In Southern California that was a logical step for the young Cambodians to take. If they could steal cars and do drive-by shootings, so could we." ![]() "We saw that American people had groups, white with white, black with black. "At school the Mexicans looked down upon us and hurt us," recalls Mad Dog, 29, a "retired" homeboy whose mother was a Phnom Penh university professor. ![]() Three decades later, Cambodian immigrants seeking affordable homes arrived. The kid who traded shots with Slicc was a member of the East Side Longos, a large Mexican-American gang rooted in the Hispanic community that settled along Anaheim Street in Long Beach (pop. Nearly every ethnic group is represented in the mayhem: the highly publicized black Bloods and Crips multigenerational Hispanic groups that account for nearly two-thirds of all California gangs whites Asians Pacific Islanders and Jewish and Armenian groups. Last year in the county the gangs accounted for 18,059 violent felonies and 690 deaths. They range from subteen "peewees" to as many as 13,000 hard-core killers. 8,776,000), estimates that 130,000 gang members operate in his jurisdiction alone. Ira Reiner, district attorney for Los Angeles County (pop. Cambodian gangs battling Hispanic gangs is but the newest infection. In the bizarre and bloody world of Southern California gang life, armed and alienated children are guerrilla warriors. "Parents don't understand," shrugged Flipper. Friends of Slicc's and Flipper's pushed the man firmly back inside his house. " At that point, the father began to wave his arms and shout. "The Mexican drives up and yells, 'What set you from?' I yell it ain't none of his business, and he busts three caps ((shoots three bullets)) at me. "I'm on the corner phone with my girlfriend," Slicc recounted. ![]() His 14-year-old son, gang-named Flipper, and another homeboy, Slicc, 18, were bragging to a stranger about a shoot-out. Now, as he stalked furiously back and forth across the grimy patio behind a cramped bungalow in the Little Phnom Penh section of Long Beach, he saw a very different threat materializing - within his own family. Middle-aged man had fled Cambodia to save his family from the genocidal Khmer Rouge.
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