18th Street Gang
18th Street is considered the largest gang in Los Angeles, California, and is a strong armed transnational Latino criminal gang.
It is estimated that there are thousands of members in Los Angeles County alone. There are approximately 200 separate individual autonomous gangs operating under the same label within separate barrios in the San Fernando Valley, the San Gabriel Valley, the South Bay, South Los Angeles, Downtown Los Angeles, Pico Union, Inglewood, Cudahy, and Orange County, according to the latest figures from the NDIC.
Their wide-ranging activities and elevated status has even caught the eye of the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who recently initiated wide-scale raids against known and suspected gang members netting hundreds of arrests across the country.
Although most members are Mexican, membership is open to other backgrounds, including Central American, Middle Eastern, Asian, African American and Caucasian. 18th Street have an organized hierarchy. It is unknown who is at the top.
On the streets, there are the Shotcallers, their Lieutenants, and the foot-soldiers beneath them. Although the gang is well networked throughout the Los Angeles, there is no known central leadership nationally or internationally. Cliques generally function independently, but will join forces when combating rival gangs or law enforcement.
Haven't seen this but reading comments makes me feel anyone who has sympathy is retarded there is always a choice I realise there is not a lot of options but you give any young person the choice do right and work hard for $20 or do wrong for $60 its pretty obvious which way they will go the problem which everyone who has commented knows Is not the people not the parents but the greedy government that allows this to happen it leads back to them pricks
Does anyone know who directed this movie?
Eventhough it is a good documentary , it is not about the original gang 18 st, and it'S principals, it is about El Salvador. i am a member of ws 18 st Hgs LA and i get fustrated when I see what some so called hommies made of 18 in the media, we are not about that, and yes i agree that it has escalated to a political reason in El Salvador, but trust me we have not and never will be a Salvadorian gang, we are Los Angelinos....
poverty probably is the main reason for this sort of bullshit going on throughout the world - and the reason for that is capitalism - the distribution of wealth - some get everything (jobs, education, security etc.) while others get damn all - there must be some other way
PRIMITIVE BEINGS I FEEL SO SORRY FOR THEM
The problem is the doc description. This is NOT an LA gang documentary. It's about a bunch of poor teenagers in San Salvador & how they get by. They call themselves a gang but are nothing like what you'd find in LA. A sad bunch of punk kids. Clearly they are poor, uneducated, & un-parented. With few options available and no ambition to speak of, they're caring for themselves and each other as best they can.
first of all there should not be latino gangs in the usa, its the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, period....
the US government is doing nothing to remove them from the usa, the come to this country, they dont speak english, or even try, they take over comunities, municipalities, these things should be sent back to where they came from, this is not their country, never was never will be,
Jaymali and ProudinUS
Your do not understand the roots of the problems but are quick to blame someone. Latin America has been in a deep economic and political problems ( some generate by the US policies and its bad strategies in the region) for more than 3 decades and many people had to migrate to US ( mainly illegally)to work hard. Some of them with young children and others left behind their families. Thus, these children are the ones who suffered the consequences there is no a simple solution for this problem. Now we have an epidemic over the continent and abroad.
dont think that you're any better than these people because you haven't made the choices they have. I grew up with many friends from gangs and its never been something they could just walk away from and i understood that. When your entire family is in a gang, your neighborhood is a gang central, and you witness close friends and family killed by others gang members for no reason, then you can talk about how "horrible" these people are. How about instead of pointing fingers, blaming, and judging something you can't understand, you offer some solutions? It would make you sound like less of a jack***.
-D.L
omg first scene...!!
commented on wrong movie, sorry.
i don't blame the kids i blame the parents who had these kids and left them alone. I wonder what is wrong with Africans and Latinos, only thing that we are good at is killing and crimes we don't deserve to live on earth.
i'm sorry was this a joke? they're a gang? their leader is 16, their racketeering is like, you know, whenever... they can't afford 2 dollars to buy rolling papers and their claim to fame is selling weed that looks like something a cow spit up. the "biggest gang in the world" gets by on 60 dollars profit and some change they get from some bus drivers? LOL homeboys are doing something wrong. oh, and when you see vids of REAL gang initiations you don't have anyone yelling "NOT THE FACE, NOT THE FACE!"
I wonder where all the adults were and parents and family..... or are they apart of it too? I understand that alot of the boys didn't have so called blood family who cared enough for them, but wasn't there any love from any adults who did? Not good. My heart went out to the one who called his mom. All he wanted was to be with her and still....... she denied him even that. If any of them ever see these comments..... my heart is with you boys and may GOD bless.
sorry to say that these kids wouldn't stand a chance in the eu if they tried to pull a gun out on any older than them...i know for sure that in my city im they just pulled out a gun on any of my friends best case scenario we would dismember their bodies and feed them to the dogs and its the best case scenario
good docu the 2nd is not so good follows 1 persons life (slapy), the 3rd one jail life is an interesting insight to there jail culture lol
These 18th and MS13 are the branch of illuminati and freemasons. The fema camp is ready for them. We will keep them with their bosses soon.
The communities will be free of the igronce and barbaric people once and for all.
Free America forever!!!
the operatores of the gang world are from the western leaders who involved in drug and cocain project. They need the minority children to sale the drug on the street. We don't have leaders, we have gangsters who build weapons to steal countries and distroy human race around the World.
At the botom of the problem, Police have to clean-up the invisable crimes of our leaders. I wish we can speak with out
fear not to be killed by CIA or masons. We don't have a country, we have the land of liers and decivers who make their liveing based on human race suffering. They need human blood in order to make their adiction fullfiled.
With out police and their sacrifise, we could have been killed by mesleaded gangs.
I was born and raised in Santa Clarita,Ca. It's about 25 mil.north of LA. I knew a lot of bangers. Alot of WANNA be gansters I should say. You really can't blame some of the kids that get involved in gangs. Most of them are pretty much forced into it. Some of them are without any parentel supervision. They see the older G's make a couple grand in an hour and think that's better then getting a job. Where I lived it was pretty much white but we had our own little clicks that protected us.It's the wanna bees down there that you have to be affraid of because they have more to prove.
I find it hard that some of the commenters find these kids as less then human. They don't live where their at and have no idea how f%&*ed up their situation is.Poverty and having to be on their own. The gang is their only sence of security.
Nothing but a bunch of scum, a waste of human life. Going around intimidating, bullying etc. ordinary, hard-working people just because they're far too lazy to work and get a life.
I couldn't give two f--ks if they had a bad childhood, or no childhood at all, whether they come from abusive homes or not, it's no excuse to behave in that disgusting way.
If every one of them were shot tomorrow, I couldn't care less. Good riddens, I say.
@ekim Haha and maybe if I was more educated i would have correct punctuation and not be missing a verb in the last sentence. :P My statement came off sounding pretty pissy and I apologize for that. What I find alarming is the fact you don't seem to realize these kids are disadvantaged. They can't help where they are. That being said, you can't help being what values have been instilled in you, but you can change them. Please realize that it is not "stupidity at its finest"
@ekim These kids aren't educated well because of their socioeconomically disinclined situations. They can't help the fact that the value of education was not instilled in them. This is where they were born and as trends show with social class, where they will stay. Its not their fault? Ignorance? Stupidity at its finest? Maybe if YOU were more educated you would know basic sociology and less ethnocentric.
@ekim,Prix:
It still never ceases to amaze me how ignorant and brainwashed American people usually are.
Maybe if you where not so ignorant you would understand that the world is a pretty complicated place.
Poverty and social alienation is by far the two biggest reasons any community through out history has gone sour.
It keeps repeating itself over and over but no one seem to learn or even want to learn...
I feel sorry for these kids because they do know that what they are doing is wrong, they just can't find a way out. Yes, education would help greatly.. give them some prospects in life. And poverty is also a factor.
My heart goes out to the boy who wants his mother to pick him up from the US. She could change, even save, his life but she doesn't seem to care.
For most of the kids, it appears that the biggest attraction of the gang is the family aspect and support. Maybe they wouldn't be drawn to such a thing if they had been given support in their lives.
...and yet our government still lets people like this in,and does nothing to at least get the illegals ones out,and keep them out.They come here only to bring drugs,violence, and death to America.Our government doesn't care and most Americans don't care if these criminals waltz across our boarders illegally.This is one of the reasons our country is becoming a s**t-hole.Frankly thats what we get for not demanding that our boarders are secure and we keep all illegals from coming here...