Skipp Townsend was a member of the Rollin' 20s Avenue faction of the Bloods gang in Los Angeles for 27 years.
He became a member of the Bloods in the early 1980s. According to Townsend, this was for protection from the dominant Crips gangs in his neighborhood. He discusses his involvement in drug dealing and gang activities, as well as being a target of neighborhood drive-by shootings.
Townsend speaks with Business Insider about his experience as a gang member, the culture of the Bloods, and the rivalry with the Crips. He talks about gang tattoos, signs, and music. He also covers the role of celebrities and groups affiliated with the Bloods, such as Suge Knight and Death Row Records, in gang prevention within California.
After his release from jail, he began a career as a tow-truck driver and later founded the gang prevention and intervention organization 2nd Call to support local communities in LA, focusing particularly on the youth.
He became a member of the Bloods in the early 1980s. According to Townsend, this was for protection from the dominant Crips gangs in his neighborhood. He discusses his involvement in drug dealing and gang activities, as well as being a target of neighborhood drive-by shootings.
Townsend speaks with Business Insider about his experience as a gang member, the culture of the Bloods, and the rivalry with the Crips. He talks about gang tattoos, signs, and music. He also covers the role of celebrities and groups affiliated with the Bloods, such as Suge Knight and Death Row Records, in gang prevention within California.
After his release from jail, he began a career as a tow-truck driver and later founded the gang prevention and intervention organization 2nd Call to support local communities in LA, focusing particularly on the youth.
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TechTranscript
00:00 My name is Skip Townsend. I'm a former member of the Rolling 20 Avenue Bloods out of L.A.
00:04 And I was active for over 27 years. And this is how crime works.
00:08 As a blood gang member, I have to go out there willing to die or be killed just to stand my
00:18 ground. When the fuel goes, it's looking to make a statement, and the statement is going to be dead
00:23 bodies. I do not believe anybody won because every neighborhood has over 100 obituaries.
00:30 Main rivals for Bloods has always been the Crips. Getting on the bus at 13 years old,
00:42 the average person back then, we're going to the back of the bus. That's where you're from,
00:48 or what you're looking at, or what size are your shoes. And if there were a group that was maybe
00:54 five or six, seven deep, and somebody got on and said they were from the wrong neighborhood,
00:59 that's where it started. That's where the fight's going to come. And that's how I became a blood
01:02 gang member, willing to fight back. And that was in 1977. I joined a movement, and the movement was
01:08 to not be a victim of the Crips. That was 1980 when I'm walking home from a football game. I
01:17 was on Crenshaw and 59th Street, and the Rolling 60s had a big party that night. It was about 15
01:23 of them. They had beat me to the point where I was unconscious for a second. And then when I jumped
01:29 up and took off running, one guy followed me, and he kept running after me. That was a horrible
01:35 experience, but I'm glad I lived through it. What Hollywood thinks about gang membership
01:41 is that there's some people handing out guns to each other saying, "Man, we're about to go
01:46 shoot this up." And that's just not the case. Most of the shootings are emotions. Somebody's with
01:52 somebody's girlfriend. Somebody stole somebody's car. Somebody got beat up at the mall, and now
01:57 they know they're going to be at the skating rink tonight. The gang wars was not just a table of
02:03 guys strategizing like, "Who are we going to shoot next?" So back in the '80s, most of the
02:09 individuals had 38 specials. They had a revolver that only shot five, maybe six times. They would
02:16 have a .22, and now nobody has the 38 specials and 12-gauge. They have SKs and ARs and MAC-11s.
02:26 They have 30-round clips. They have banana clips. They can shoot 30 times within a matter of
02:31 seconds. So that changed everything, and that's when L.A. became the killing field, and it was
02:36 hard to survive. The beefs now are majority on the Internet. Most of the beefs are going now
02:44 because someone said something, and they're really tough behind a camera and a keyboard,
02:52 whereas we actually had to go to school to fight. So the beefs are totally different
02:56 in today's age than it was back when I was younger.
03:00 [Motorcycle engine]
03:06 Drive-bys were happening every day, and I could tell you the time that I'm standing out waiting
03:12 on one of my friends, and a guy came down the street in a nice-looking car, and I started
03:16 walking in the street to go see the car, and the closer he got, he started shooting at me.
03:21 He was coming to do a drive-by, and I'm looking at the car, kind of unaware, didn't know who he was.
03:27 It was war zone. There's an area in my neighborhood that we call Iraq. We call it Iraq because
03:34 right here on 20th Street in Arlington, a father and son had got shot together in front of their
03:41 house. Stuff like that happened. Every day I wake up, I don't know if this is the day. That's why
03:48 so many people had to carry guns. That's why I carried a gun back in the day because I did not
03:54 know was I going to have to use the gun today just to get home. Not to just intentionally
04:00 go look to hurt somebody, but I just want to go home every night.
04:03 [Motorcycle engine]
04:10 The Crips chose the color blue, so red was just the opposite of blue, and also red stands out.
04:18 There's something here that's brighter than you. Let you know that we're brighter than you and not
04:24 not hiding. I didn't have to have on any red. If I'm wearing all beige, they'd be like, "Oh,
04:29 okay. I see what you're doing." They would know, "Okay, these are bloods."
04:33 Some people who didn't leave their neighborhood would wear red shoes, red shoestrings, red belt,
04:40 red shirt, red hat. For me, it was doing a little bit too much.
04:43 The terminology really, it progressed over the years. Everything would be like a big back B-Boo,
04:53 Mocha Bigarette, drive my bar to the beach, eat a bandy bar, have a bup of boffy.
04:57 Everything was terminology used as a B. Number one blood sign is this right here.
05:03 But then this is also a blood sign right here. But different neighborhoods have their own sign.
05:13 See if I can still do this. This right here is disrespectful, and I don't mean to disrespect
05:19 anybody, but this is a C with a K in the background. If you didn't know who you were
05:25 talking to, instead of giving them your sign, you throw up the CK, which is to see if they're
05:31 offended by it.
05:32 For me at my age, I don't want to do that. But what I do want to say that if anybody's offended
05:41 by me doing that, it wasn't my intent. I just want to show you guys what it was.
05:45 I think the music industry played a vital part in promoting gang culture, made it prevalent,
05:52 made it glorified. Just the rhythm, the rhythm and the excitement of being out of town and hearing
06:01 an Ice Cube or a Snoop Dogg or a Tupac come in hardcore, it just, it filled the spirit with
06:10 confidence and invincibility. I'm invincible now. Youngbloods today, a lot of them go to college.
06:17 A lot of them are into videos. They're videographers. They're rappers. They're
06:21 they're doing movies. They're entrepreneurs. Some of them work for different companies,
06:26 but they still want to affiliate with the gang, with the blood culture.
06:36 So there was never one way that anybody would make money in a gang. So there are guys who go
06:42 out and steal cars. They're real good. Take a screwdriver, they can go out and steal cars.
06:46 Then there are other people in the community who sell drugs, but everybody's not a drug dealer.
06:50 So some guys will go out and sell drugs and they'll go to the swap meet and spend all their
06:54 money on fresh T-shirts, khakis, new shoes. They're fresh, real clean. But they'll never
07:00 be a drug dealer again. Whoever gave them that knows not to give them anything else because
07:04 they don't know how to manage money. I would leave town. I would go sell drugs. But it was
07:09 not ever to benefit a gang. It was to benefit... I had a Cadillac. I like lowriders. I wanted to
07:15 have a better lifestyle. The most profitable thing that I did was sell crack cocaine. I got to a
07:23 point where I was making about $8,000 a day in Las Vegas. But at the same time, when other people
07:29 were making almost a million dollars a day selling crack in other cities. But then I know people who
07:37 had a PCP. We call it SHERM. And they could make $50,000 in a day. So the thing with the 1980s,
07:47 the crack era and all that, it put a lot of bloods and crips together because it was now no longer
07:53 just about money for the bloods. It was like the crips might have had a bigger sack or maybe a
07:59 blood had a bigger sack and the crips were buying from them. So really, it was about relationships.
08:04 I never shared money with a gang and there was no leader that ever told me I had to bring my
08:09 money back to them. Everybody had a family member who was out of town, a cousin in Alabama,
08:15 Louisiana. Some people had them in Las Vegas, Arizona. I had a team of crips and bloods.
08:22 And we just started putting the drugs on the north side of Las Vegas. And it was very profitable,
08:28 very fruitful. So the blood culture did expand because of all these out-of-town missions.
08:33 We're gathering more blood gang members and we're letting people know our culture. And they're able
08:40 to come to LA and talk to us and deal with us. So it expanded throughout the '80s. Even now today,
08:47 some guys are old and they have their legitimate business. So there are several ex-blood gang
08:53 members who now are millionaires. And it's not from selling drugs. It's because they bought
08:58 trucks. I had tow trucks. Now they have dump trucks or 18-wheelers. So there's a lot of
09:04 successful people who were once part of the bloods. Suge Knight comes directly out of what
09:09 is considered the Piru territory in Compton. And he got a legitimate business out of Def Roe Records.
09:15 Def Roe Records came out and made a lot of music based on their relationship with the crips. Now,
09:22 Suge being from the Piru area is able to show that bloods and crips, or let me say,
09:29 Pirus and crips can be together. I would have used the crips that's working to build relationships.
09:35 Maybe hire somebody from South Side or hire somebody from Santana block or whatever the
09:40 situation is. And we could have started building peace. And I think Suge did get involved in a
09:46 couple of peace agreements. I think that's a good example of Pirus and crips working together.
09:52 And we don't have to kill each other.
09:53 There are definitely rules for blood members. Always say where you're from.
10:03 If somebody say, "Where are you from?" Don't say, "Well, I don't bang, homie."
10:07 You a blood, you a blood. Number two is never tell. Never tell on anybody. You can't even tell
10:12 the crips. If the crips say, "My name is John Smith. I'm about to shoot you, pow."
10:16 And the police come, "Who shot you?" "I ain't even seen him. I don't know."
10:20 It's a rule not to snitch because if you're in this lifestyle and culture,
10:24 you're going to be in jail. You're going to be going to court. You're going to go to prison.
10:27 And you can't be known as a snitch and be a blood. People that didn't follow the rules
10:30 would get what they call deplete, get a discipline. And you can run from it on the streets.
10:35 But as soon as somebody get in the jail and they say, "Oh, whoopty whoops here."
10:38 You know, they're going to be like, "Oh, you know what you got coming."
10:41 And you can't run from the DP in jail.
10:50 The way the territories are separated could be based on one street. As a matter of fact,
10:56 there are certain streets I could walk down in LA, it's one neighborhood. And by the time I get to
11:00 the middle of the block, it's turned into something else. The Roland 20 Avenues were
11:04 based at 16th Place and 2nd Avenue. Even though it was more towards 3rd Avenue, but because we're
11:12 from 20s, we wouldn't say 3rd Ave, but everybody be hanging out on 16th Place between 2nd Ave and
11:18 3rd Ave. Being a part of Roland 20 Avenues, there were well over 300. In any given time,
11:26 you know, some people would be in jail, some people were off, gone somewhere. So,
11:31 when the blood started, there were a group of guys in LA that considered themselves the brims.
11:39 They did not consider themselves blood. There's another group of guys, the outlaws. And that
11:44 wasn't a gang, it was just a group. But as they started fighting the Crips, they got together
11:49 with the guys from Athens Park, the guys from other areas too, the Pirus in Compton, and the
11:57 villains, the Bloodstone villains on the East Side, to make sure that the Crips weren't dominant,
12:01 no matter if it was a parade or no matter what the situation was. So, even though they came
12:09 together and considered themselves as one, like a blood connection, but everybody has their own
12:17 area. You know, there's a Roland 20s, which is your area. And so, that's just to be able to
12:23 identify where you're from. So, for me, there's no difference between the Bloods and Pirus.
12:28 However, there's some people that say there is a difference, but if we're standing on the same
12:33 corner, you don't know the difference. All Bloods are not all African American. We have
12:39 Belizean homies, we have Jamaican homies, we have a couple of guys who are white. So, it was never
12:46 about just African American. In other cities, other states, I know they're in Detroit, New York,
12:52 there's a lot of them in Georgia. They are emulating something that we've actually gone
13:00 through. There are individuals who live on a street, and one street is one neighborhood,
13:07 and the other end of the street is another neighborhood. So, those are things that can't
13:11 be emulated. And that's just what's so different about LA. So, yeah. And there's no hierarchy.
13:18 And most of these cities out here, they pay dues, and they have a timeline. And, man, there is no
13:24 person who could ever collect dues, not in my neighborhood. He'd be in trouble. Everybody
13:29 would try to get the money back. And, you know, it just, it doesn't make sense. There's no
13:34 organization where I'm from. Everything in LA is unorganized until you go to a California prison.
13:41 Then that's when the organizational structure comes in.
13:43 My first arrest was in 1977, but I was in and out. I was juvenile. I started getting locked up in
13:59 1982 as an adult. I spent from 1977 to 2009 either on probation, on parole, in custody,
14:10 or on the run. I had drug cases. I had firearm cases. I had attempted murder case. I had a
14:19 perjury where just getting a license and another name, they sent me to jail for nine months,
14:26 you know, violation, you know. So, there's a number of different things I was arrested for.
14:30 Anything you could think of in prison, bloods are associated with it, whether it's,
14:36 it's not always contract killing, but, you know, I mean, it's drug selling. It's getting cell
14:44 phones. The UBN that started in New York was totally different than everything we were doing
14:49 out here in LA. They had a hierarchy. They had a level of command. They really organized.
14:56 Going to jail in 1982, I was able to maneuver in what they call general population.
15:02 So, I'm in and out of general population. Later in the '80s, I would go to the blood module
15:09 because that whole 9,000 floor was just full of crypts. It was a free-for-all. It's like a
15:16 hundred and something people in there, and whoever's the deepest crypt is going to beat
15:19 up the other crypts, definitely all the bloods. Emotionally, in jail, it's horrible. Jail is the
15:25 worst place in the world. Being away from my family is the most horrible thing for me.
15:30 I think mass incarceration took out not just the blood gang or the crypt gang, or
15:35 they took out our families. They destroyed our families. They destroyed the fathers and mothers
15:41 who happened to leave the house. California has the most incarcerated individuals in the country,
15:47 and this country has the most incarcerated people in the world. When Arnold was the governor,
15:52 he spent $7.2 billion and built in more prisons, but he didn't build any junior colleges.
16:01 I think that people need to have a trade because they might not do well in a four-year college,
16:06 but he didn't invest in that. He invested in the prison system.
16:09 LAPD played a major part in helping to develop and grow the hatred that we had for each other.
16:25 LAPD would actually drop people off in different neighborhoods, would get on their loudspeaker,
16:32 and they would wake up the neighborhood and say, "There's a blood in your area. He's in this car,
16:38 and he's sitting in front of the house right now," and people would come out to see what
16:41 they're talking about. I think LAPD has taken a thousand baby steps forward.
16:47 I do not think that they see us or view us any different now. I think the only thing that's
16:55 a little different now is that LAPD, not the LA County Sheriff, but LAPD,
17:01 will listen to the concerns and the complaints of the community, whereas back in the days,
17:06 they didn't want to hear it. Now they're proactive. They're looking to bust up groups,
17:10 see who has guns, who doesn't, but prior to that, it would take a phone call, and most community
17:16 members didn't make the phone calls to the police department because, once again, we'd be victimized.
17:23 So I don't want to be victimized, so I don't want to call the police. I'm going to call my mother.
17:27 [Car engine]
17:33 So there was never a year that I decided to leave the gang life. In 1998, when I was in jail facing
17:39 two life sentences for the attempted murders, I knew that this was not where my future was,
17:45 and I didn't have anybody to talk to. Everybody was either on drugs or talking about robberies,
17:50 and I wasn't doing robberies. I was owning a tow truck business. So when I came home,
17:55 I just stopped going around my community. However, my kids were still there,
17:59 and my community members were still dying. So I never left the community. I just left
18:05 that part of me that wanted to help be ignorant. So then, as I started Second Call,
18:12 I started helping individuals get jobs, get into careers, get their high school diploma,
18:16 help them start getting shoes and clothing for school. So now that I'm a positive part of the
18:21 community, a lot of the young people have no idea who I was. So they just know me as this person,
18:28 but they don't know me as the person with the gun or who went to war or any of that type of stuff.
18:34 In the city of L.A., we have gang reduction youth development. So we have summer night lights at
18:39 parks where, during the summer months, the city pays for certain activities to go on from 7 to
18:44 11. It used to be a little later, till midnight. But what they do is they get everybody tired.
18:50 They do free food. They do face painting, their prizes. And that's from the city of L.A. that
18:56 use intervention workers. But also on the outskirts, they have the police
19:00 to kind of monitor to make sure nobody comes and disrupts what's going on.
19:12 I think the old school blood culture values is more so we are one. And the new school
19:22 blood culture values are they fight each other. And like I said, they were born into a war
19:30 when they were born. They were born into blood versus blood wars. So they don't know what peace
19:36 is. The ignorance part of not ever letting go of, say, the gang culture, the gang lifestyle,
19:43 not developing into something different, and into a more productive neighborhood.
19:48 The Blackstones don't have to be gangs. The Jungles don't have to have a gang. But
19:53 there needs to be more development. And don't get me wrong. There are people who went off to play
19:58 professional sports. There are people who are making a million dollars off of entertainment.
20:04 But I just think that there's so much more that could be. There's healing circles in the
20:09 jungles. They're doing expungement clinics. There's so much that's going on. But I think that
20:16 the culture, the mindset never changed. The violence of the corruption of bloods is
20:21 definitely going to end soon, within 10, 12 years. But in the next 30, 35 years,
20:27 there'll be something else that everybody gravitate, all the kids will gravitate to be this.
20:33 I don't know what this is, but it's got to happen.
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