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The 18th Street gang has an estimated 100,000 members. Pretty huge gang if you ask me. MS 13 is a huge gang as well. They have members across the U.S. and they're considered to be one of the most dangerous gangs in the nation. LA was pretty bad in the 90s.
All major street gangs around the U.S. are either from Chicago or L.A.
The 18th Street gang has an estimated 100,000 members. Pretty huge gang if you ask me. MS 13 is a huge gang as well. They have members across the U.S. and they're considered to be one of the most dangerous gangs in the nation. LA was pretty bad in the 90s.
Yes it was.
18th Street, MS13, Bounty Hunters, Avenues, Rollin 60s, etc are part of that "largest 10%" that I referred to. (MS13 are dangerous enough that they are a terrorist group just as much as a gang)
L.A. has quite a few tiny gangs that few people have heard of outside of the neighborhoods where they exist and who are more often victims of gang crime rather than perpetrators of it. I don't think you have that in Chicago. Every Chicago gang is a massive gang.
You have a few gangs with HUGE numbers and you also have some other gangs with pretty small numbers, and in between gangs.
One of the reason L.A. is the "gang capital" is because here, the gang culture exists pretty much all over, not just in certain areas. While I don't really know too much about Chicago gang violence, I believe (I of course could be way wrong) that it really only exists on the South and West side of the city. In Los Angeles, from the Valley, to East L.A., to South L.A., and even a few parts of the Westside (recent article about gang injunction, arrests in Venice b/c of drugs), gangs exist. Obviously, some parts are much, much worse than others, and in other areas they're barely noticeable, but the culture and mindset still lingers throughout.
There are even a few gangs on the northside of Chicago like the Gaylords and Simon City Royals (the last remaining major white non-Nazi skinhead urban street gangs in the US). There may be a few Popes left.
Youngstown, OH is one of the rough little city, but back in the 90's it was real nasty. I believe it had the highest murder rate in the county at some point in the 90's (1997 I think), plus the Mafia still had a major stronghold on that city back then.
I have always heard that NYC was at its worst in the 70s-80s and L.A.'s heyday of crime was the 90's.
Yes it was, from the 70's to the early 90's. In certain areas I believe close to half the population was on crack or on some other drugs and crime was very high, things began to change in '88 when some cop got killed in South Jamaica, Queens (my hood) because at the time cops didn't go as hard as they do know in some areas. The cops started going hard and crime started to show a sharp decline by the mid 90's even though it was still very high.
Chicago doesn't have as MANY gangs but its gangs are quite large.
L.A. has MORE gangs but some of the gangs are very small and not that dangerous, the worst 10% of the gangs commit 80% of the gang related crimes. I don't think you'd find a gang of 15 people in Chicago like you do in L.A., the Chicago gangs are all really massive.
The number of total gang members is about the same due to many LA gang members having moved to the suburbs (although if you're talking SoCal as a whole it has by far and away the most gang members of any region in the US). This might've happened in Chicago also to some extent
I'm not sure about 15 member gangs in LA (I'm not denying it, I've just never heard of any hoods there that are that small and inactive), but I believe you are correct in saying Chicago's gangs are all generally huge. I think LA has more active gangs within its city limits, and historically it has had more gang-related homicides than any other city (to the best of my knowledge), so it gets the title of gang capitol by a small margin over Chicago. LA's population is also 20-25% larger than Chicago, so per capita Chicago may even have more gang members, making it the capitol. LA's gangs are more widespread across the country (and beyond) than Chicago's gangs, so in that sense LA is the capitol. Either way, I think its really splitting hairs between the two cities which is why I think they are both co-capitols.
As for the SoCal as a region, I fully agree. Compton, Inglewood and Long Beach alone added in with LA make the region the most gang-infested, let alone every other city in the area. I think anyone with any familiarity with LA County and the rest of SoCal would easily agree on that. Unless people really aren't aware how widespread it is down there.
1991
Chicago - 3,092.5 LA - 2,525.8
Oakland - 2,495.8
NYC - 2,318.2
New Orleans - 2,190.3 Long Beach - 2,100.7
That's ridiculous how Long Beach and LA were among the most dangerous at that time considering how close they are. LA was definitely was war zone back in the 90s. Oakland was crazy too..wow. Still is pretty crazy today I must say.
And throw everything else into the mix down there from San Bernadino to Compton and you had a pretty bad mess. I'm glad its improved as much as it has. Oakland's come a long way too, regardless of where it ranks now. It was way worse in the 90's.
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