Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock

Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock is a 1994 documentary from HBO's "America Undercover" television series documenting gang violence in Little Rock, Arkansas. The film was produced by Marc Levin.

Gang War begins with Little Rock's 1993 Fourth of July celebrations. Public enjoyment of traditional holiday activities like fishing, fireworks, and band concerts is juxtaposed against roving armed gangs, fist-fighting youth, and rap music.

The central figure in the film is Steve Nawojczyk, the Pulaski County coroner since 1983. Nawojczyk had noticed a change in the pattern of homicides a few years earlier as more young victims brought to the morgue bore Bloods, Crips, and Folk gang-related tattoos and brands. Drive-by shootings became common, with innocent victims caught in the crossfire.

Members of the blue-wearing Hoover Folk, associated with Chicago's Folk Nation are interviewed and a new female member is shown alternately "getting love" and "getting their ass kicked" during an initiation ritual. The implication is that gang provides family experiences not available in broken homes. A Hoover Folk member is shown brandishing "gats" (guns) and receiving a primitive pitchfork brand.

Blue-wearing 23rd Street Crips loitering west of the Governor's Mansion are also interviewed. Californian "L.A." Moe talks from jail about how he introduced the Crips' drug business to Little Rock in 1987. Moe's protege seventeen year-old Bobby Banks talks about his introduction to "gangbanging" in the city and how it got him a house and three cars. The implication is that gang life provides economic opportunities for young people born into deprivation.

A West Side Blood is shown brandishing .22 automatics. A Blood member wearing red talk about the lucrative crack business. Others are filmed getting "jacked up" or hauled off by police for questioning.

North Little Rock's Old Mill and Little Rock's Governor's Mansion Historic District are two of the shooting locations of the film.

Reaction to Gang War

In the wake of the cable broadcast in 1994 some city leaders fell into denial and others took action. Said Nawojczyk in 2002, "There was lots of grumbling that [the documentary] wasn’t truly reflective of Little Rock. But it was truly reflective of what was going on in the locations that it was filmed. These were neighborhoods that were under fire day in and day out." The number of murders in the county dropped from 94 in 1994 to 49 in 2000, and the number of known gangs fell from around 60 to around 30.

An after-school prevention program for at-risk young people, Our Club, expanded to seventeen sites across the county. Another faith-based effort is the Watershed Project led by executive director Hezekiah Stewart. A third was the Let Our Violence End (L.O.V.E.) Foundation. Said Charles Mobley, juvenile services director for Pulaski County, "These programs are very worthwhile and needed because they are a deterrent to getting in trouble. If we invest in kids now, we won't be concerned with the number of jails beds we have later on."

In 2002 the Reverend Hezekiah Stewart emphasized that the conditions underlying the original problem had not gone away: "The lack of jobs, the bad relations with parents, the apathy, the drug culture. It's all still here. Selling drugs to bring home money to your family and joining gangs is their way of surviving."

References

• Winston Bryant, State of Arkansas Attorney General's Youth Gang Task Force: Summary Report, 1994.
• Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock (America Undercover Series, HBO, 1994).
• Natalie Gardner, "Bangin' in Little Rock Nearly 10 Years Later," Little Rock Family, March 2002.

External links

• The Coroner's Report - Homepage of Steve Nawojczyk