Raymond Washington

Early life

Raymond Lee Washington was born in Los Angeles, California, on August 14, 1953 the youngest of four sons to Violet Samuel and Reginald Washington. He had three older brothers and one younger half-brother, Derard S. Barton, from his mother's second marriage. His parents separated when he was two years old, and he was raised by his mother and stepfather. Washington grew up on East 76th Street, between Wadsworth and Central Avenues in Los Angeles.

Contemporaries recalled that Washington had an affinity for fist fighting. He was constantly in trouble with the Los Angeles Police Department for various offenses as an adolescent, although his mother is quoted as saying, "Raymond was a good kid when he was a boy. Raymond didn’t go out of his way to fight or do anything bad, but if someone came to him, he would protect himself. And he was well-built. He tried to protect the community and keep the bad guys out. But after a while, every time I looked up, the police were coming to the house looking for Raymond.”

Some neighbors remembered Washington differently. Lorrie Griffin Moss, who resided across the street from Washington on 76th Street, said, "I don’t have a whole lot of good to say about Raymond. Raymond was a bully. A muscular bully. He wouldn’t let anybody from outside our neighborhood bother us. He would bother us. Raymond could be very mean."

A friend stated that Washington was a good football player, but never participated as a member of school sports team due to his poor grades. He transferred between schools repeatedly due to expulsion, and attended Locke High School, John C. Fremont High School, an alternative school attached to Washington Preparatory High School, and Fairfax High School in the Fairfax District near West Hollywood.

Gang involvement

Youth crime in and around Watts, Los Angeles escalated dramatically in the late 1960s, especially in the three housing projects known as the Bricks: Imperial Courts, Nickerson Gardens and Jordan Downs. Violent street robberies were common among adolescent criminals. Older street gangs like the Slausons, the Businessmen, and the Gladiators, had been ended by activist groups such as the Black Panther Party and the US Organization (US). Numerous gangs began to form among the youth that rejected the old gang names. Some of the names of these new gangs were Sportsmans Park, New House Boys, Acey Duecy, and Chain Gang on Westside. In his early teens, Washington admired an Eastside street gang called The Avenues, led by a muscular teen named Craig Munson. At age 15, Washington had an altercation with Munson's younger brother and Washington beat him in a fistfight. That happened because Munson put a gun to Reggie Washington (Raymond older brother) so Ronald Joe (Raymond other older Brother) went lookong for Craig and found him on 81st and Avalon and put in some work on him. According to former gang members who knew Washington at the time, Washington was subsequently beaten up by Craig Munson in retaliation for his younger brother's beating and Washington abdicated his membership with The Avenues.

In late 1969, Washington organized a group of other neighborhood youths in the South Central district of Los Angeles and formed a gang called the Baby Avenues. The Baby Avenues wanted to emulate a gang of older youths called the Avenue Boys. The Avenue Boys, whose territory was on Central Avenue on the east side of South Central, had been involved in gang activity since 1964. The Baby Avenues then began using the name The Crips after Reggie Washington nickname

Washington was one of the best fighters in the Crips and was feared and respected by his fellow gang members.

The Crips

By 1969, Crips and the use of the word "Crips" had taken the place of the gang's name. Meanwhile, Washington and his young African-American gang members influenced other area gangs resulting in the formation of many Crip sets. Some of these sets included the Avalon Gardens Crips, the Eastside Crips, the Inglewood Crips, and the Westside Crips, which were formed by Tookie, Sweetback etc.

The Crips remain one of the largest and most notorious gangs in the United States. They have been involved in robberies, drug dealing, and murder. What was once a single gang is now a loose network of individual gangs around the world. Crip gangs are known to have an intense and bitter rivalry with the Bloods gang, as well as many racial wars with some Chicano gangs.

One story stated:

One of the gangs in the area is known as the Crips, which started out at Washington High School as an extortion and terror organization and spread to other schools where the gang members enrolled after being expelled from Washington, the police said.

The Police also said that this gang has been spreading "like an octopus" and now has members throughout South-Central Los Angeles, Inglewood, Gardena, Compton, Lynwood, Lancaster, Palmdale, the Firestone [unincorporated] area and the San Fernando Valley.

Gang members, to identify themselves, wear black gloves on their left hands and gold-colored earrings in their left ears, which are pierced, according to police. They sometimes carry canes, which they use as weapons.

There are two stories circulating on the derivation of the word Crips. One is that it stands for a cripple, because some of the founders were injured and had to carry canes for a time. The other is that the founders once wore Afro-style hairdos and their parents made them "crip it."

With the rise of media coverage, which put these new violent gangs on the front page, soon many disaffected black youths were running to join the Crips, many without ever being contacted by gang leaders.

It has been stated that while Washington hated guns and knives, he believed in the idea of street gangs, fighting, and robbery, but only whenever necessary. This is mainly what led to his notorious reputation, since he, Williams, and other Crips felt an increasing need to steal food, money, and clothing to survive in the poverty-stricken areas of South Central Los Angeles. When new and aspiring Crip members began acting out of control of their leaders and committing homicides, it solidified Washington and the gang's reputation among the Los Angeles Police Department as notorious.

Time in prison

In 1974, 21-year-old Washington was arrested for 2nd degree robbery and sentenced to five years at the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, California. Washington would become the first Crip incarcerated at Deuel. While incarcerated at Deuel, Washington began to recruit young African American inmates into the Crips, much to the disapproval of established black prison groups like the Black Muslims and the Black Guerrilla Family (also known as the BGF). According to a former inmate who was housed at Deuel with Washington the Black Muslims and the BGF, aware of the spread of the Crips in Los Angeles, warned Washington that they weren't going to tolerate a formation of the Crips in the prison.

Washington was faced with another problem while serving time at Deuel: as the Crips murdered rival gang members on the streets of Los Angeles inmates at Deuel who were relatives of some of the victims held Washington responsible for their deaths. According to Washington's friend and Crips co-founder Greg "Batman" Davis, "People in the prisons was losing their loved ones on the streets and because Raymond was the founder of the Crips, they blamed him for it. And since Raymond was the only Crip up there (at Deuel) at the time, they were trying to kill him."

Release and death

When Washington was released from prison in the late 1970s he returned to Los Angeles and discovered that the war between the Crips and the Bloods had escalated to the point where gunplay, as opposed to fist fighting, was now the norm.

Eventually, Washington became disillusioned with the Crips as the gang committed more heinous and senseless crimes and new recruits sought to build their reputations. According to law enforcement and former gang members, Washington started to distance himself from the Crips. Ultimately Washington decided that the Crips needed to be brought back under one umbrella organization (as many new "sets" were formed after Washington and others went to jail). According to close friends, Washington wanted to return the Crips to one unified organization, stop infighting amongst the gang and then work towards a truce with the Bloods.

At around 10:00 PM on August 9, 1979, Washington was murdered at the age of 25 in a drive-by shooting on the corner of 64th and San Pedro Streets in Los Angeles. It was reported that Washington was hanging out on the corner when a car pulled up and the unidentified occupants called Washington to the car. Fellow Crips, as well as the police, were aware that Washington always made it a point never to walk up to the cars of people that he didn't know. Washington apparently knew the occupants of the vehicle because he told another gang member that he knew them and engaged in a brief conversation with them before the occupant in the passenger seat drew a sawed-off shotgun and shot Washington in the stomach. He was rushed to Morningside Hospital where he died while undergoing emergency surgery.

At the time of his death, Washington no longer had any real control over the gang he founded. He wanted to unite warring gangs in peace and had always opposed guns. Different theories exist on why he was killed and who did it but no one was ever arrested for his murder.