About 10 years ago, one of my hobbies was driving through the ‘hood (with windows up and doors locked) to look at gang graffiti. I’d see a lot of six-pointed stars, winged hearts, and pitchforks, signifying the Gangster Disciples; and five-pointed stars and canes, indicating the Vice Lords.<\/p>\n
Somtimes the symbols would be more elaborate. A picture of a joint next to a dollar sign indicated “drugs for sale at this location.” The number 187 next to someone’s name was a death threat (187 is the California criminal code for homicide). A six-pointed star next to an exploding cane or exploding five-pointed star would indicate that the Gangster Disciples were declaring war on the Vice Lords (“6 poppin, 5 droppin”).<\/p>\n
Well, Sunday I was talking with a friend at Sleep Out’s, and he told me that these days, gangs have a new way of identifying themselves: specialty license plates.<\/p>\n
One gang apparently uses the Tennessee Walking Horse<\/a> plate to indicate membership. My friend commented on seeing a tricked-out Caprice Classic with risers and spinner rims rolling down the street. “You know he ain’t got no damn horse,” he said.<\/p>\n Another gang uses the Tennessee Arts Commission Fish<\/a> plate to mark their vehicles. Not sure which gang goes with which plate.<\/p>\n So the next time you see one of those plates, it may not indicate that the driver has a love for horses or the arts, but rather a love for crack cocaine, bling bling, ho’s, and 9 mm semiautomatic pistols.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About 10 years ago, one of my hobbies was driving through the ‘hood (with windows up and doors locked) to look at gang graffiti. I’d see a lot of six-pointed stars, winged hearts, and pitchforks, signifying the Gangster Disciples; and five-pointed stars and canes, indicating the Vice Lords. Somtimes the symbols would be more elaborate. … Continue reading “The latest trend in gang symbols”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}