this man for whatever reason cannot get it together. So, someone from whatever gang it was would sit down with the crash dummy and ask if he would be interested in joining their gang. Maybe by now the crash dummy was starting to feel isolated because he had gotten on everyone’s last nerve around him. Plus, by now these three gangs had built themselves into such a huge force that everyone knew never to mess with any of their members. So naturally, these crash dummies felt happy about their new-found friends and most of them eagerly accepted their offer. The first thing they did was sit down with them and make it understood that they would have to make some serious changes about themselves. They had to stop running around getting in trouble, they had to be able to take orders and follow these orders no matter what. If they didn’t follow these orders or brought unnecessary attention to their organization, they were assured that they would be disciplined. Discipline could mean many different things; I have seen two or three men take someone in a cell and make him hold onto the end of the bed while each of them took turns hitting him in the ribs. I have also seen them beat him until he couldn’t move. These crash dummies were either going to learn or they would be killed.

Another big thing with these gangs was working out. There is zero tolerance for any member that misses a workout. Even for the made guys, if you didn’t show up when it was time, you got beat the fuck up. I remember going to the rec yard and there would be lines of men all working out like a boot camp. The gangs did this for several reasons, one they wanted everyone to see how many of them there was that way all the other prisoners understood that if you tried to do something to one, you would have to deal with all the others. Second, all of these men were in great physical shape and they wanted everyone to know they were ready for war.

Now that these gangs were growing and putting made members on the street, these guys were paying off all the dirty guards they could to take their gang drugs and phones inside the prison. Now their numbers started getting huge and the money was rolling in, these different groups flooded the prison system with every drug you can imagine. If one really thinks about it, what better place to sell drugs? There’s no police to worry about, the guards are working with these gangs or they are paying them off to just turn their head, a whole prison full of men who liked to use drugs. The gangs would sell prisoners drugs then the prisoners would contact their family who would send the money through Western Union to different places or if the made members on the street lived close to whoever was sending the money, they would go by and pick it up themselves.

Now that the head of these gangs had cell phones inside the prisons, they were able to communicate with the men on the outside whenever they needed. These different gangs had some well-organized people in the free world. Now they started expanding their numbers not just inside the prison, but on the street as well. Since they understood the importance of having men around them with some intelligence, they were careful who they allowed in their inner circle. Right now, the made members on the street had all been in prison together, so they knew each other well. They also knew they could trust each other. Remember all these men were killers, they had to commit murder before they could be made. If one of them got busted for something and went to prison somewhere different than they were before, they would write the original lifers who were still in charge and permission to start prospecting new members, same when someone got busted in another state. The men inside prison would also have the dudes running things on the street send men to other states to expand their drug business. So, within a decade these different gangs had literally hundreds of members. Even though their top money maker was drugs, they were involved in everything you could imagine. These guys were in prison with cartel members, so all of them became well connected with people in the drug business. They also made connections with people in Central and South America. They would help them smuggle drugs inside the US and if they had trouble with someone here, they would pay the gangs to have their people on the street kill them. These gangs had people on the streets get ahold of all the guns they could so they sell them to the cartels in Mexico. For many years the borders between the United States and Mexico usually just searched the cars and trucks coming to the US, so it was easy for these different gangs to find women that were drug users and pay them to drive into Mexico with millions of dollars in cash or to drive a car loaded with guns. One gang member told me, “As you know Jay, California has the biggest homeless problem in the US, so we would go downtown in LA and find us about ten homeless women and ask them if they wanted to make some good money, of course all of them said yes. So we would clean them up, put some real nice clothes on them, then have them drive into Mexico with a car full of money. We’d have another car following them just in case something happened. This worked so well that we were driving ten or twenty cars across a day. We were getting ten percent of everything we crossed. Hell, we were making a million a day just doing this and if one of them got busted, no big deal, we’d just go find another homeless person.” As these gangs grew in numbers, the money they made daily was unreal. As I go into my next chapter, I’ll explain how they took their gangs across America into almost every major city and how they paved a road of murder along the way.