In the mid-1980s, crack-dealing gangsters in Los Angeles decided to branch out.
Members of two rival gangs – the Crips and the Bloods – traveled to Tacoma in 1987 and found an uncharted – and highly profitable – market on the Hilltop for selling crack cocaine.
With the drug dealing came violence – drive-by shootings, assaults and homicides – as the rivals battled over turf.
Over the years dozens of gangs formed, attracting hundreds of local youths from all ethnic backgrounds. Today, about 50 gangs operate in Tacoma and Pierce County.
Some are small, as few as 20 members.
Some are particularly violent.
In 1998, nine members and associates of the Loc’d Out Crips, at the time a gang comprised mostly of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese people, were responsible for the city’s worst mass homicide – the Trang Dai cafe shooting that left five dead and five wounded.
Some have taken their turn as the main drug provider on the streets.
In 2004, the Seven Deuce Mob rose to the top of cocaine dealers in the city.
A federal drug case brought against the gang ended in 10 members convicted of various crimes.
Over the years, the gangs faced crackdowns by law enforcement agencies that targeted gangs committing the most serious violence or selling the most cocaine. Federal task forces have helped out, going after violent gang members with weapons, drugs and conspiracy charges.
For years, the Original Loco Boyz, a Cambodian gang, “were public enemy No. 1,” Tacoma police detective John Ringer said. That changed after investigators arrested several members of the gang, which in recent months has been “real quiet,” he said.
The Loc’d Out Crips, which was gutted after the arrests in the Trang Dai massacre, also remains quiet.
Traditionally, the gangs formed along racial lines – black, Hispanic, Asian, American Indian and white – and aligned themselves with either the Bloods or the Crips. Others had ties to Mexico and Russia.
Over the years, the gangs became more diverse and intermixed. That’s especially apparent on the East Side, said FBI special agent Todd Bakken, a member of the South Sound Gang Task Force.
“The East Side is so multicultural,” he said. “Gangs on the East Side are more multiracial.”
Some gangs – the Lakewood Hustler Crips, the Eastside Loco Surenos, the Westside Piru and the Tillicum Park Black Gangster Disciples – took their names from the geographic areas they claimed as their own.
Those claims sometimes led to battles, including gunfights, over turf.
The highest-profile fight for control of a neighborhood didn’t involve two gangs but residents fighting a gang. In 1989, a shootout between some Fort Lewis Rangers and gang members led to neighbors starting to reclaim the Hilltop’s streets.
Block watches were formed, drug houses shut down, lighting improved and bushes cut back. Residents learned what to look for and how to report suspicious and gang activity in their neighborhoods to police.
Over time gang violence moved to the East Side, parts of the South End and Lakewood.
The early part of the 2000s saw an influx of Hispanic gangs and violence associated with their members on the East Side. Investigators have said members of those gangs are known to make methamphetamine in large quantities and distribute it.
In recent years, residents on the East Side and the South End have started to fight back, forming block watches, organizing clean-ups, painting over graffiti and talking with police about how to reclaim their streets.
