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Happy Anniversary Los Angeles Sentinel; 5/5/1994; James Bolden Los Angeles Sentinel 05-05-1994 Happy Anniversary. This week marks the second anniversary of the much-ballyhooed truce between the Crips and the Bloods, the two dominant gangs that thrive in inner city Los Angeles and in many other surrounding environment. What gang truce, you say? With all these killings via drive-bys, ambushes in Pasadena, car jackings--a great many gang-related or gang-initiated--and you say there was a gang truce? Well, yes! There was a gang truce. It was fashioned by several members of the Crips and Bloods, mainly in the Watts area two years ago this week. The truce makers--men like Charles Rachal and the late Tony Bogard--even studied documents like the Treaty of Versailles in order to give the written document some peacemaker legitimacy. Several of the truce makers were rewarded with a trip to Bill Clinton's Jan. 20, 1993 Presidential Inauguration in Washington D.C. Initial news of the truce was met with hope in some quarters--and contempt in others. Many politicians, like Cong. Maxine Waters, and organizations, like the Los Angeles Sentinel, welcomed the truce, and truce makers, with open arms. Members of the Daryl Dates' Los Angeles Police Department, however, reportedly bullrushed and disrupted many gang truce gatherings held in parks around the Southland. Now, two years later, what do we have? Depends on who you ask. If you ask Waters, a truce still exists, albeit only in the isolated Watts area. She had lunch with gang members last weekend. Waters, in fact, has been the gang members' most powerful ally. Long after the cameras disappeared, Waters was still there. When the gang members cried out for job opportunities and recreational services, Waters has done her best to come through. Very few other elected officials and civic leaders--if any--can make that claim. Now, as it was then, the success of the truce depends on the very men and women whose idea it was to forge a truce in the first place. The Crips and the Bloods themselves. Politicians can't help them; civic leaders can't advise them; religious leaders can't counsel them. Only they can stop the violence and make the truce a continuing success. Happy anniversary. News Topics | Home | Research | History | Blood Gangs | Crip Gangs | People| Life in a Gang | Gallery | Iraqi Cards | Memorial | Migration | Graffiti | Resume| Injunctions Homicides | Maps | California Prisons | Contact

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