Danger in the Hood

We live in Long Beach.  I have been told that the reason we don't see more gang violence is because Long Beach is totally and completely in the control of the Crips.

Now, here is a map of the gangs in the area just to our north.

You will notice that the areas in blue are Crips.  See the lower wall of blue on the map?  That's the north end of Long Beach.  A regular buffer zone if you will.

Last Friday I went to Rite Aid to pick up some more Ensure for the old guy.  I was at the cash register and could hear men yelling outside.  Suddenly the clerk quit ringing up the Ensure because she said she needed to see if it was safe for me to leave the store.  (And, I suspect, she wanted to know what was up.)  Someone else rang up my purchase and after a few minutes the first clerk came back in to announce that it was a fight between guys from two gangs.  She told me the coast was clear, because one of the guys had left.

On the way to my car, I saw another car full of young black men who looked like they were coming in as reinforcements.  So I felt lucky that I got out of the store before they could call a lock down or something.

Typically I am not afraid of gangs.  They very rarely target middle aged women.  I don't know, it might just seem unmanly.  Mostly I feel guilty about gangs.  What kind of society do we live in that young men can't earn respect without a gun?  Maybe we should stop thinking about having a "gang" problem and realize that it's a social problem that we collectively need to solve.