Gangs in Portland: Past & Present
S. Mohamed, R. Northman, & L. Eskinazi
Portland State University
UNST 242: Leading Social Change
Gangs in Portland: Past & Present
The history of gangs in Portland begins in the 1980’s when individual Crips and Bloods gang members from Los Angeles, California sought refuge in Portland from LAPD Chief Daryl Gates’ CRASH team and their harsh police tactics such as Operation Hammer. The LAPD’s response to the rise in gang violence during the 1980’s had been heavy-handed, and involved the deployment of militarized police units, including air support, used to campaign against the gangs (Murch, 2015).
The LAPD’s tactics appear to have resulted in a mass exodus of Crips and Bloods departing to other cities across the nation, fleeing what they may have viewed as racism and police oppression. Portland was one of the many cities across the United States where those Crips and Bloods gang members fled to. The Crips and Bloods that left L.A. did not do so in any organized, concerted effort as the Crips and Bloods from Los Angeles were not at all structured into a centralized organization with any common goals or purposes (p. 30, Howell & Griffith, 2015)(“Overdose,” 1989).
When various individual Crips and Bloods gang members arrived in Portland, they were welcomed and embraced by local-area youth. Some of these young people joined the individual L.A. gang members, mimicking them and becoming members of those L.A. gangs themselves. From the beginning, there were local Portland offshoots of infamous L.A. gangs such as the Four-Tray Gangster Crips, 107 Hoover Crips, Rollin 60’s Crips, Inglewood Family Bloods, West Side Pirus, and more (Holley, 2015).
Local-area youth that did not join the gang members from Los Angeles in joining their L.A. gangs, wasted no time in forming gangs of their own, loosely based on the style of the L.A. Crips and Bloods gangs. In the late-1980’s then, Portland saw the creation of several homegrown gangs that mimicked the L.A gangs they’d recently come into contact with. The Columbia Villa Crips, the Woodlawn Park Bloods, the Kerby Blocc Crips, and the Loc’ed Out Pirus, just to name a few (Holley, 2015). Portland was no exception as this same phenomenon of gang growth occurred in cities across the nation (Katz & Webb, 2004).
Although these new local gangs used the Crip and Blood names and styles, the youth that formed these gangs were from Portland and did so without any control, knowledge or say-so of L.A. Crips and Bloods. The Portland offshoots of the L.A. gangs were similarly independent with respect to their activities (p. 31, Howell & Griffith, 2015). In contrast to the violence taking place in L.A., these earlier Portland gang members were rarely violent in their formative years.
In the summer of 1988, Joseph Ray Winston, also known as “Ray Ray,” a 17 year-old Columbia Villa Crip gang member was gunned down in North Portland’s Columbia Villa public housing projects (Associated Press, 1988). The killing of “Ray Ray” triggered gang violence that erupted into all-out urban warfare, and, by the following summer, Oregon’s governor Neil Goldschmidt had to send National Guard troops into Northeast Portland to help Portland Police quell the gang violence (“The Nation,” 1989).
In the 1980’s and 1990’s, myths and stereo-types about gangs and gang members contributed to moral panic in America. In this state of moral panic, political and social leaders suddenly defined a specific group of people as a major threat to our values and behavioral standards. (Howell & Griffith, 2015)
Since 1988, police claim that gang feuds became the new norm for gangs in Portland and throughout the 1990’s, Portland had hundreds of murders which police attributed to gang violence. Portland Police would eventually adopt many of the same “tough” tactics implemented by the LAPD against gangs in Los Angeles (pp. 2-3, Katz & Webb, 2004), which subsequently resulted in a mass incarceration of these local gang members into Oregon prisons (“Overdose,” 1989).
The Portland Police formed a Gang Enforcement Team, and a multi-agency Gang Task Force. They also adopted a gang database and gang designation procedures intended to keep track of gang members. Passage of minimum-mandatory sentencing laws, and involvement of federal law enforcement agencies have also become new norms; however, Portland has not seen a decline in gang membership (Ch. 3, MCCGA, 2014).
As violent crime decreased throughout the end of the 1990’s, and remained low throughout the next decade, gang membership continued to rise both in Portland and nationally (Katz & Webb, 2004)(“NGTA,” 2011)(“Uniform crime report,” 2020).
In 2017, the Portland Police rescinded its policies with respect to the designation of gang members, and purportedly dissolved their gang database (Saul, 2017). The Gang Enforcement Team changed its name to the Gun Violence Reduction Team, but changed nothing about how they operated tactically (“Gang enforcement patrol,” 2018). The following year a city auditor’s review reported that the Gun Violence Reduction Team still maintained a gang database; only the new one provided no due-process, and the collection and maintenance of the data had no oversight or transparency (“Gang crime investigations,” 2018). The same audit also found that the Gun Violence Reduction Team was racially profiling those who they stopped.
After the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police officers in May of 2020, the City of Portland announced it would be disbanding the Portland Police Bureau’s Gun Violence Reduction Team. In the months to follow, Portland Police have blamed the dismantling of the GVRT for a rise in Portland area shootings (“Police leaders tie recent shootings,” 2020).
In a 2011 interview with the Washington Journal, then FBI Assistant Deputy Director Robert Daniels was asked if it were illegal to be in a gang. Daniels’ reply was:
It is not. It is illegal to, um, be involved in criminal activity as a gang member, but, to just align yourself with a gang, if you’re not involved in any criminal activity, you know, that’s your First Amendment Right to do that.
Despite acknowledging this, The FBI, in their latest National Gang Threat Assessment (2011), which is nearly a decade-old, describes street gangs as “criminal organizations” and reports that there are 1.4 million gang members in the United States. In fact, the figure of 1.4 million is a 40% increase of gang members from the FBI’s 2009 estimates of only 800,000 just two years earlier. It’s no wonder why then that the Department of Justice has increasingly used the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act, a law enacted to fight organized crime, against street gangs (NGTA, 2011).
Even right here in Portland, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon is currently prosecuting the local Hoover gang for murders, drug offenses, and other crimes for which the government claims the Hoovers have committed as agreed-upon gang centered purposes, rather than as individuals (Bernstein, 2019).
Scholars disagree. Malcom Klein, as quoted by Howell & Griffith (2015), pointed out, “gangs are not committees, ball teams, task forces, production teams, or research teams. They do not gather to achieve a common, agreed-upon end.”
Also noted by Howell & Griffith (2015), was that, “street gangs are a product of U.S. history and are homegrown.” They go on to state, “the myths and stereotypes, coupled with a lack of research to address their validity, contribute to our lack of ability to address the gang problem effectively.”
Could it be that changes are needed to the ways in which we address the problems we describe as “gang problems”?
In conclusion, it has been established that:
· Gangs are legal, and members have a First Amendment Right to be in a gang;
· Gangs are not going to be eradicated and are likely to grow in number (NGTA, 2011);
· Much of what is thought to be true with respect to gangs are myths and stereotypes (p.30, Howell & Griffith, 2015);
· Since the early 1990’s, although gang membership in Portland and nationally has risen, crime has steadily decreased in Portland and nationally (UCR, 1985-2019)(NGTA, 2011) (“UCR,” 2020).
With these facts established, it seems that the past and current approaches to gangs are outdated and perhaps should be reconsidered. The reality is that gangs are likely to continue to be blamed for the lack of societal and political remedies. While society and politicians ignore their role in the problem, it only continues to worsen—not only for society and government—but for the gangs too, and the individual members who are not involved with any criminal activity who suffer from mere guilt-by-association.
Murch, D. (2015). Crack in Los Angeles: Crisis, militarization, and black response to the late twentieth-century war on drugs. The Journal of American History, 162-173. https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/102/1/162/686732
“Portland Police increase presence after gang leader shot” (1988, August 18). Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/ad3c61d74dd79fd2cd9a8ee3cc91e97a
“The Nation” (1989, July 13). The Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-07-13-mn-4567-story.html
“Overdose: cocaine and crime in Portland” (1989, September 10). The Oregonian. https://www.mentalhealthportland.org/overdose-cocaine-and-crime-in-portland/
Saul, J. (2017, September 15). In a first for the nation, Portland Police end gang list to improve relations with Blacks and Latinos. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/2017/10/06/gang-violence-portland-police-tear-gang-member-list-effort-rebuild-community-665374.html
Holley, S. (2015, March 22). Is Portland’s gang problem getting worse? Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/jmbymd/is-portland-oregons-gang-problem-getting-worse-322
“2011 National Gang Threat Assessment” (2011). Federal Bureau of Investigation. https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/2011-national-gang-threat-assessment
Katz, C., & Webb, V. (2004, April) Police response to gangs: a multi-site study. Arizona State University. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/205003.pdf
Howell, J., & Griffith, E. (2015). Gangs in America’s communities. Sage. https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/93052_Chapter_2_Myths_and_Realities_of_Youth_Gangs.pdf
“Gang crime investigations: lack of accountability and transparency reduced the community’s trust in police” (2018, March). Portland City Auditor. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/auditservices/article/677594
“Gang enforcement patrol: The Police Bureau must show that traffic stops are effective” (2018, March). Portland City Auditor. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/auditservices/article/677598
“Uniform Crime Report” (2020). Federal Bureau of Investigation. Department of Justice. https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/explorer/national/united-states/crime
Bernstein, M. (2019, November 7). Alleged Hoover gang members accused of 3 murders, other crimes in racketeering conspiracy indictment. The Oregonian. https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2019/11/federal-prosecutors-to-unseal-new-racketeering-indictment-against-alleged-hoover-gang-members.html
“Multnomah County Comprehensive Gang Assessment” (2014, June 30). Lore Joplin Consulting. https://multco.us/lpscc/multnomah-county-comprehensive-gang-assessment-and-implementation-plan
“Police leaders tie recent shootings to end of Portland’s Gun Violence Reduction Team” (2020, August 5). Oregon Public Broadcasting. https://www.opb.org/article/2020/08/06/gun-violence-portland-reduction-police-lovell-turner/
