The Tongan Crip Gang, or West Side 102st Tonga Crip Gang, is a street gang that is a subset of the

Crips The Crips is an alliance of street gangs that is based in the coastal regions of Southern California. Founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1969, mainly by Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams, the Crips were initially a single alliance ...

gang. The gang is active in the U.S. states of

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...

and others, as well as a presence in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. Tongan Crip Gang members are primarily of

Pacific Islander Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/ racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of O ...

descent, mainly Tongan.

History

The Tongan Crip Gang was born in the City of Inglewood, California during the 1970s and 1980s, many Pacific Islanders moved into the high crime-rate areas in

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the List of the most populous counties in the United States, most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, ...

, California. There, Samoan and Tongan Americans formed their own gangs during the 1970s. Many of the Tongan Crip Gang members moved from California to the

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...

, Utah area in the 1980s, and distributed the gang set there.Court shooting sheds light on 'Tongan Crips', a gang with Alaska ties
/ref> The Salt Lake City branch of the Tongan Crip Gang was founded in 1989 after intimidation by Latino gang members in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of

Glendale Glendale is the anglicised version of the Gaelic Gleann Dail, which means ''valley of fertile, low-lying arable land''. It may refer to: Places Australia *Glendale, New South Wales ** Stockland Glendale, a shopping centre * Glendale, Queensland, ...

Criminal activities

The Tongan Crip Gang's crimes include burglaries, auto theft, selling drugs, home invasions, credit card fraud, bank fraud, federal fraud (theft of federal documents, passports, driver's licenses), witness intimidation, insurance fraud, arson, sex trafficking of minors, impersonation of both state police and federal agents, prostitution, hacking, child pornography, kidnapping, extortion by means of threat to reveal information about the private life of an individual, crimes against the elderly, crimes against Central American Communities and individuals associated with the MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha Gang), crimes against the disabled, mail fraud and murder. In 2007, members of the Tongan Crip Gang and the 18 Street Gang were indicted by a federal grand jury for criminal conspiracy in a plot to murder 33 members of a Los Angeles subset of MS-13.

References

{{Organized crime groups in America Organizations established in the 1970s 1970s establishments in California Crips subgroups Pacific Islands-American gangs Tongan American Gangs in Los Angeles

History

Criminal activities

See also

References