Gangs in Kennedy, Illinois

There are multiple gangs in Kennedy, mostly on the West Side and Downtown. Crips are said to be the largest gang in the city with 3,176 members as of 2009, followed by Bloods with 2,794 members and the Gravehill Gang with 1,614 members.

In 2009, there were 8,739 known gang members in the city, making up 2.1% of the population.

Gangs first emerged in the Kennedy area around 1974, shortly after the establishment of housing projects. These gangs formed themselves to protect themselves from gangs living in other housing projects.

Early Gangs
The Cajun Boys were among one of the first gangs, founded in the Dawson-Greene Projects of west Kennedy in 1972. It was formed mostly of white Southern teenagers in order to intimidate Black residents in the housing project.

The Cajun Boys often practiced racist acts of violence. One of the first known acts was the beating and robbery of a young Black woman in the Dawson neighborhood. Another well-known crime was the shooting death of 22-year-old Antoine Royce, in which five Cajun Boys members were found guilty of murder. In response to the activities of the Cajun Boys, Blacks and Asians formed their own gang in the Dawson-Greene Projects.

The gang was called The Hornets, an indication of the gang's multiracial status involving the Black and "yellow" skin colors of the member. The Hornets engaged in much more brutal acts of violence against the Cajun Boys. In 1975, twelve Cajun Boys members and five Hornets members were killed in a large knife fight in the parking lot of Dawson High School involving as many as forty people. Months later, alledged Cajun Boys founder, Danny "Stumps" Thompson, was shot twelve times in the chest, neck and stomach and found dead in the Lower West Side neighborhood.

Around 1978, several other gangs began to form as racial tensions escalated in the mixed-race Dawson and Lower West Side neighborhoods. Between 1978 and 1980, the number of gang members rose from 193 to 472. Gangs began to form in other impoverished west side neighborhoods such as Bagley, Bankers Village, Elander and Knowlesville by 1981.

Crack Epidemic and the Rise of the Crips
The emergence of crack cocaine in 1983 allowed for gangs to flourish with business. Many gangs shifted their objective from protecting neighborhoods with violence to the manufacture and distribution of Cocaine and Marijuana.

In 1985, Hakeem "Chuck" Raymond, a 21-year-old Crip gang member from Los Angeles, California; moved to the Kennedy neighborhood of University Park, where he began to sell crack cocaine. Raymond began to recruit teenagers living in the neighborhood and supplied them with crack and firearms in exchange for protection. Raymond's set was organized into multiple crews, each which controlled a specific drug corner. Raymond named his set "Hood Rat Crips" in honor of his set in Los Angeles.

In 1986, however, the house of crew leader Jack "Sly" Miller was burglarized. Miller had previously refused to pay Raymond street tax for being provided with drugs. Miller broke his crew off from the Hood Rat set and formed the Taylor Park Crips in his nearby neighborhood. Taylor Park Crips recruited from the neighborhood's stock of impoverished young adults and formed a small force of gang members. Taylor Park declared war on Hood Rat Crips after opening fire on two Hood Rat members outside of a Downtown liquor store.

Crip gangs formed throughout the public school system. Many Taylor Park Crips attended Stuyvesant High School, which was located outside of the neighborhood. Inspired by the Taylor Park set, a group of teenagers from Stuyvesant High School formed the "Downtown Hood Rat Killer Crips", which soon became the city's largest Crip set.

On August 14, 1986; overwhelmed by the gang war, a crew of Hood Rat Crips built a homemade pipe bomb, which was placed in the roof of Jack Miller's downstairs patio, below Miller's bedroom. They laid in wait for three hours staking the house out in an abandoned home behind Miller's.

At 11:06 PM, as Miller went to bed, the crew left the abandoned house and walked into Miller's back yard. White 15-year-old gang member Jason "Wonder Bread" Woods lit the fuse, detonating the pipe bomb at approximately 11:08 PM. The attack killed Jack Miller and his cousin "Switchblade," who was asleep in the other bedroom.

Woods and one other member of Taylor Park Crips was arrested and charged with Homicide and Terrorism, and sentenced to life in prison.

Meanwhile, the number of gang members in Kennedy rose from 427 in 1980 to 3,973 in 1987. As of 1987, Crips was the largest gang in the city; the largest set being Downtown Hood Rat Killer Crips with 496 known members. Over the decade, the city's crime rate rose 324%.

Bloods and Gravehills
The first Blood gang was said to have formed in the Wabash County Correctional Facility in 1986. Blood gang members who had moved from California who had been arrested were said to have formed the first set in the prison. Many were released around 1992, and returned to their neighborhoods.

The Bloods formed sets in their respective neighborhoods and soon grew to be a large gang. Many Blood gangs stayed away from Crip-claimed Downtown and formed sets on the outskirts of the city. The largest set was the Murder Town Bloods which formed in the highly impoverished Railyard neighborhood of the city. The Railyard neighborhood was, and still is, a mixed-race neighborhood, with a racial makeup of 49.6% White and 31.5% Black in 1992. All races were welcome in the Murder Town Bloods, which helped it to become a large empire with nearly 361 members in 1995.

However, many whites in the West Side, mostly those from the South and the Plains, did not feel that whites and blacks should be in the same gang. Also, many white Blood members attacked other whites that were not gang-affiliated. A group of white adults from the Green Duck area began organizing other white gangs, both teenage and adult gangs, into a large group. Among these white gangs were the Cajun Boys of Dawson, the Wild Hogs Motorcycle Club of Green Duck and the Westside Glock Crew of Bankers' Village.

This new alliance, completed in 1994, was named the Gravehill Gang and was organized under a central leadership commission which included the former leaders of the criminal organizations it was founded upon. Each area was formed into a Gravehill set which combined members of the former gangs into one set. Violence among whites rose 30% in 1994, including a 700% increase in murders committed by whites.

Modern Gangs
While gang violence has decreased in the past decade, it is still heavily present. Gang-related incidents made up 16.4% of homicides in 2008, and 20.3% of homicides in 2009.

In 2008, there were:
 * 7,131 drug charges connected with a gang or gang member
 * 4,476 burglaries which resulted in the arrest of a gang member
 * 3,172 gang-related assaults
 * 832 robberies which resulted in the arrest of a gang member
 * 52 gang-related arsons
 * 23 gang-related kidnappings
 * 19 drive-by shootings (of which 6 resulted in murder)

There were 146 known gang sets in Kennedy with an average of 59 members each. In 2006, there were seven gangs in Kennedy with more than 65 members:

* - Formerly Downtown Hood Rat Killer Crips
 * Downtown Killer Crips - 752 members*
 * Murder Town Bloods - 418 members
 * Drunken Snakes Motorcycle Club - 274 members
 * Green Duck Gravehill O.G.s - 155 members
 * Arlington Rollin' 60s Crips - 108 members
 * 9th Block Downtown Blood Nation - 82 members
 * Dawson Shotgun Heights Bloods - 73 members

Gangs in the Suburbs
Many sets also exist in the inner suburbs of the Kennedy area. The city of Beiermann Farms has the highest gang member percentage of any city in the region with 9.4% of the population being gang affiliated.

Other suburbs with prominent gang affiliation include:
 * Orleans - 607 gang members (2.2%)
 * Gravehill: 214 (35.3%)
 * Crips: 208 (34.2%)
 * Bloods: 173 (28.5%)


 * Sorms Fields - 455 gang members (1.6%)
 * Gravehill: 312 (68.5%)
 * Bloods: 42 (9.2%)
 * Crips: 9 (1.8%)


 * Wremburg - 927 gang members (1.3%)
 * Bloods: 542 (58.4%)
 * Crips: 209 (22.5%)
 * Gravehill: 86 (9.2%)


 * Case Hill - 53 gang members (1.0%)
 * Gravehill: 34 (64.1%)
 * Bloods: 11 (20.8%)
 * Crips: 4 (7.5%)


 * Jacksonville - 628 gang members (0.8%)
 * Crips: 287 (45.7%)
 * Gravehill: 141 (22.4%)
 * Bloods: 108 (17.1%)


 * Thomasville - 83 gang members (0.5%)
 * Gravehill: 59 (71.1%)
 * Crips: 11 (13.3%)
 * Bloods: 4 (4.8%)