‘That West Coast influence of gangs was coming in’

On Monday, we continued our Red Ribbon Week series, looking closer at mandatory minimum drug sentencing laws and how they disproportionately affect young black men in our community.

Today, we will focus on how gangs proliferated on the streets of Columbus from the perspective of Eugene Thomas, a former gang member who ended up in prison for 21 years on a voluntary manslaughter conviction. I also checked with two other former gang members, now in their 40s, who confirmed Thomas’ recollection of how gangs developed in this area.

Thomas said he grew up in the 1980s when gangs were just emerging in the community. He said it began with neighborhood youths imitating stepping that they saw at college fraternities. They adopted some of the Greek names and began competing locally. Some even had jackets and boots as a form of identity.

“This is on the hood level, now — this isn’t on the collegiate level,” he said. “We weren’t sanctioned or anything, but they were popping up everywhere.”

Thomas said that led to skirmishes at South Columbus Boys Club, which eventually spilled out into the street.

“OK, now it’s on sight,” he explained. “We ain’t got to meet up at the dance. ... If I catch you in McDonald’s, that’s where it’s going to happen at. And it got like that. As these fights started spilling into other areas, other people felt disrespected.”

At first, the groups didn’t call themselves gangs, he said. It was just a natural progression among boys who spent a lot of time together. He belonged to a group called Delta Alpha Assassins, which sprung up in Northstar Drive area.

“At that time, the way things were happening is, if you were from a particular neighborhood, you just naturally hung out with the guys in the neighborhood,” he said. “This was before everybody had a car. This is before cell phones. You just hung out with the people that were right there with you. You drank with them. You partied with them. You knew their families. You spent the night with them. You played Little League football with them, and Little League baseball. You all were like brothers, and initially, none of us actually thought about a gang.”

Soon, it also was about marking territory. There was a spot in School Alley where the Delta Alpha Assassins liked to smoke reefer, drink alcohol and have fun.

“Well, people from other areas hear about that,” said Thomas. “So, now everybody wants to come along and hang out in that area. But, of course, when you have girls out, and everybody ego-tripping, people try to make you look bad in front of the girls from your neighborhood. And that’s pretty much where it starts. You know, guys start disrespecting you in front of females in your neighborhood, and they start disrespecting your neighborhood.”

Prior to that, Columbus didn’t really have a lot of gangs, Thomas said. The Crips, Bloods, Vice Lords and Stones were practically non-existent in the city. If there were Gangster Disciples, there wasn’t much of a presence. But when one of the Greek-named groups split up in Baker Village, some of their members started embracing the Bloods ideology, calling themselves “Boys in the Hood” and “Raiders,” he said.

“That West Coast influence of gangs was coming in,” he said. “Colors had come out. ... You see, the mid-West GDs, Vice Lords, Stones, that influence hadn’t hit yet. The popular influence was the West Coast style gangs.”

The “Boys in the Hood” label came from a rap song produced by Eazy-E, a West Coast gangster rapper. The lyrics were, “Cause the boyz n tha hood are always hard. You come talking that trash we'll pull your card.”

The “Bloods” were popular on the West Coast. And “The Raiders” became popular because the best known rap group at that time was N.W.A. They wore black and silver like the Oakland Raiders, which were considered neutral colors in gang culture. It was all new to Southern boys like Thomas, but they soon adapted.

“These were Compton-based, Los Angeles rappers and we could relate to them because we were running from the police, too,” Thomas said. “Instead of wearing black medallions around our necks (like the conscious rappers), we started putting gold chains on and wearing Jheri curls. The industry was pushing conscious black music to the side for gangster rap because they knew it was going to make money.

“And it started becoming popular to go to jail,” he said. “We just started not giving a damn. We would go into the store, now, and just take beer. I’d go in there, take a beer and just walk out with it.”

For more on Thomas’ story, go to http://bit.ly/2dPBQq2

This story was originally published October 24, 2016 at 9:20 PM with the headline "‘That West Coast influence of gangs was coming in’."