The Triangle

The Triangle: A Year on the Ground with New York’s Bloods and Crips

Kevin Deutsch

For a harrowing year, journalist Kevin The TriangleDeutsch shadowed the gang-bangers of Hempstead, Long Island, in a place known as the Linden Triangle—ground zero of a 2012 turf war that turned an already rough neighborhood into a slaughterhouse. Forget the stereotypes of suburban Long Island. Think The Warriors rather than The Great Gatsby.

Dramatically reconstructed from interviews, legal records and first-hand experience, The Triangle is as fast-paced and action-packed as a first-rate thriller—a literary narrative as entertaining as it is troubling. The cast includes leaders, hitters and corner crews from both the Bloods and Crips; the terrorized residents of Hempstead; cops, criminologists and others in the justice system; and a minister who leads midnight prayer groups on the corners.

Deutsch stitches together their stories with a novelist’s skill. He’ll (rightfully) earn high marks in the press for his research and daring, but his ability to manage this Dostoyevskian cast without disrupting the narrative flow is worth noting.

Racial and social problems emerge that are intrinsic to the drug war. Incarceration and surrounding gentrification has turned Hempstead into an island of poverty. The gangs are the biggest employers in the Triangle, and those who would oppose the gangs are financially trapped in their territory.

Deutsch doesn’t give us an easy out. The reader is forced to confront the capriciousness of life in Hempstead, the social and legal conditions that created it and the self-defeating strategies of the gangsters that maintain a vicious status quo.

There is something heroic about the ability to survive in this environment, particularly in defiance of hateful neighbors (one Nassau County government official recommends that they “carpet-bomb Hempstead”: “Let the blacks and Hispanics go back to New York City. They’re better off there. Long Island isn’t that kind of place.”) Yet, Deutsch is wise to avoid romanticizing thug life, and not afraid to reveal the cowardice of its so-called soldiers:

Tyrek, leader of the Crips set, earned his membership by stabbing a pregnant teenager in the stomach. His ace card in the turf war is a suckerpunch, not a fair fight. J-Roc, a rising soldier in the Bloods, talks a big game, but struggles to intimidate a senior citizen. Ice, leader of the Bloods, helps promising kids get an education, yet orders the kidnapping and gang-raping of his rivals’ sisters, girlfriends and mothers.

Sadly, for all the lip service about honor, the Crips and Bloods mostly prey on the vulnerable. The true casualties of this war are the women in the crossfire. “The gangsters see sexual violence as a strategic and tactical weapon, as important to their arsenal as guns and blades,” Deutsch writes in the chapter “Extreme Tactics,” which includes the retaliatory abduction and gang rape of a female Crips employee.

At least the victim, in this case, actually works for the gang. That is not a prerequisite. Flex Butler, a Crips lieutenant, brags about assaulting the 15-year-old sister of a guy who’d stolen $2,000 worth of cocaine.

“‘[He] was hiding from us,’ Flex says. ‘So we got his sister when she was walking home from school. She fought hard, but there was a lot of us.’”

So yeah, these are not sympathetic characters. Deutsch doesn’t condemn, patronize, glorify or victimize, but presents the residents of Hempstead in all their unresolved moral complexity. For the most part, he avoids the cinematic histrionics common to gang narratives. The lone exception is D-Bo, a promising kid whose attempt to escape the corner gets a bit of the Hollywood treatment. Much is made of the timing of a confrontation with his gang (even though he’d been at home for a month), which leads to a chase scene, a misunderstood shooting and a dramatic exchange between the corner boy and the officer who tried to help him escape while awaiting the paramedics.

But I’ll forgive Deutsch this one instance of going for the heart strings. Otherwise, this is an unflinching look at the fear, fame and futility of gang warfare.

Strong writing, compelling characters and front-line reporting make this an entertaining read, but Deutsch’s detached, yet compassionate handling of the material makes The Triangle an important one as well.

Into the streets

The Triangle: A Year on the Ground with New York’s Bloods and Crips by Kevin Deutsch (Lyons Press/Globe Pequot, $16.95).

Kevin Deutsch is an experienced criminal justice reporter with Newsday, and The Triangle: A Year on the Ground with New York’s Bloods and Crips is the outgrowth of some long-term reporting he did on street gangs.

The Triangle is an area in Hempstead, Long Island; once a very nice neighborhood, it’s gone far beyond “blighted” as drug-running gangs shoot it out for dominance while their customers try to score and the area’s residents try to fight back. Deutsch’s reporting chops are evident, as is his willingness to immerse himself in the neighborhood. The stories he tells aren’t limited to shooters, drug dealers and users; instead, he gets inside the neighborhood to show us the range of people affected by—and, in many cases, determined to stop—the violence. The Triangle is excellent reporting and engrossing reading, with insights into how troubled neighborhoods become that way.

This story takes place in Long Island, Hempstead. The streets are Linden Avenue, and Linden Place. These make a triangle that the two street gangs the Bloods, and the Crips, have turned into a drugged infested war zone between these two gangs. The author give you a behind the scenes look at the people living in the neighborhood who can’t leave and the pain it has caused them in their lives. He also talks to a returning vet who with his PTSD, feels like he is still in the war especially after his wife leaves him. A women who has lived in the neighborhood since it was the place to be and does not want to move because she is hoping for a change. She passes away. This is not a feel good book by any means this is just a little look at what life is like for anyone throughout the country living in many neighborhoods like this one. Murder, rape, drug addiction, and many other crimes are committed but go unreported for many reasons. The author explains this in the book. This is a very graphic but true life story that has taken away a generation, and now is working on another one with no hope for change and not being able to leave the hood even when they have it planed accept for an ambulance. Be ready for a good story about real life on the streets and the author does not pull any punches when writing. A very good book that actually members of Congress should be force to read. Won’t happen. Very good book!