Clanton 14

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Clanton 14th St. is one of the oldest Chicano street gangs in Los Angeles, California. Formed at the beginning of the twentieth century, the gang is named for the street on which it started.

[edit] History

Clanton Street is now called 14th Place in the Central City area of Los Angeles. Due to the war effort a lot of streets were renamed to numbers for the war-related industries in the Los Angeles area. This made civil service businesses easier to find.^{[citation needed]}

The gang's territority was mainly around the Central City area about two miles east of downtown Los Angeles. A second neighborhood was sanctioned in the late 1950s around Pico Boulevard and Union Avenue, where the gang expanded west.

The gang was divided into age groups: the "Pee Wees", the "Midgets", and the "Jokers" who were older members. There were also specialized groups like the "Dukes", "Cut Downs", and "Tiny Locos" who recruited and made their way to the Hollywood area. Some of the members of Clanton 14 during the 1960s and 1970s were known bank robbers and early drug traffickers.

[edit] Decline and resurgence

The murder of a highly respected LA police officer stopped the growth of the gang in the late 1970s^{[citation needed]}. However, they remained a viable and functional gang, expanding into the Hollywood and North Hollywood area, and their East Side (which is around 30 years older than their West Side) expanded south into the Newton District.

The group started a chapter in San Jose, which is now one of the larger gangs in the Bay area of Northern California. It is divided into two chapters as well, East Side Clanton (ESC) and West Side Clanton (WSC). The Clanton 14th street gang has made national headlines in a Newsweek report on having one of the first ever "Web Banging" gang web site and The Dept. of Justice and the FBI has on record Clanton being the first known street gang to have a web site as well where its older and younger members keep in contact and post pictures of chicano american art work and become pen-pals with older gang members who are serving time in the California penal system. Special Agent John Hampton of the FBI's Gang Awareness Div. of Los Angeles, Ca. has stated that older gangs like Clanton use the advancement of technolgy and have these web sites and the local law enforcement dont have to leave the office to patrol the streets to find out what is happening on the streets any more. Its all bragged about on guest book pages.