I need you to bring my passport and then bring your passport. And I need you to bring my gun. Ray Donovan s7e9: Passport and a Gun, Daryll to Jasmin
Hollywood’s streets are neither paved with gold nor safe. Crime is rife. Work is hard to come by. Drugs Inc s3e7: Hollywood High, National Geographic 2012
Cocaine, Heroin and Methamphetamine come up from the border to this part of LA. Here it is kept in stash-houses. ibid.
The Mexican cartels exert a powerful grip on the drugs scene in Hollywood and LA as a whole. But they have competition. ibid.
The party-set prefer their heroin smoked. ibid.
LA Country has 1,000 [marijuana] dispensaries. ibid.
Total annual homeless in LA County is 200,000. ibid.
Crystal Meth: it’s one of the most addictive substances on the planet. It does more damage to the body than heroin or crack. It’s cheap, it’s easy to make, and it’s everywhere. ibid.
Monday morning Oakland California: At the local morg it’s the busiest day of the week ... The drug trade is the cause of most of them. In this city the drug dealers run wild and the death toll is spiralling out of control while the bodies pile up. Drugs Inc s5e2: Cokeland, 2014
The drug market in west Oakland has become a free-for-all. ibid.
Even making Belushis [heroin & cocaine] can be dangerous. ibid.
In Oakland, California, ambitious dealers have started robbing each other to make more money ... Last year there was 131 homicides in the city. Drugs Inc s6e2: Bad Boys
70% of all drugs in America are now controlled by Mexicans. ibid.
In 1984 Los Angeles was a city with two faces ... The plague of the devil ... Jemeker Thompson, the Queenpin, indicted in a vast cocaine conspiracy. She would serve hard time. Gangsters: America’s Most Evil s1e8: The Queenpin, Jemeker Thompson, Bio 2012
In 1984 Jemeker Thompson was on top of her game. ibid.
Lisette Lee – the Pot Princess of Beverly Hills ... Gangsters: America’s Most Evil s2e3: The Pot Princess of Beverly Hills/Lisette Lee, Bio 2013
‘Operation Black Rain started in 2005: we used informants – the goal was to get to the top.’ Gangsters: America’s Most Evil s2e4: Ruben Cavazos, rozzer
The decade’s long feud between the two California-based motorcycle gangs [Mongols v Hell’s Angels] had escalated in recent months ... The two motorcycle gangs went to war. ibid.
The Avenues street gang ... The rap sheet and reputation of a gangsta ... Deported twice to her home nation of Mexico. Gangsters: America’s Most Evil s2e9: Mother of All Avenues – Maria Chata Leon
The Avenues: the gang got the name from the streets they worked. ibid.
The most feared gangsta in all of Los Angeles may have been a 44-year-old mother of 13. ibid.
What we know: 2 suspects dead, 1 suspect arrested, 6 officers injured, witnesses interview, no hostages taken. Situation Critical: North Hollywood Shootout, news, Youtube
9 a.m. Bank of America is open for business … 9.17 a.m. Two masked men entering the bank – it is a rare but fortuitous moment – they call for backup. ibid.
Both gunmen continue to spray the perimeter of the bank with deadly fire. ibid.
9.28 a.m. The first Swat team get ready for battle. ibid.
‘These Crips and Bloods have been warring for thirty-odd years.’ Crips and Bloods: Made in America, 2008
‘Over the past 20 year alone in LA County there’s been over 15,000 gang-related deaths.’ ibid.
In the southern portion of the richest city in the richest state in America lies a cluster of neighbourhoods: the streets and boulevards laid out in a grid between concrete ribbons of freeway … on its streets erupted the country’s most violent outbreak of civil unrest not once but twice. It’s also the home of America’s two most infamous African-American gangs – the Crips and the Bloods. ibid.
‘People were being killed for what were in retrospect the most trivial of offences.’ ibid.
Blood for Crips and Red for Bloods … Much of the first-hand knowledge has been taken to the grave. ibid.
These covenants mandated the sale of real estate along racial lines. ibid.
‘Children over time began to do worse than their parents.’ ibid.
The introduction of crack cocaine on to the streets of LA in 1981 proved to be a major tipping point for an already vulnerable people. ibid.
Gang murders in Los Angeles are at their highest level for ten years. 173 murders were the result of gang rivalries last year. Killing at the Car Wash, BBC 2017
‘Gunshots on Florence at the car wash right off of Crenshaw.’ ibid. 911 call
On 29th May 2015 19-year-old Tavin Price was murdered for wearing the wrong colour shoes. South Central LA is segregated into Crip and Blood neighbourhoods. Last year over 69 gang members got away with murder. ibid.
‘The boy shot him two more times in the heart.’ ibid. mother
Dwight Smith receives a reduced sentence of 12 years after testifying against his fellow gang members. ibid. caption
For the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of LA and funnelled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerilla army run by the CIA. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America. It is one of the most bizarre alliances in modern history – the union of a US-backed army attempting to overthrow a socialist government and the Uzi-toting gangstas of Los Angeles. Gary Webb
‘The high on crack cocaine was better than sex … I made millions and millions of dollars. I wasn’t afraid of nothing and nobody. I wasn’t afraid to die. So they made me queen-pin.’ Drug Lords s1e2: Jemeker Thompson: Crack Queen of LA, Jameker, Netflix 2018
The crack business is booming and Jameker’s lifestyle shows it. One of the richest and most feared drug lords in LA. ibid.
‘I just never got enough of it.’ ibid. Jameker
‘Within two weeks I was going like two, three K [a day].’ ibid.
Cheap to make and even easier to distribute. ibid.
One of the most powerful, wealthiest drug lords in the United States. ibid.
But the DEA agents aren’t the only ones monitoring Jemeker. ibid.
Mr Orange: What happens if the manager won’t give you the diamonds?
Mr White: When you’re dealing with a store like this, they’re insured up the ass. They’re not supposed to give you any resistance whatsoever. If you get a customer, or an employee, who thinks he’s Charles Bronson, take the butt of your gun and smash their nose in. Everybody jumps. He falls down screaming, blood squirts out of his nose, nobody says fucking shit after that. You might get some bitch talk shit to you, but give her a look like you’re gonna smash her face next, watch her shut the fuck up. Now if it’s a manager, that’s a different story. Managers know better than to fuck around, so if you get one that’s giving you static, he probably thinks he’s a real cowboy, so you gotta break that son of a bitch in two. If you wanna know something and he won’t tell you, cut off one of his fingers. The little one. Then tell him his thumb’s next. After that he’ll tell you if he wears ladies underwear ... I’m hungry. Let’s get a taco. Reservoir Dogs 1992 ***** starring Harvey Keitel & Tim Roth & Michael Madsen & Chris Penn & Steve Buscemi & Lawrence Tierney & Edward Bunker & Quentin Tarantino & Randy Brooks & Kirk Balz et al, director Quentin Tarantino
Hey, Dad, we got a major situation here ... He said the place turned into a bullet fest. He took a cop hostage just to get the fuck out of there. Do I sound like I’m fucking joking? He’s fucking driving around with a cop in his trunk. I don’t know who did what. I don’t know who’s got to Lou. I don’t know if anybody’s got to Lou. I don’t know who’s dead. I don’t know who’s alive. I don’t know who got caught. I don’t know who’s not. ibid. son
Pulp Fiction: pulp/pelp/n 1. A soft, moist, shapeless mass of matter. 2. A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper. American Heritage Dictionary, New College Edition. Pulp Fiction 1994 ***** starring Uma Thurman & John Travolta & Samuel L Jackson & Harvey Keitel & Tim Roth & Amanda Plummer & Maria de Medeiros & Ving Rhames & Eric Stoltz & Rosanna Arquette & Bruce Willis & Christopher Walken et al, director Quentin Tarantino