The Bloods

Started in Los Angeles as a street gang in the 1960s, spread to Texas prisons in the 1980s. Besides serving the broader purpose of neighborhood protection, the Bloods street gang originally arose as an opposing force to their rivals the Crips, who had been allying with various other gangs in the 1970s and becoming more powerful. As a result, the Piru gang allied with the Denver Lanes, the LA Brims and the Lueeders Park Hustlers to become the Bloods in 1972. "Bloods" was a term that African-American fighting men called each other in the Vietnam War. The Pirus later changed their name to Bloods.

The East Coast Bloods began in 1993 in New York City. Leonard "Deadeye" MacKenzie, then 26-year-old inmate from Brooklyn living inside a Rikers Island cell, and fellow prisoner O.G. "Original Gangsta" Mack, founded the New York chapter of the United Blood Nation in 1993. Deadeye is now in his late 30s and is incarcerated in upstate New York.

By the late 1990s, New York Latin Kings leader Antonio Fernandez (AKA King Tone) aknowledged that the Bloods have begun to dominate New York's prison system, and that his own gang has abandoned criminal operations in favour of political-activism. Because of this abatement in Latin King crime, the Bloods have a stronger and larger population in jail.

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