Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing by Joe Domanick

expand the Grape Street Crips brand into new, virgin territory, “just like when America went to the moon and set down its flag.”
    Christian was more than up to that job. Tall, dark, and powerfully muscular at 265 pounds, he possessed the self-assurance of a young man who not only liked to fight but was very, very good at it. He’d never been a gun man—that wasn’t for him. But being able to seriously hurt someone without compunction and never reveal himself to be a punk was the basis of his self-esteem, and a key determinant of his respect in the projects and the gang pecking order. He was also someone who’d learned the hard way to await opportunity. This was true whether he was dealing drugs, recruiting new members for the Grape, or quietly, strategically conducting the serious business of maintaining his street credibility. He was known for lying low and waiting for just the proper time to avenge an insult or violence committed against him or those close to him—hence the genesis of his “Low Down” street name.
    In any case, the Grape Street Crips had a famous, fearsome reputation in their own right, and there were plenty of potential young black recruits in Moreno Valley, the area of Riverside County where Christian now lived. A large number of African-Americans had settled there in the past decade, seeking cheaper housing and refuge from the crime and violence of South Los Angeles. And many of their sons were eager to wear Grape Street’s colors—to wear its purple rag around their necks like a cowboy, or wrap it around their foreheads like the Lone Ranger’s faithful Indian companion, Tonto.
    Christian had no problem “getting young cats to start playin’ it on the Grape Street side” and getting them to work as low-level dealers, subcontracted to him as their supplier. It wasn’t like he had to actively recruit. Within seconds, it seemed, people would click on something he’d said, or key in on his wardrobe, and ask, “Where you from?” It just happened. Exposure to wider experiences was limited out there in Moreno Valley, along with aspirations and options. And an identity like that of the Grape had enormous appeal for young black men in the hip-hop culture of Southern California in the eighties and nineties.
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    The Jordan Downs housing project had been a flashpoint of the Watts Riots twenty-seven years earlier. It was a tough, violent place in whichto grow up. And Andre Christian, who lived about two minutes away, hung out there with his cousins until he finally moved in with them when he was twelve.Twenty-five hundred people resided in the projects’ low-slung, seven-hundred-unit apartment buildings, which, almost fifty years after their construction as temporary worker-housing during World War II, had acquired the weary patina of an old, mothballed army barracks. In the early nineties, the residents were almost entirely African-American, mostly single mothers raising kids who often had little supervision outside their homes. It was a place not just of broken families but of broken people, where alcoholism and drug addiction were a lifestyle, stability was a pipe dream, and every situation had the potential for violence. It wasn’t surprising that it was also the incubator of one of L.A.’s most violent gangs.
    Out in the projects’ playgrounds and streets, a kid was essentially on his own. If he went to play on the swings, he had to establish his right, through physical force, to play on the swings. If someone tried to take his bike, it was up to him to keep it. Reputations were defined in the sandbox that would follow boys into manhood. There was absolutely no going to the cops or any other authority figure for protection. And if a boy dared bring his mama into any situation, he would be labeled a punk, derided, challenged, and beaten by his peers. That was just the law, the culture of Jordan Downs. If you weren’t tough, weren’t ready to fight at a moment’s notice,