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Crip sets, which often war with each other as well, wear blue; Bloods wear red. The rivalry is carried to extraordinary lengths.

A Blood will not ask for a cigarette because the word begins with a ''C,'' as in Crip; ''bigarette'' is preferred. Crips refer to Bloods as ''slobs. Hispanic sets are more old-fashioned, and tend to fight over turf rather than a cut of the cocaine trade.

Less violent than their black counterparts, they pose more of a danger to one another than to their neighborhoods. This is no romantic update of ''West Side Story. Just a few miles to the south and east, but a world away, are the black and Hispanic ghettos. The desperate poverty and the newly lucrative trade in crack have combined to give the gangs extraordinary power. Parents sometimes depend on their teen-age sons, who may make several thousand dollars a week, to pay the rent.

Both are black, street-smart and have never been gang members. Anthony, 36, is soft-spoken and reserved. A wiry, intense man of 29, Wheeler grew up on the impoverished East Side. He worked as a youth counselor before joining the agency in A young black man zooms by in a white Porsche Carrera convertible with a car phone - sure signs of a drug dealer.

Across the street another youth parks his red Mercedes-Benz. The team's mission today is to try to cool the tensions that caused the Good Friday shooting the night before. Rumor has it that the Five Deuce Hoover Crips may have been responsible. Five Deuce stands for 52d Street, meaning that the gang's turf centers on 52d and Hoover Street. Wheeler spots a Five Deuce member he knows, Big Bam, a tall young man, who is carrying a portable phone.

He has just been released from jail. They exchange pleasantries and Wheeler advises: ''I'm telling you, Five Deuces, be cool. Big Bam is cryptic about the gang's putative involvement, implying that the shooting may have been done by younger renegade members. Think they goin' to listen to you?

Them niggers not goin' to listen to you. When the kids do listen to Wheeler, he brings a sobering message. In their off-white compacts with circular insignia, Wheeler and the other gang workers are familiar sights at the gang hot spots, although their reception ranges from warm to frigid. Five nights a week, Tuesday through Saturday, until midnight or 1 A. The idea of using former bangers to mediate between gangs began in Philadelphia with the Crisis Intervention Network; similar efforts have been mounted in Chicago, Miami and Atlanta.

The seven-year-old L. Its executive director is Steven D. Valdivia, 39, who has worked with gangs in the tough, largely Mexican-American barrio on the East Side. The agency's workers are usually hired at the recommendation of community leaders, neighborhood centers, the district attorney's office or politicians.

They are trained mostly by its veterans, with probation officers, youth authorities and the district attorney's office providing advice. When making gang contacts, they are taught to recognize those amenable to intervention -for example, younger people who may not be fully committed to gang life, or those who have been victims of shootings or knifings, or had close relatives and friends killed.

But the most difficult part of the job is knowing when nothing can be done, when the knives and guns flash and the radio crackles with '','' the code for a shooting. Although gang workers purposely maintain a distance from the police to preserve credibility with the gangs, ''when there is no way of talking it out,'' says Valdivia, ''they must know when to call Code Blue [ the cops ] to save lives.

There is debate about the wisdom of using former gang members. They win a measure of praise from Lieut. Bob Ruchhoft, a gang specialist with the L. Police Department. You cannot hire people born and raised in the middle class to go into these neighborhoods. Nate Holden, however, the black city councilman who represents central L. Several years ago, some of the agency workers were arrested on drug and other offenses, but there have been no incidents since. Just west of south-central, on the fringes of L.

International Airport, the neighborhood becomes mostly Mexican-American. It is terrain that year-old Marianne Diaz knows like the back of her tattooed fingers. She originally joined Los Compadres, she says, ''out of my need to control something,'' as well as for the ''family atmosphere. In jail she found no help from her gang, and Ken Bell, a county deputy sheriff who knew her from her street days, helped her see the dead end into which she was heading.

Now the stocky, assertive woman is a gang worker, ''trying to do the same thing he did for me. This Saturday night she is checking out her target area with her partner, Vincent Parton. Parton is a hip year-old who was never a gang member but who knew them well when he was part of a neighborhood break-dancing club. The two drive down an alley littered with old tires and discarded furniture where, with the help of sympathetic South Los gang members, they have been conducting an anti-graffiti campaign.

Several walls have been painted clean; on one, a neighborhood artist has painted a mural of the Virgin Mary. No new graffiti have appeared, and no one, they say, deals drugs before the mural. Diaz, ''we get a lot of mileage out of their religious upbringing, their ancestry, their roots. The team's first order of business is defusing a potential conflict that arose the night before.

Some youths stole a set of tools from a car belonging to some nearby gang members, who are threatening mayhem if the tools are not returned. So this evening Ms. Diaz and Parton are scouring the neighborhood in their Dodge Colt, looking for clues. They check a liquor store. Parton wheels the car up a driveway. A youth furtively comes out the back door, runs into the garage and hands him a white plastic bag full of tools. The team drives off to find the aggrieved party, and Parton hands the tools over to an intimidating-looking man with tattoos on his thick neck who is just out of prison for ''shanking [ knifing ] a dude,'' in Ms.

Diaz's words. Comes the reply, ''Yeah, O. A small victory. A moment later, the car radio crackles with a report of a gang confrontation nearby. The pair screeches off to the Taco Bell restaurant at the corner of Hawthorne and Lennox Boulevards, where a banger in a black sweatshirt and carrying a stick is watching warily.

A carload of youths in a maroon Capri from Tepa, a nearby rival gang, has tried to jump a member of the Lennox gang.

The warm night air is suddenly charged as carloads of Lennox gang members gather in the parking lot of a Top Valu supermarket. Diaz and Parton, both of whom grew up in the neighborhood, know the kids well. They ask them to calm down, to ''kick back'' and wait. The team drives down to where the Tepas are gathering. Sticks and bats can be seen in the darkness. A boy comes to the car to talk. Parton: Hey, you guys, Lennox is going to be rollin' by here. Diaz: You with your back to the street, homeboy.

They goin' to be lookin' for this car, some burgundy car. Diaz: I'm tellin' you to be afraid of them. There are some girls here. You better tell them to move down the street. We are goin' back over there to try to keep them there. Don't get lazy or drunk and not know what you're doin'. I know you don't think it's serious, but if one of your friends gets killed tonight, you will. Not Rated. Did you know Edit. Connections Edited into Race for Space Soundtracks Suspended Greeting Performed by Hive.

User reviews 28 Review. Top review. Must See Movie! I was lucky enough to be part of a select crowd last week to see the Los Angeles premier of "Made In America" in the center of downtown LA. The atmosphere was charged with excitement as many of the characters who appeared in the film were there to see it, many for the first time. Though there were were sound issues early, the power and integrity of the film could not be masked.

This is such an important film. It is so easy to live in this city, sitting back in condos in Sherman Oaks or fancy houses in Brentwood, and have no idea that a whole other city exists just south of the 10 freeway.

Early on in the movie a number is thrown out; fifteen thousand gang related homicides in the past twenty years. Think about that for a moment. If that was happening in any other country, to any other race of people, there would be an out cry to the UN.

In Los Angeles, it's just another day. Turn the page and see what Britney did this time. This is a story that needs to be told. The people of Los Angeles need to hear this. I heard some talk at the end of the film that they may try to show this in the LA school system. I hope that this happens. Knowledge is power. And, there is a message in here that needs to be shouted from the roof tops. I would ask, if not him, then whom? Who else has stepped up to put their reputation on the line, to go into these neighborhoods with an open mind and open heart, and sacrificed years of their life to give a voice to this condemned segment of society?

This has been Stacy's most ambitious project to date. I applaud his efforts and congratulate him on shedding light on a subject that most of America would rather ignore. Please go see this film. Please tell your friends. It's not a romantic comedy. You will feel it in your guts for the next week or so. But, it's worth it, I promise. Details Edit. Release date January 20, United States. United States.

Gangs of L. Box office Edit. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 1h 33min.