The Triangle
A Year on the Ground with New York's Bloods and Crips
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4.5 • 18 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The Linden Triangle: Linden Avenue and Linden Place, Hempstead, Long Island. At this blighted intersection, seemingly forgotten by the middle and upper class communities that surround it, the dream of suburban comfort and safety has devolved into a nightmare of flying bullets and bloodshed. Here, a war between the Bloods and Crips has torn a once-peaceful neighborhood apart.
The book tells the true story of one year in the life of a suburban village-turned-war-zone. Written by Kevin Deutsch, award-winning criminal justice reporter for Newsday, it follows two warring gangs and the anti-violence activists and police desperate to stop them. As the body count climbs and conflict spreads to New York City, young men wielding military grade weaponry wage a prolonged battle over pride, respect, revenge and their legacies.
Based on immersive reporting and more than 250 interviews with gang members, their families, drug addicts, police and others, The Triangle is the first insider account of a New York Bloods/Crips gang war from the only journalist ever given access to the crews’ secretive realm. Triangle is a chilling investigation of a world in which teenagers shoot their childhood friends over drug debts; where gang rape is used as a form of retaliation; and once-promising students are molded into cold-blooded assassins.
With gang and drug-related violence responsible for as many as half of all non-domestic homicides in the United States, The Triangle will make a significant contribution to the national conversation about gangs, chronicling the effects of armed gang conflicts not just on Long Island and New York City but throughout America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Deutsch, a criminal justice writer for Newsday, spent a year among the Bloods and Crips who occupy the Triangle, a once prosperous but now blighted area in Hempstead, Long Island, described by one local (and former Iraq vet) as a "war zone." Shootings there are commonplace, as are beatings and sexual assaults. Anyone in the area who is perceived to cooperate with the police is dealt with swiftly and severely; and so the cycle goes on. Deutsch's immersion in the community is evident from the range of people he profiles from a newly initiated gang member to a college graduate who left the corporate world for the drug trade (he likens the long-running Bloods-Crips feud to "some kind of corporate fight you'd read about in the Wall Street Journal, only this is about our kind of business: rock cocaine"), to the ex-gang members and churchgoers who patrol the area nightly in an effort to bring peace. There are many stories here, and Deutsch gives readers a 360-degree view of the community. He describes a complex problem rooted in a lack of hope and opportunity that many participants see as insoluble. This is a crucial and enthralling work on gangs and the communities they inhabit. B&w photos.
