The Bloody Road to Jail
The real violence erupted during Shen’s junior year when they were ordered to back up some allies against the Red Door gang. The plan was to meet at a park to fight, but when they arrived they couldn’t see anybody in the darkness. With their car headlights illuminating the trees of the park they saw “shimmering like mirrors.” All of a sudden a bunch of guys rushed out from the woods with machetes. Chris and his fellow gang members tried to get into their cars and flee but soon the windows were smashed and they tried to flee on foot as rocks were hurled at them. One of them wasn’t as fortunate and ended up getting stabbed five to six times before being flown to a hospital. It was Shen’s first taste of real violence and he described it as “scary but exciting.” Extreme violence is also found in other ethnic Asian gangs. One member in a study on Filipino American gangs in LA said, “When you gangbang, or if you were in danger of being attacked by enemies, everybody was down for you. Everything was suicidal, you know…We didn’t care..all we do is like…whatever happens, happens.” 11 The machete incident would only be the beginning as this event incited a gang war between the Wah Ching and Red Door.
There was a lot of tit for tat violence as the gangs fought not over turf but money. Perhaps what makes Asian gangs so intimidating is the level of sophistication even at the street gang level. In one instance, Chris described how they planned a trap by timing stoplights at the intersection of a shopping plaza parking lot where the enemy gang was parked, then blocked the exits before finally getting out with weapons and bashing in the rival gang’s car windows in order to get at the passengers. In another anecdote, he explained how they tormented one of their offenders instead of going directly after him so that he would suffer more. They hired Latino gang members to tag the person’s name on the walls of the business where he worked. Then they used bats to destroy the cars both the victim and his employer. After this, the person lost his job and was in debt to the company for the damage caused in his name.
At first, Chris felt internal conflict hurting other people who he had nothing personally against. After some time however, he said he didn’t feel anything anymore when punching and kicking a victim. At one point as I was interviewing him, Chris pointed out the window of the diner across the street. There, in a drive by shooting, he felt two bullets whiz by either side of his head striking his friend and his friend’s girlfriend. The girl was killed by the gunfire, and Chris held his bleeding friend in his arms while watching his eyes roll back into their sockets. Though the friend survived, the mayhem and violence had escalated to a “whole different level. It wasn’t fun and games anymore,” Shen said.
In the end it was jail that saved Chris Shen from being a victim of a gang war he knew little about. In an unrelated dispute on Thanksgiving his senior year, a group approached him holding chains and bats asking if he was Chris Shen. He answered in the affirmative and the guys, foolishly being unaware of the ultra violent nature of Wah Ching, told him to get his posse so they could fight. Shen phoned his friends but he himself had to go home for Thanksgiving dinner with his family. What ended up happening was his Wah Ching friends brought guns and the fight ended with a bullet riddled arcade that still bears the signs of that night to this day. The police raided his home to the shock of his unsuspecting parents and, though he wasn’t at the shooting, he was charged with murder. His upper-middle class family had the means to hire a talented defense attorney who got the charges reduced to attempted terrorism. This potentially saved him from years in prison. He was lucky to get away with one month in juvenile hall and three months in a camp. The perpetrators were not so fortunate.
It was in jail that he awoke to the reality of what he had been involved with. He was the only Asian there surrounded by blacks and Latinos. The first things they asked him was “Hey Bruce Lee, what gang are you in?” and “Do you know kung fu?” He knew that to survive he would have to use his street instincts and act tough. Any sign of weakness and the other inmates would take away everything he had. All he knew was that he wanted to get the hell out of there. He watched as little boys barely in middle school from impoverished neighborhoods fought each other over the most trivial things like a piece of candy. They had nothing to lose. Some of the most troubled inmates were placed in isolation for weeks, and as soon as they got out they would get in a fight and go right back. Shen was lucky because his parents would come visit him every week giving him support. He also clung to the knowledge that he had something to go back to after he served his time. He noticed the kids who were most violent and in constant isolation were those that had no visitors. They lived in a world where nobody cared about them. During his time there Chris reached out to one of the most troubled inmates. Shen asked him why he was so stupid and kept doing things that constantly got him put in isolation. Did he really want to spend the rest of his life in that hellhole? To the amazement of the prison officials Shen was able to reform this kid that nobody else could reach.
The Afterlife
Regarding the gang activity in the San Gabriel Valley, things have settled down drastically over the past few year. Shen attributes the decline to intragang disputes that fragmented the gangs as leadership fought over the increasing profits, as well as the LAPD’s new police chief since 2004. Indeed, Chief William J. Bratton is the veteran gangbuster from New York that made curbing gang violence a priority after noticing that gangs accounted for at least half of the region’s homicides.12 Police raids have since broken up Shen’s former gang, and as we sat at one of his former gang hangout he recognized nobody in the crowded room.
Shen served his time with good behavior and was released on parole with community service duties on Saturday mornings. He currently works for his uncle’s business and plans to return to school while assisting a friend in starting an import/export business. He worries about his younger brother getting into trouble like he did, and uses his former gang reputation to scare his brother’s friends into staying the straight path. They know that if Chris’ brother were to get in trouble Chris would hold them responsible. Chris also tries to convince some current gang members to get out before they end up dead or in jail. However, he has learned that some people like himself just won’t listen and will have to learn the hard way. Shen and his brethren have learned To live and die in (or east of) LA.
- Alsaybar, B. (2002). Filipino American Youth Gangs, ‘Party Culture,’ and Ethnic Identity in Los Angeles. In N. Zane & B. Kim (Eds.), Readings in Asian American Psychology (pp. 387-401). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.
- Barret, B. (2004, October 2). Bratton’s challenge: LAPD’s new chief believes gang problem can be solved. LA Daily News. Accessed 27 Nov. 2006 at http://lang.dailynews.com/socal/gangs/articles/dnp7_main.asp
To Live and Die in (or East of) LA by Daniel Yang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.