Collection of Insane and Fun Facts
Inmates of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept. can get free laser tattoo removal, e.g., gang sign tattoos they want to break from. Over 2,200 inmates have had tattoos removed; the removal incurs no cost to the public, paid for in part by the charity Homeboy Industries.
A deaf 45 year old North Carolina man was repeatedly stabbed after he was walking down the street, signing to his friend and a gang member mistook their signing conversation for gang signs.
The gang named “Cribs” evolved into “Crips” when members began carrying around canes to display their “pimp” status. People in the neighborhood then began calling them cripples, or “Crips”.
The Crips street gang was originally formed as a Neighborhood Watch to eliminate criminal gangs by force.
Hermit crabs form gangs to steal other hermit crabs’ shells.
Michael Jackson cast 80 members of the Los Angeles’ Crips and Bloods for the music video “Beat It” in hopes to foster peace between them.
There is a female gang in India draped in pink saris that punish perpetrators of domestic violence and other crimes against women.
Stanley Tookie Williams, the founder of the LA gang the Crips, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize numerous times. He was executed in 2005 and of course never did win any noble prize.
When Super Famicom (SNES) first launched in Japan, Nintendo had to ship the consoles in the middle of the night so the Yakuza didn’t hijack them.
The FBI keeps a publicly-available list of every gang name they come across, indexed by state, and some of the names are hilarious. California, for example, has “Red Team” and “Blue Team”.