CRIPS AND BLOODS' ENDLESS WAR HAS NO BOUNDARIES.

Byline: Beth Barrett and Jason Kandel Staff Writers

For decades, most of the gangland murders in Los Angeles have grown out of the endless war between the Crips and the Bloods.

And that's still true today, even though Latino gangs outnumber black gangs 209 to 152. There also are 31 Asian gangs; 16 are ``stoner'' gangs that tend toward Gothic dress and rave parties; and eight are white gangs. Together, the L.A. gangs have about 45,000 members, about half the total in all of Southern California.

The gangs are tracked through Cal-Gang, a computerized system developed to allow officers across the region to share intelligence. A person with no reported gang activity over five years automatically is dropped from the system.

Many of the gangs identify with a particular neighborhood, street or avenue, or ``turf,'' which they mark with gang graffiti and ruthlessly protect for control over drug dealing and other criminal ventures.

But others, like the Latino gang 18th Street and the Salvadoran gang Mara Salva Trucha, number thousands, with branches throughout the region and country.

Latino gangs identify as cliques. Subgroups of each are known as posses and crews. Many have arms that extend throughout the Southland, and tentacles that reach across the nation.

The traditional black Crip and Blood gangs that formed in the late 1960s in South Los Angeles have fractured into sets - today there are 109 Crip gangs with 11,257 documented members, and 43 Blood gangs with 4,505 members.

Gang histories and street lore trace the origins of the Crips to Raymond Washington, killed by a rival in 1979, and Stanley ``Tookie'' Williams, now on Death Row in San Quentin state prison. Washington, who was kicked out of Fremont High School and ended up at Washington High, adopted the Black Panther philosophy of neighborhood control to appeal to street kids in his neighborhood around 107th and Hoover streets. That Eastside movement soon merged with Williams' Westside forces.

By 1972, Washington's group was being blamed for a series of crimes, including the beating death of a 16-year-old boy outside the Hollywood Palladium, and the murder of a pimp in South Los Angeles.

The Crips moniker is variously attributed to the way members walked with a shuffle like a limp, to the sporting of canes or to a mispronunciation of Crib Avenues or Cribs, a term for younger gangsters.

Non-Crip black gangs by the late 1970s were referred to as ``Bloods,'' a term that initially was generically applied throughout the 1960s' Black Panther movement among black men referring to each other as ``blood'' brothers.

Crips not only fight Bloods, but also many Crip sets fight each other. Bloods rarely feud among themselves.

LAPD Officer Dave Ross, an expert in the Rollin 60's - the largest black criminal gang in Los Angeles - said the Crips began to splinter in the 1970s.

LAPD Detective Tony Moreno, a 29-year veteran gang cop, said Los Angeles is at the center of the spread of gangs throughout the country, an image enhanced by Hollywood's glamorization of gangsters wearing multi-carat stud earrings and other jewelry, and escorting dazzling women.

``Gang culture is high profile,'' said Moreno, who wrote the 2003 book, ``Lessons From a Gang Cop.'' ``A lot of kids are curious about it, enamored about it. They can become sucked in. You get instant attention, recognition, and protection.''

Loyalty remains across geographic boundaries, with gang members keeping their affiliations as they change addresses across town or across the country.

``They don't change their uniform,'' said Moreno, who conducts gang training sessions for officers across the nation. ``If I'm from 18th Street in L.A. and I move to Oregon or Kansas, I stay 18th Street. They're loyal to their gang. You don't just change your uniform like a football player does when he gets traded. It's easy to start a gang up in another neighborhood.''

CAPTION(S):

2 boxes, 2 maps, chart

Box:

(1) Estimated total gangs and members by area

(2) Total gang-related homicides by law enforcement neighboring regions

Map:

(1 -- 2) SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GANG-RELATED HOMICIDES

Chart:

Percentage of L.A. gang-related homicides compared with California

Sources: Los Angeles Police Dept; L.A. County Sheriff's Dept.; San Bernardino County Sheriff's Dept.; Ventura County Sheriff's Dept.; Oxnard Police Dept.; Port Hueneme Police Dept.; California Attorney General's Office; Daily News research by Jason Kandel, Beth Barrett and Warren Huskey

Warren Huskey/Staff Artist