Product Description

There is no gang turf more desperately unique than that hidden among the 464 square miles which make up the City of Los Angeles. It is a fragile place; both tantalizing and repulsive, where wild fires can scorch hill-top celebrity homes as easily as gang members decimate a housing project with automatic rifle fire.

The Gangs of Los Angeles is a classic, real life account of American crime. From the early Tomato Gangs of 1890’s Boyle Heights to the modern Crips and Mara Salvatrucha, with side trips through an Irish Dogtown, the gang wars of “Happy Valley”, Sleepy Lagoon and the yellow journalism of the Hearst Press, and a tragic murder at Sunset and Vine, Dunn recounts the events and notorious denizens that spawned LA’s gang subculture.

Praise for William Dunn’s BOOT: “BOOT uses Dunn’s stint on the streets to make incisive and invaluable observations about the nation’s troubled urban areas and their policing.”
—Publishers Weekly

“… Read BOOT by William Dunn for an honest, inside look at the world’s most controversial police force.”
—Joseph Wambaugh, author of Hollywood Station

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64032 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
William Dunn is a Detective Sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department. A former CRASH officer and renowned gang expert, Dunn has instructed law enforcement nationwide regarding the current MS-13 gang epidemic. A UCLA graduate, Dunn lives near L.A.

Customer Reviews

From the author
This book is the culmination of five years I spent researching the history of LA's gang culture. I've been a gang cop (both in a CRASH unit and as a gang detective) in this city almost two decades, and I'd heard all the urban legends about the origins of the Crips, the Bloods, White Fence, MS-13, etc. Little of it made sense, and it seemed you could ask any two OG or Veteranos the same question about their gangs past and get two seperate answers. So I wanted to know what the truth was, especially after other gang investigators in other states, now being hit with our gang members who were migrating from our town to their areas, were calling me and asking me not only what we'd done to fight the gang culture, but how did it all begin. They didn't want to make the same mistakes. So I went back, into the 50', the 40's, the 30's, even back to 1892 when it all begins, to see how it started, and what the city did to suppress the gang culture, both the stuff that worked, and the stuff that didn't.

For more information about gangs you can read my other book Boot: An L.A.P.D. Officer's Rookie Year which details my first year as a street cop in South Central during the Crip and Blood wars of 1990. I will also soon be publishing a book called "The Tequila Triangle" which is a history of Mexican Border drug cartels like The Gulf, Juarez, Tijuana, Sonora, etc. Cartels; as well as the "Sicario" (assassination) groups like the Sinaloan Cowboys, Zetas and Kaibiles; and how all these organizations have corrupted and influened Los Angeles' gang and drug culture; and where these ties could be taking our country!

Gangs like I've never seen them before
I read Mr. Dunn's first book BOOT and loved it. My son is a police officer and it gave me great insight. So I thought I'd read this when I found he wrote a second. he is a wonderful writer, and he brings back 1940's and 1950's Los Angeles, and the way the gang stuff was going, just as I saw it. This is a fine book and i recommend it to anyone who doesn't know anything about gangs but wants to become an expert overnight. Now i know why we have a War on Gangs.

"An All Out War Against Wicked Gangs This Way Comes"
"The Gangs of Los Angeles", William Dunn, NY, iUniverse, Inc., 2007, ISBN: 978-0-595-44357-4, Pbk, 272 pgs. Includes Preface 3 pgs. Table Contents 1 pg.. 9" x 6".

A recognized gang expert and CRASH officer, UCLA Graduate Wm. Dunn is Detective Sgt. With Los Angeles Police Department. He has extensive first-hand knowledge of currently active gangs of their evolution and has provided nationwide instruction on the current MS-13 gang epidemic. Dunn provides a revealing accounting of the history of gangs since Biblical times and emphasizes the origin and evolution of Hispanic gangs, the Mexican Mafia, Blood & Crips, Hells Angeles, and details on dozens of the hundreds of other gangs now dispersed throughout the United States. He describes methodologies used by police, public officials and International authorities is identifying and dealing with gangs - with succinct commentary of the effectiveness or deleterious consequences of different intervention programs. Of especial importance is his depiction of the Mara Salvatrucha and its various offshoots, all of Salvadoran origin

Inveiglements for added clarity to this book would have been inclusion of maps of Greater LA, Mexican Counties and the Countries of Central America. This book is concise, covers the A to Zs of gangs and gangsters in its 19 chapters; and it is truly a classic book of the rise and dissemination of gangs, their diverse memberships, activities and influences throughout many parts of the world. Although moderately technical with names, dates and memberships, I'd consider it to be "Gangs 101" for anyone who professes to be knowledgeable in gangs and their activities. The disastrous consequences of "Sanctuary Cities" is provided, noting Los Angeles City and Boston join the ranks with San Francisco on aiding and abetting these most evil criminal elements. [Too many Mayors seem to put themselves above the law (are they "on the take" or just stupid?)].

Dunn is not only an accomplished writer but he is a refined historian with excellent citing and commentary on those economic, military and political forces which helped shaped gangland activity that now is overtly involved in money laundering, drugs (heroin, crack cocaine, methamphetamine, Marijuana), prostitution and more recently, International Terrorism. It's a good read, one that's hard to put down!