America’s Most Infamous Criminal Gangs

Born To Kill was founded by Tho Hoang “David” Thai, who was born in Saigon in 1956 and came to the United States as a refugee following the Vietnam War. After struggling to find a well-paying job, he got involved in the Asian underworld. Thai had developed a lucrative counterfeit watch business and used the money to build the Born To Kill gang, composed of Vietnamese boys younger than himself. With police cracking down on Chinese gangs, BTK took over Canal Street. They developed a reputation for violence and operated brothels with the Italian mob. The group disbanded following the arrests of Thai and other gang leaders.

The Bloods are an African-American gang formed in Los Angeles in the early 1970s. The Bloods were made up of smaller gangs who didn’t want to join the Crips, who dominated gang life in L.A. at the time. As the Bloods expanded in Los Angeles and in other cities, including New York, they became more violent. That violence grew in the 1980s as the gang focused on drugs such as crack cocaine. The rivalry with the Crips has become a part of urban lore, and has been profiled in movies such as “Colors,” released in 1988.

There is little agreement on how the gang got the name Crips, but there is no disputing their strength and use of violence. The Crips were founded in 1969 (some sources say 1971) by two pugnacious high school boys, Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams, as an alliance between their two groups of toughs. It has been said that they were originally a political group influenced by the Black Panthers, but Williams wrote a memoir in which he discounted that theory. The Crips exploded in numbers, especially in the 1980s as they became increasingly involved with drugs. They established a presence in 40 states and formed alliances with Mexican cartels. Besides narcotics, the Crips also are involved in auto theft, robbery, and carjacking. To distinguish themselves from the Bloods, the Crips began wearing blue clothing, as opposed to the red apparel of the Bloods.

Established in the California prison system in 1964 by Irish-American bikers, the Aryan Brotherhood is the nation’s oldest white supremacist group. They were originally formed to protect white inmates after the prison system was desegregated. They have an estimated 20,000 members who can be found in most federal and state prisons around the U.S. Although racist in its origins, the group cares more about money than biased ideology. It has forged alliances with non-white gangs in pursuit of the criminal enterprises of murder-for-hire, armed robbery, gun-running, narcotics manufacturing and sales, counterfeiting, and identity theft.

Cinemaphiles might remember Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film “Gangs of New York,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill “The Butcher” Cutting. The character was based on actual gang member William Poole, leader of the anti-immigrant Bowery Boys gang. They clashed with the Irish Five Points gangs during the middle of the 19th century. By day they had legitimate jobs, but off-hours, they engaged in turf wars with gangs such as the Dead Rabbits.