The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago

However, the Two Six females were not organized as formally as were the Latin Queens whichwas a distinct but closely-related organization of the Latin Kings.Fighting Between the Gangs. Fighting between the two gangs was continual. Hardly aday passed without a confrontation between individuals and sections of the two opposing gangs.Some sections had a reputation for being more violent than other sections of the same gang; thevarious sections also seemed to go through phases or cycles of violence. There were fashions inviolence among the sections, from bottle throwing, knifings and car ramming by one section todrive-by-shooting, bicycle and walk-up shooting by another. Field observations indicated thatthe Latin Queens and the clusters of Two Six females clashed with each other in periodic fist andknife fights. These violent incidents were more often unplanned than planned, depending onsituational opportunities and the moods of the gang youth. The more lethal encounters were lessfrequent, and occurred in spurts followed by quiet periods.Fighting was an essential component of the gang tradition in Little Village. Its purposeseemed to be to develop or sustain the status and reputation of the individual gang member aswell as the gang. The tradition of a particular gang and of its particular sections seemed to makea difference in the scope and nature of the youth-gang member’s violence and criminal activity.The Latin Kings generally were an older, more established and larger gang with sectionsthroughout Chicago, the Midwest, and the rest of the country. The Project team worked withabout fifteen sections of the Latin Kings in Little Village. The Two Six were a large gang thatalso comprised about fifteen sections, although the sections were smaller than the Latin King’s.The Two Six were somewhat younger and had more recently expanded into the Chicago suburbs,to Indiana, and as far away as Texas. The Two Six were more volatile and mischievous, and8.18