Home Turf

The Bloods and the Crips surface in Chester.

by Jeff Deeney

Jeff Deeney GANG SIGNS: Bloods graffiti on a wall in Chester. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

There's been much discussion of Chester's recent uptick in gun-related violence that left six dead and more injured over a week's span in mid-August. Wendell N. Butler Jr., the mayor of Chester and a former Chester cop, said the violence, which mostly involved young men, was related to drugs, long-held neighborhood beefs and arguments over girls. Detective Capt. Joseph Massi added that none of the fighting was interconnected, though much of it took place on a small square of land on the city's west side. Anti-violence advocates held rallies, and editorials demanding change were penned. But one word was conspicuously missing from Chester's urgent debate about violent crime:

The west side of Chester is home to a number of them, including franchises of the national Bloods and Crips gangs. The square of land west from Barclay Street to Pennell Street and south from Ninth Street to Sixth, where much of the recent violence occurred, belongs to the Bloods; at every turn the gang's name is painted in red, along with other gang-related graffiti ("CK" for Crip Killer; "Piru," paying homage to a street in Compton, Calif.; and "Fuck Crips," a message to their rivals).

The Happy House Chinese takeout joint on the corner of Ninth and Lincoln acts as a sort of headquarters for the gang. Members gather around back in an alleyway covered in scrawled red graffiti and littered with malt liquor bottles. Photos of Bloods posing behind "the Happy" throwing gang signs can be found on respective members' MySpace pages, which are decked out with red bandana graphics. Most of Chester's recent shootings have happened within blocks of the restaurant, though there are no suspects, motives or witnesses and no evidence linking them to gang warfare.

To the southeast of the Chester Bloods' territory sits the infamous William Penn Homes housing project. Drug activity has been concentrated in the Penn Homes for at least the past 15 years. On the blocks surrounding the Homes, the letters "DPG," standing for "Dog Pound Gang," are painted everywhere. A loose conglomeration of teens living in or pledging allegiance to the Penn Homes, DPG members favor a white bandana ("the White Flag"), and also use a spray-painted paw print to mark territory. DPG territory butts up against the Bloods', but there are signs of cooperation between the groups. Members are connected to one another on MySpace, and behind the Happy House, DPG tags mingle with the Bloods'.

The Crips' territory encompasses the Wellington Ridge and Chatham Estates housing projects further to the west. Formerly named McCaffery and Lamokin villages, the blocks surrounding these projects are also known drug spots. On MySpace there's an entire page dedicated to Lamokin Village's "Fallin Angelz"; it's decked out in blue Crips signifiers, and features memorials for a handful of dead "LVCs," or Lamokin Village Crips. In the page's comment section, one self-identified Chester gang member states, "di$ i$ a Crip thing, we don't die, we multiply."

Here in Philadelphia, "gang" culture is fractious. The city has long been resistant to franchising by national street gangs, and is instead home to small groups representing different blocks or neighborhoods. But reports suggest that national gangs have gained major influence in both Camden and Trenton, N.J. Without deeper intelligence it's impossible to know whether the Bloods and Crips of Chester are directly connected to Los Angeles, or if they're isolated locals that adopted the symbols of larger, more powerful groups.

Walter Tomlinson is the president of Black Men in Motion, a Chester west-side nonprofit that connects volunteer mentors to area kids. When asked about the recent violence in Chester, he says drug gangs battling over turf could be partly to blame. Asked specifically about the Bloods, he says, "I heard [the Bloods were] introduced to Chester, but we haven't seen any significant build-up of groups like that."

Detective Capt. Massi feels similarly.

"We have a couple groups that wear red," he states, "but we don't see any evidence of organized crime."

When told about the Bloods and DPG tags in the area where most of the recent violence occurred, Massi goes so far as to unequivocally deny the existence of such groups.

"There are no gangs in the city of Chester," he says.

(editorial@citypaper.net)