Toledo Under Assault by Non-White Gangs

The city of Toledo, Ohio has a problem: gangs. 

An article in the Toledo Blade points out this threat is one of the non-white variety
[Gangs exact bloody toll on Toledo:Members, city police agree that streets are growing more dangerous, Toledo Blade, 4-30-13]:

Police track known gang members in an electronic database and, although police won’t make public exact numbers, Lt. Ed Bombrys, who oversees the gang unit, said there are an estimated 2,000 gang members in Toledo. There are, he said, anywhere from 25 to 40 “big, major gangs.”

In 2012, gang-related homicides were down from 2011, said police Chief Derrick Diggs, but police and gang members themselves said it’s more dangerous now than it has been in decades.

“Most of our problems are gangs, guns, and drugs,” Chief Diggs said. “It’s all related. … Are gangs more violent today than they were back in the late ’80s around here? Absolutely.”

More guns.

Less hope.

Fear no one.

Today’s gangs

The gangs depicted in movies and on television — those don’t exist. Not here. Not anymore.

Shootouts between gangs are rarely about colors or which “nation” you belong to. It stopped being exclusively Bloods versus Crips a long time ago.

Fights these days are about everything, but mostly nothing. Money, shoes, drugs, who you have sex with, whose sister you cussed out.

Most of Toledo’s gangs still associate with one of the nations — the Bloods, the Crips (born in Los Angeles in the 1960s), or the Folk, which grew out of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods in the 1970s — but run in smaller sets, usually the kids you went to elementary school with, or are defined by neighborhoods.

And each gang could have subsets — including girl gangs — created by younger generations who don’t quite fit the profile of the older homies.

People from outside of Toledo — California, Chicago, New York, Detroit, and Cleveland — moved in to basically teach young people how to turn gangbanging into a business, how to establish territory, and, perhaps most critically, how to defend it.

Gang members then became drug dealers and drug dealers became gang members.

That’s where the violence came in, and drive-by shootings — which hadn’t really been seen in Toledo since the end of Prohibition — returned.

At about the time Toledo youth started to claim Bloods or Crips, and most were claiming Bloods, Hispanic gangs started to form, said a former La Mafia gang member, called “Bowman.” Now 35, he grew up as a gang member in Toledo’s Old South End.

He and his friends banded together under La Mafia, he said, to protect themselves from the Bloods, who were always looking to fight.

The demographics of gangs haven’t changed much in the past 25 years. Most active members are young — generally about 15 to 24 years old — and most, in Toledo, are black. There are Hispanic gangs – Locs, Choloz, East Side Vatos, MS-13, Sur-13.

There were white street gangs in the 1990s — notably the Bill Boys who made money by testing drugs for Stickney 33, a Blood set in North Toledo — but white street gangs don’t exist now in Toledo. There are, however, whites who are members of traditionally black and Hispanic gangs, police said.

 "White street gangs don't exist now in Toledo."

 Simple question: do "white" street gangs exist anywhere in America?

If the 'State' (the Toledo police and local Toledo government) isn't willing to address this non-white "gang" problem, then they have ceded authority - their monopoly on violence - to these gangs.

The problems addressed in this Toledo Blade are merely a microcosm for the problems befalling all American cities.