AMERICAN GANGSTER: STANLEY "TOOKIE" WILLIAMS & THE RISE OF THE CRIPS {SERIES PREMIERE} (TV)

Summary

One of two programs on this asset. The first in this documentary series profiling some of America's most notorious and prolific black criminals. This installment focuses on Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the influential leader of the Crips gang in Los Angeles. Narrator Ving Rhames explains that nearly 15,000 people have died as a result of gang violence in the area since the 1970s, though the gangs, originally formed to fend off white vigilantes in the area, were largely non-violent at first, with the six dead in 1960 considered a high number. Williams arrived from Louisiana in 1959 alongside his single mother, and as FBI director J. Edgar Hoover began sanctioning the killings of various Black Panther and other civil rights leaders, the gangs transformed into lawless criminal enterprises. Williams teamed up with Crips founder Raymond Washington and the "mania" soon spread, creating a large "surrogate family" for the survivors of the earlier violence and offering a sense of personal power through violence for its members. Robert "Sugar Bear" Jackson describes his creation of the "Crip Walk," or "C-Walk," the group's signature dance move, and the size of the gang multiplied rapidly by the early '70s.

Ricky Robinson describes Williams' considerable physical strength and his habit of "hunting," or simply taking what he wanted from others through violence, angrily declaring that his own life was negatively changed because of Williams' abuse. In 1972, a sixteen-year-old boy was attacked and killed by twenty Crips, and though four were convicted in the headline-making case, it only heightened the gang's appeal and recruitment numbers. A rival gang, the Bloods, soon formed, and the two groups clashed in public fights at events such as Wattsfest, a local music festival, which was eventually cancelled because of the violence. Williams, an aspiring bodybuilder, appeared on "The Gong Show" and was awarded second place, and also used his considerable local authority and his "A-1 mind" in his ironic job as a counselor for at-risk youth, who obeyed him unquestioningly. When Washington went to prison, Williams became the undisputed Crips leader, and as the death toll climbed, Williams himself was shot in a drive-by, leading to more retaliatory violence. He began using angel dust, which caused him to behave with such violent mania that he was briefly committed to a psych ward.

Williams' then-wife Bonnie and close friend Charles "Ho Chi" Pitchford both attempted to convince him to alter his life and abandon the drugs and violence, but Williams was soon arrested for the murders of a store clerk and of a family of three, and he was largely unable to aid in his own defense because of the angel dust's "ravaging" of his mind. He was eventually convicted, partially because of a possibly-forged note suggesting that he was planning a violent prison break, and was sentenced to death in 1981. Washington too was then killed, and the rise of crack cocaine led to even more street violence and the popularity of high-powered weaponry. The cops' controversial "Operation Hammer" did little to fix the problem, but Williams had an "awakening" during his six years spent in solitary confinement and began to educate himself, eventually writing several anti-gang books for kids and recording public service announcements on the topic, though Robinson notes that his "redemption" came far too late. The Crips and Bloods declared a truce in 1992, and much to everyone's shock, Williams was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his anti-gang advocacy. Pitchford approved of the idea, but many more protested, as he had never shown remorse for the four murders, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to spare Williams' life. Bonnie recalls speaking to him on the night of his 2005 execution, and his funeral was a lavish and widely-attended affair. The gang truce fell apart around 2004 and the violence re-escalated, with the children of the original Crips and Bloods taking up the "family business," and Pitchford observes that poverty and other societal problems "made" Williams, as it did many other criminals. Commercials deleted.

(The series' second episode is also on this asset; for synopsis and credits, see ACCNUM 123095.)

Details

• NETWORK: BET
• DATE: 10:00 PM
• RUNNING TIME: 0:41:16
• COLOR/B&W: Color
• CATALOG ID: 122385
• GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
• SUBJECT HEADING: African-American Collection - News/Talk; Public affairs/Documentaries; Crime and criminals
• SERIES RUN: BET - TV series, 2006-
• COMMERCIALS: N/A

CREDITS

• Nelson George … Executive Producer
• Frank Sinton … Executive Producer
• Steven Michaels … Executive Producer
• Tiffany Reis … Coordinating Producer
• Mark Rowland … Supervising Producer
• Henry Schipper … Producer
• Shayla Hebron … Associate Producer
• Lea Walker … In-House Line Producer
• Mark Qura Rankin … Music by
• Derryck "Big Tank" Thornton … Music by
• Ving Rhames … Narrator
• Charles "Ho Chi" Pitchford … Interviewee
• Bonnie Williams … Interviewee
• Robert "Sugar Bear" Jackson … Interviewee
• Ricky Robinson … Interviewee
• J. Edgar Hoover
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Raymond Washington
• Stanley "Tookie" Williams