The Gangs of Los Angeles

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’sBOOT: “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

Customer Reviews:

From the author

By W. Dunn "Cop / Writer" - July 10, 2007

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... read more

Gangs like I've never seen them before

By A. Warfel "Robby's mom" - July 30, 2007

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.

Good history of gang violence in LA, horrible editing

By Scott Hedegard "Scott" - April 28, 2008

With the American Mafia pretty much out of the picture, its having relocated to more white collar Wall Street crime (where there's plenty of company), the spread of gangs in the country's cities and smaller population centers where there's construction or some type of meat processing work to be had has become a real problem and a bigger threat to city life than ever before.
"The Gangs Of Los Angeles", by William Dunn, is a bit of a knock off of the classic "Gangs Of New York", but no less important or interesting. From the "Tomato Gangs" to the "West Side Story" style gangs of the late '50s, to the riots in Watts in 1965 and up to present day terrors like the Bloods and Crip gangs and Latin gangs like the dreaded MS13, Dunn paints a bleak picture, but also places the blame on lazy parenting, lack of a male authority figure and the nation's most historically corrupt and racist police force as ingredients in this violent stew that has spread nationwide.
The passion is... read more