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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00:00My name is Skip Townsend. I'm a former member of the Rolling 20 Avenue Bloods out of L.A.
00:04And I was active for over 27 years. And this is how crime works.
00:12As a blood gang member, I have to go out there willing to die or be killed just to stand my
00:18ground. When the fuel goes, it's looking to make a statement, and the statement is going to be dead
00:23bodies. I do not believe anybody won because every neighborhood has over 100 obituaries.
00:37Main rivals for Bloods has always been the Crips. Getting on the bus at 13 years old,
00:43the average person back then, we're going to the back of the bus. That's where you're from,
00:48or what you're looking at, or what size are your shoes. And if there were a group that was maybe
00:54five or six, seven deep, and somebody got on and said they were from the wrong neighborhood,
00:59that's where it started. That's where the fight's going to come. And that's how I became a blood
01:02gang member, willing to fight back. And that was in 1977. I joined a movement, and the movement
01:08was to not be a victim of the Crips. That was 1980 when I'm walking home from a football game.
01:17I was on Crenshaw and 59th Street, and the Rolling 60s had a big party that night. It was about 15
01:23of them. They had beat me to the point where I was unconscious for a second. And then when I
01:29jumped up and took off running, one guy followed me, and he kept running after me. That was a
01:34horrible experience, but I'm glad I lived through it. What Hollywood thinks about gang membership
01:41is that there's some people handing out guns to each other saying, man, we're about to go
01:46shoot this up. And that's just not the case. Most of the shootings are emotions. Somebody's with
01:52somebody's girlfriend. Somebody stole somebody's car. Somebody got beat up at the mall, and now
01:57they know they're going to be at the skating rink tonight. The gang wars was not just a table of
02:03guys strategizing like, who are we going to shoot next? So back in the 80s, most of the individuals
02:09had 38 specials. They had a revolver that only shot five, maybe six times. They would have a 22.
02:18And now nobody has the 38 specials and 12-gauge. They have SKs and ARs and MAC-11s. They have 30
02:27round clips. They have banana clips. They can shoot 30 times within a matter of seconds.
02:32So that changed everything, and that's when L.A. became the killing field, and it was hard to
02:38survive. The beefs now are majority on internet. Most of the beefs are going now because of
02:46someone said something, and they're really tough behind a camera and a keyboard, whereas we actually
02:53had to go to school to fight. So the beefs are totally different in today's age than it was back
02:59when I was younger. Drive-bys were happening every day, and I could tell you the time that
03:11I'm standing out waiting on one of my friends, and a guy came down the street in a nice-looking car,
03:16and I started walking in the street to go see the car, and the closer he got, he started shooting
03:21at me. He was coming to do a drive-by, and I'm looking at the car kind of unaware, didn't know
03:26who he was. It was war zone. There's an area in my neighborhood that we call Iraq. We call it Iraq
03:34because right here on 20th Street in Arlington, a father and son had got shot together in front
03:41of their house. I mean, stuff like that happened. Every day I wake up, I don't know if this is the
03:48day. That's why so many people had to carry guns. That's why I carried a gun back in the day because
03:53I did not know was I going to have to use the gun today just to get home.
03:58Not to just intentionally go look to hurt somebody, but I just want to go home every night.
04:10The Crips chose the color blue, so red was just the opposite of blue, and also red stands out.
04:18There's something here that's brighter than you. Let you know that we're brighter than you and not
04:24hiding. I didn't have to have on any red. If I'm wearing all beige, they'd be like,
04:29oh, okay, I see what you're doing. They would know, okay, these are bloods.
04:35Some people who didn't leave their neighborhood would wear red shoes, red shoestrings, red belt,
04:40red shirt, red hat. For me, it was doing a little bit too much.
04:44The terminology really, it progressed over the years. Everything would be like,
04:51Big Back B-Boo, Mocha Bigarette, Drive My Bar To The Beach, Eat A Bandy Bar, Have A Bop A Boppy.
04:57Everything was terminology used as a beat. Number one blood sign is this right here,
05:04but then this is also a blood sign right here. Different neighborhoods have their own sign.
05:13See if I can still do this. This right here is disrespectful, and I don't mean to disrespect
05:19anybody, but this is a C with a K in the background. If you didn't know who you were
05:25talking to, instead of giving them your sign, you throw up the CK, which is to see if they're
05:31offended by it. For me at my age, I don't want to do that, but I do want to say that if anybody's
05:41offended by me doing that, it wasn't my intent. I just want to show you guys what it was.
05:45I think the music industry played a vital part in promoting gang culture, made it prevalent,
05:52made it glorified. Just the rhythm, the rhythm and the excitement of being out of town and hearing
06:01an Ice Cube or a Snoop Dogg or a Tupac come in hardcore, it just, it filled the spirit with
06:10confidence and invincibility. I'm invincible now. Youngbloods today, a lot of them go to college.
06:17A lot of them are into videos. They're videographers. They're rappers. They're
06:22doing movies. They're entrepreneurs. Some of them work for different companies,
06:26but they still want to affiliate with the gang, with the blood culture.
06:30So there was never one way that anybody would make money in a gang. So there are guys who go
06:35out and steal cars. They're real good. Take a screwdriver, they can go out and steal cars.
06:39Then there are other people in the community who sell drugs, but everybody's not a drug dealer.
06:44So some guys will go out and sell drugs and they'll go to the swap meet and
06:47spend all their money on fresh t-shirts, khakis, new shoes. They're fresh, real clean,
06:52but they'll never make money in a gang. So there's a lot of people in the community
06:58who are fresh, real clean, but they'll never be a drug dealer again. Whoever gave them that
07:02knows not to give them anything else because they don't know how to manage money.
07:06I would leave town. I would go sell drugs, but it was not ever to benefit a gang. I had a Cadillac.
07:13I like low riders. I wanted to have a better lifestyle. The most profitable thing that I did
07:20was sell crack cocaine. I got to a point where I was making about $8,000 a day in Las Vegas.
07:27But at the same time when other people were making almost a million dollars a day
07:32selling crack in other cities. But then I know people who had a PCP, we call it SHERM,
07:40and they could make $50,000 in a day. So the thing with the 1980s, the crack era and all that,
07:48it put a lot of Bloods and Crips together because it was now no longer just about
07:54money for the Bloods. It was like the Crips might have had a bigger sack,
07:58or maybe a Blood had a bigger sack and the Crips were buying from them.
08:02So really it was about relationships. I never shared money with a gang and there was no leader
08:07that ever told me I had to bring my money back to them. Everybody had a family member who was
08:13out of town, a cousin in Alabama, Louisiana. Some people had them in Las Vegas, Arizona.
08:19I had a team of Crips and Bloods and we just started putting the drugs on the north side of
08:25Las Vegas and it was very profitable, very fruitful. So the Blood culture did expand
08:31because of all these out-of-town missions. We're gathering more Blood gang members and
08:36we're letting people know our culture and they're able to come to LA and talk to us and deal with
08:42us. So it expanded throughout the 80s. Even now today, some guys are old and they have
08:49their legitimate business. So there are several ex-Blood gang members who now are millionaires
08:55and it's not from selling drugs. It's because they bought trucks. I had tow trucks. Now they
09:00have dump trucks or 18 wheelers. So there's a lot of successful people who were once part of the
09:06Bloods. Suge Knight comes directly out of what is considered the Piru territory in Compton
09:12and he got a legitimate business out of Defro Records. Defro Records came out and made a
09:19lot of music based on their relationship with the Crips. Now Suge, being from the Piru area,
09:26is able to show that Bloods and Crips, or let me say Pirus and Crips, can be together. I would
09:32have used the Crips that's working to build relationships. Maybe hire somebody from South
09:37Side or hire somebody from Santana Block or whatever the situation is and we could have
09:43started building peace. And I think Suge did get involved in a couple of peace agreements.
09:48I think that's a good example of Pirus and Crips working together and we don't have to kill each
09:53other. There are definitely rules for Blood members. Always say where you from. If somebody
10:04say where you from, don't say well I don't bang homie. You a Blood, you a Blood. Number two is
10:09never tell. Never tell on anybody. You can't even tell the Crips. If the Crips say my name is John
10:15Smith and I'm about to shoot you, pow. And the police come, who shot you? I ain't even seen him.
10:19I don't know. It's a rule not to snitch because if you're in this lifestyle and culture, you're
10:24going to be in jail. You're going to be going to court. You're going to go to prison and you can't
10:27be known as a snitch and be a Blood. People that didn't follow the rules would get what they call
10:31deep plea, get the discipline. And you could run from it on the streets, but as soon as somebody
10:36get in the jail and they say oh whoopty whoops here, they're going to be like oh you know what
10:40you got coming. You can't run from the deep pee in jail.
10:50The way the territories are separated could be based on one street. As a matter of fact, there
10:56are certain streets I could walk down in LA, this one neighborhood, and by the time I get to the
11:00middle of the block, it's turned into something else. The Roland 20 Avenues were based at 16th
11:06Place and 2nd Avenue. Even though it was more towards 3rd Avenue, but because we're from 20s,
11:12we wouldn't say 3rd Ave, but everybody be hanging out on 16th Place between 2nd Ave and 3rd Ave.
11:18Being a part of Roland 20 Avenues, there were well over 300 in any given time. Some people
11:27would be in jail. Some people were off, gone somewhere. So when the Blood started,
11:34there were a group of guys in LA that considered themselves the Brims. They did not consider
11:40themselves Bloods. There's another group of guys, the Outlaws, and that wasn't a gang. It was just
11:45a group, but as they started fighting the Crips, they got together with the guys from Athens Park,
11:50the guys from other areas too, the Pirus in Compton, and the villains, the Bloodstone
11:57villains on the East Side to make sure that the Crips weren't dominant. No matter if it was a
12:03parade or no matter what the situation was. So even though they came together and considered
12:11themselves as one, like a Blood connection, but everybody has their own area. There's a Roland
12:1920s, which is your area. And so that's just to be able to identify where you're from.
12:25So for me, there's no difference between the Bloods and Pirus. However, there's some people
12:30that say there is a difference, but if we're standing on the same corner, you don't know
12:34the difference. All Bloods are not all African American. We have Belizean homies. We have
12:41Jamaican homies. We have a couple of guys who are white. So it was never about just African American.
12:49In other cities, other states, I know they're in Detroit, New York. There's a lot of them in
12:53Georgia. They are emulating something that we've actually gone through. There are individuals who
13:02live on a street, and one street is one neighborhood, and the other end of the
13:08street is another neighborhood. So those are things that can't be emulated. And that's just
13:13what's so different about LA. And there's no hierarchy. And most of these cities out here,
13:20they pay dues, and they have a timeline. And man, there is no person who could ever collect dues
13:27not in my neighborhood. He'd be in trouble. Everybody would try to get the money back.
13:33It doesn't make sense. There's no organization where I'm from. Everything in LA is unorganized
13:38until you go to a California prison. Then that's when the organizational structure comes in.
13:50My first arrest was in 1977, but I was in and out. I was juvenile. I started getting
13:58locked up in 1982 as an adult. I spent from 1977 to 2009 either on probation, on parole,
14:08in custody, or on the run. I had drug cases. I had firearm cases. I had attempted murder case.
14:18I had a perjury where just getting a license and another name, they sent me to jail for nine
14:24months, violation. There's a number of different things I was arrested for.
14:32Anything you could think of in prison, bloods are associated with it. It's not always contract
14:39killing, but it's drug selling. It's getting cell phones. The UBN that started in New York
14:47was totally different than everything we were doing out here in LA. They had a hierarchy.
14:52They had a level of command, and they really organized.
14:56Going to jail in 1982, I was able to maneuver in what they call general population.
15:03I'm in and out of general population. Later in the 80s, I would go to the blood module
15:09because that whole 9,000 floor was just full of crypts, and it was a free-for-all. It's like
15:16a hundred and something people in there, and whoever's the deepest crypts is going to beat
15:19up the other crypts, definitely all the bloods. Emotionally, in jail, it's horrible. Jail is the
15:25worst place in the world. Being away from my family is the most horrible thing for me.
15:30I think mass incarceration took out not just the blood gang or the crypt gang,
15:35or they took out our families. They destroyed our families. They destroyed the fathers and
15:41mothers having to leave the house. California has the most incarcerated individuals in the country,
15:47and this country has the most incarcerated people in the world. When Arnold was the governor,
15:52he spent $7.2 billion and building more prisons, but he didn't build any junior colleges. I think
16:01that people need to have a trade because they might not do well in a four-year college,
16:06but he didn't invest in that. He invested in the prison system.
16:10LAPD played a major part in helping to develop and grow the hatred that we had for each other.
16:20LAPD would actually drop people off in different neighborhoods, would get on their loudspeaker,
16:27and they would wake up the neighborhood and say, there's a blood in your area,
16:32he's in this car, and he's sitting in front of the house right now, and he's going to kill you.
16:36He's in this car, and he's sitting in front of the house right now, and people will come out to
16:41see what they're talking about. I think LAPD has taken a thousand baby steps forward. I do not
16:49think that they see us or view us any different now. I think the only thing that's a little
16:56different now is that LAPD, not the LA County Sheriff, but LAPD will listen to the concerns
17:02and the complaints of the community, whereas back in the days, they didn't want to hear it.
17:08Now they're proactive. They're looking to bust up groups, see who has guns, who doesn't,
17:12but prior to that, it would take a phone call, and most community members didn't make the phone
17:18calls to the police department because, once again, we'd be victimized. So I don't want to
17:24be victimized, so I don't want to call the police. I'm going to call my mother.
17:33So there was never a year that I decided to leave the gang life. In 1998, when I was in jail facing
17:39two life sentences for the attempted murders, I knew that this was not where my future was,
17:45and I didn't have anybody to talk to. Everybody was either on drugs or talking about robberies,
17:50and I wasn't doing robberies. I was owning a tow truck business. So when I came home,
17:55I just stopped going around my community. However, my kids were still there,
17:59and my community members were still dying. So I never left the community. I just left
18:06that part of me that wanted to help be ignorant. So then, as I started Second Call,
18:12I started helping individuals get jobs, get into careers, get their high school diploma,
18:16help them start getting shoes and clothing for school. So now that I'm a positive part of the
18:21community, a lot of the young people have no idea who I was. So they just know me as this person,
18:28but they don't know me as the person with the gun or who went to war or any of that type of stuff.
18:34In the city of L.A., we have gang reduction youth development. So we have summer night
18:38lights at parks where, during the summer months, the city pays for certain activities to go on
18:43from 7 to 11. It used to be a little later, till midnight. But what they do is they get
18:49everybody tired. They do free food. They do face painting and their prizes, and that's from the
18:55city of L.A. that use intervention workers. But also on the outskirts, they have the police
19:00to kind of monitor, to make sure nobody comes and disrupts what's going on.
19:05I think the old school blood culture values is more so we are one. And the new school
19:22blood culture values are they fight each other. And like I said, they were born into a war
19:31when they were born. They were born into blood versus blood wars. So they don't know what peace
19:36is. The ignorance part of not ever letting go of, say, the gang culture, the gang lifestyle,
19:42not developing into something different, and into a more productive neighborhood.
19:48That Blackstones don't have to be gangs. You know, the jungles don't have to have a gang,
19:52but there needs to be more development. And don't get me wrong, there are people who went
19:57off to play professional sports. There are people who are making a million dollars off of
20:03entertainment. But I just think that there's so much more that could be. There's healing circles
20:08in the jungles. They're doing expungement clinics. There's so much that's going on. But
20:15I think that the culture, the mindset never changed. The violence of the corruption of
20:20bloods is definitely going to end soon, within 10, 12 years. But in the next 30, 35 years,
20:27there'll be something else that everybody gravitate, all the kids will gravitate to be this.
20:33I don't know what this is, but it's going to happen.
20:50you