Paul L. McCord Jr.

Oklahoma City Gangs

If  you have lived in Oklahoma City over the last fifteen years or so you may be familiar with the explosive hispanic population growth on the south side.  The south central area of the city seems to have gone through a transformation that looks a lot like Mexico.  Just as there are good and bad in any group of people, you can say the same thing about this segment of the population.  If you have been anywhere South of 15th Street to around 59th and between I-35 to May Avenue you could not miss this transformation.  It seems that at least 50% of the businesses are in spanish.  I would like to add a disclaimer to this story by saying that we as most places have had crime before this explosive population growth.  This is not an attempt to say that all Mexicans are criminals in any way.  The main purpose of focusing on this segment is because it has become such a visible site around a large portion of our city.  In this area of town we have also had a growth in grafiti on just about any flat surface that can be painted on.  I went out today and took some pictures and thought I would share them with you.  The Chamber of Commerce usually does not like this part of the city to be published.  This could be said of any city’s Chamber as it is not very flattering.   Even the Oklahoman newspaper posted a story about it here.

In the above photo you can see an example of some of this grafiti some poor soul has suffered.  This portable building is covered on all four sides with grafiti from various gangs in South OKC.  As you can see the SE GBC, 23, and 405.  The GBC is the Gran Barrios Central gange and the 23 is the number that is associated with their group.  The SE is meant to represent t East side faction of the gang.  The 405 is representative of the Oklahoma City telephone area code.  This tagging is all over the place as you can see in the photo below.  The 14 is representative of the Juaritos gang of Southwest OKC.  These groups seem to refer to Oklahoma City as “OKLAS, 405″ or ”The City of OKLAS”.

In this photo you can see where one gang has marked out another one’s tag and then another.  Before you know it, there is virtually no clear space left.  There are several gangs in this area such as the Southside Locos, Gran Barrios Central, as well as the Juaritos gang.  You can see the 13, 14, 23 and SE are all markings that signify these gangs.

In this photo you can see the GBC 23 ES signifying the Gran Barrios Central gang with their tell tale number 23.  The ES shows this was the marking of the East side group as this gang is split into the East side and West side.  This was painted on the front of the house.  There were about ten houses in  a row on both sides of the street with grafiti painted on them at this spot but I could not stop long enough to shoot them due to traffic.  These are not isolated cases as you can see they are all over Youtube.  The photo below is a picture that I leached from a Southside Locos member’s Myspace page.

WARNING… THESE VIDEOS HAVE PROFANITY SO BE WARE.

If you can handle the profanity included in these videos you would be amazed in the talent these guys have.  They are mostly rap videos about Oklahoma City in both English and Spanish.

This video is representative of the many Oklahoma City Mexican gang videos that are on Youtube.  If you can ignore the profanity it is actually pretty amazing to see how many there are.  Just go to Youtube and search for “Oklas” and you will find scores of these videos.  Many of these people seem to be very talented and could go far if they used this talent for good.  I think that many people in this city have no idea this is going on.  I am sure there are many hispanics that live here that are law abiding citizens.

From the rhetoric you see on their websites they are similar to gangs in other cities in that they are into drugs and violence.  If you listen to this video above you will see some of this as well.  If you watch the video below you will see a video dedicated to the South Side Locos gang member that was killed at Crossroads Mall a few months ago.  I remember this story as the TV broke in and was showing a helicopter view over the mall.

It is difficult to understand what makes a young person decide to join a gang especially when you hear about the violence on the news all the time.  I am not trying to portray our city in a way that would make people think this is a city of crime.  This is just an observation that I have made driving across town.  Again, this is also not an attempt to portray all Mexicans as gang members and criminals because I do not believe this myself.  I work with several that are as nice as you are likely to come in contact with.  Again, the reason I focus on this particular issue is because it has become so visible with the growing grafiti problem.  Also I live on the South East side so I can see the police helicopter flying over that part of town virtually every night.  The spotlight shows up very nice from my vantage point.