page_title: Crips
section_title: Practices
hierarchical_section_title: Crips / Practices
caption_attribution_description: one of a series round the neighborhood off richmond highway, alexandria, virginia
context_page_description: The Crips are a gang based in the coastal regions of southern California. It was founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1969, mainly by Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams. Once a single alliance between two autonomous gangs, it is now a loosely connected network of individual "sets", often engaged in open warfare with one another. Its members traditionally wear blue clothing, a practice that has waned somewhat due to police crackdowns targeting gang members. Historically, members have been primarily of African American heritage.
  The Crips are one of the largest and most violent associations of street gangs in the United States. With an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 members in 2008, they have been involved in murders, robberies and drug dealing, among other crimes.
  The Crips have a long and bitter rivalry with the Bloods.
context_section_description: Some practices of Crip gang life include graffiti and substitutions and deletions of particular letters of the alphabet. The letter "b" in the word "blood" is "disrespected" among certain sets and written with a cross inside it because of its association with the enemy. The letters "CK", which stand for "Crip killer", are avoided and replaced by "cc". For example, the words "kick back" are written "kicc bacc". Many other letters are also altered due to symbolic associations. Crips traditionally refer to each other as "Cuzz", which itself is sometimes used as a moniker for Crip. "Crab" is the most disrespectful epithet to call a Crip, and can warrant fatal retaliation. Crips in prison modules in the 1970s and 1980s sometimes spoke Swahili to maintain privacy from guards and rival gangs.
caption: "BK" ("blood killer") graffiti, Alexandria, Virginia
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