Query: Why "Cripples" (> "Crips") as gang-name?

[Fred Shapiro]

> From: "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at UMR.EDU>
> To: <ANS-L at LISTSERV.BINGHAMTON.EDU>
> Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2006 6:33 PM
> Subject: Query: Why "Cripples" (> "Crips") as gang-name?
>
>>    The message below is interesting.  But why would a rough-tough gang
>> call itself "Cripples"? Some members might have been crippled in the gang
>> fights,
>> but adopting a name expressing an infirmity seems strange.

The earliest citation on Nexis (1975) suggests that the name came from
their habit of maiming or crippling their victims.

An authoritative-seeming web site, www.streetgangs.com, cites the Los
Angeles Sentinel, Feb. 10, 1972, as an early usage of the term.  This site
describes the name as a media-coined variant on an earlier appellation for
the gang, the Avenue Cribs, or Cribs ("crib" being a comment on the gang
members' youthfulness).

Fred Shapiro

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