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SAMOAN BLOOD GANG

The American street-gang lifestyle attracted first generation Samoan-Americans in Los Angeles in much the same way it attracted disadvantaged young people of other ethnicities. Samoan-Americans banded together under the banners of the Bloods and the Crips in the early 1980s as a natural extension of their Samoan brotherhood and as a means for protection in neighborhoods where Samoans were outnumbered. Samoan sets like the Scott Park Pirus, the West Side Pirus and the Sons of Samoa Crips have multiplied over the last three decades and thrive to this day amidst a bitter rivalry between Samoan Blood and Crip factions. Our trip through the LA Samoan gang landscape took us from Scott Park on the East Side of Carson to the Scottsdale housing projects on the West Side, to Long Beach where the S.O.S. Crips bang.