Starship Coyote
Original Gangster!
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-firestone18oct18,0,6500817.story?coll=la-home-local
As the story goes, the East Coast Crips robbed a Florencia 13 drug connection of a large quantity of dope nearly a decade ago. Since then, the tale of how a black street gang ripped off a Latino rival has taken on mythic proportions.
But to this day police are uncertain if the fabled heist ever occurred.
"You hear so many different variations of this crime," said Terry Burgin, a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department gang detective. "Who knows what really happened? [But] the effects are tremendous."
Over the years, the two rival gangs have battled over control of the drug trade in Florence-Firestone, an unincorporated neighborhood north of Watts.
The feud has escalated into what many residents call a race war.
It used to be that innocent bystanders were not targeted, said Chris Le Grande, pastor of Great Hope Fellowship in Faith, one of Florence-Firestone's largest black churches. "Now it's deliberate. 'I'm deliberately shooting you because of your color.' "
On Tuesday, the U.S. attorney's office announced a sweeping indictment against more than 60 members of Florencia 13, accusing the Latino gang of waging a violent campaign to drive out African American rivals. Once primarily black, the working class community of 60,000 today is mostly Latino.