Monday, June 16, 2008

Warriors...come out and play


Smurfs Inc. — an eloquent Flint Expatriates commentator who's not to be confused with the old Flint gang of the same name — provides a rundown of local gangs, in no particular order, with commentary:

The Eighties
Top Dawgs
Bad Boys Inc.
Smurfs Inc. (No joke, a fairly large gang in the early/mid 80s)
Westside Warlords
Westside Rockers
Yellowjackets
Mexican Mafia
Acapony Stonyonys
Southside Boys
Greens (Saginaw)

"I seem to recall brawls at Playland and a melee at the IMA between the Top Dawgs and Greens. An all female gang on the east side?!? Numerous biker gangs. Blue monogrammed track suits that read: Smurfs Inc. A gang that wore novelty plastic batting helmets. I know this reads like a sequel to The Warriors but I swear it was Flint in the '80s."

The Nineties
Insane Spanish Cobra Nation
Vice Lords
Pierson Hood
Selby Hood
Merrill Hood
Voltron Posse (Again, a small but deadly crew.)
Aryan Nations (Northeast side)

And The Flint Journal, in true cornball style that just might be an embarrassing homage to James M. Cain, reflects on the days when Flint was known as Cracktown USA...by the reporters at the Journal anyway:

"The late 1980s also marked the emergence of organized street gangs in Flint. And drugs were only part of their activity. "Emulating high-profile gangs in Los Angeles and New York, Flint gangs began wearing colors and staking out neighborhoods as territory. "Police identified groups known as the D-Boys, P-Boys (or Project Boys), Six-Os, Selby Hood and the South End Boys. Gangs often recruited their mostly teenaged membership through coercion and intimidation and put them through initiation rites. They often cruised the streets better armed than the police; some crime scenes were littered with shell casings. "But it was the brutality of the crack-driven murders that often stunned hardened cops, prosecutors and judges."



1 comment:

  1. Though gangs actually go back as far as the 70's in Flint I think the violent public menace gangs didn't come to full fruition until the latter part of the 80's. I miss my old happy Flint so badly. I can still remember when we lived in a shining city on a hill where community prospered.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.