Crips–Bloods gang war

The Crips and the Bloods, two majority-Black street gangs founded in Los Angeles (L.A.), have been in a gang war since around 1971. It has mostly taken place in major American cities, especially L.A., but is also present in Australia, Belize, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The war is made up of small, local conflicts between the two gangs' chapters, or "sets".

In the 1970s, a lack of economic opportunities in South Central L.A. led to gangs like the Crips, who claimed city territory and guarded it from other gangs. The Bloods formed as defense against numerous Crip shootings. Both groups started extorting money from local businesses, and distributing crack cocaine. In the 1980s, the war reached other countries. By then, the gangs' members often identified themselves using clothing colored blue for Crips, and red for Bloods. Those wearing a gang's colors in an opposing gang's territory were often targets of violence; this trend had declined by 2014.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) targeted the gangs' L.A. sets. The LAPD's 1987 anti-gang initiative, Operation Hammer, included the vandalism of people's homes, and led to mass incarceration which did not greatly reduce gang violence. In response, the gangs' L.A. sets gained a sense of solidarity, and in 1992, signed a truce in the city conflict; the violence resumed in 1993, due to continuing tensions and economic instability. New policies enacted by the city of L.A. starting in 2006 lowered the violence, but it still continued. In 2012, a major conflict in the village of Hempstead, New York, led to at least 56 people being shot. An estimated 20,000 people had died from the broader war by 2014.