leave gangs. either one, they need help building their identities. they need help with sang an alternative to the gang life. they need someone who is interested in them. i am going to tell you a story, and i will talk about who those people are. when i was a sweet young thing and a social worker in nickerson gardens, i had that one kid. every gang interventionist, every person in this room knows about that one kid. all of us have that kid. they touch us for reasons we cannot articulate. i don't know why bobby touched me, his name was little devil but i never wanted to call him by that name. i think about his personality and that maybe the reason. he was 14 years old and had been abused, and was in foster placement with his hat -- aunt. i fell in love with him in the most proper, loving, in the most big sister way. i would say to him, with all the ignorance of the young social worker, i will always be here for you, always. always. it was a friday night, and i had gone on a string of disasters state

gang members to leave the gangs. they leave the gang for a variety of reasons. they all have a turning point, when they decide to leave. and it changes them. this would be something that any of you would logically imagine. for female gang members, and we did not see many of them on that video, but they are out there. they are not mothers, they are active gang members. female gang members, the turning point came at the birth of a child. for male gang members, the picture is more complex. it may be, surprisingly, it may be because they got their second strike, and they're frightened of getting the third. it may be because of the birth of a child, usually a sign. the gang world has not caught up with post-feminist theory. with the story that a gang member named maniac told me, he decided to leave the rolling 60's after 20 years, after achieving status. he was in the back seat of a car, being driven by one of his underlings in the front seat. one of his fellow gang associates got in the back seat with him. the associate said to move over. maniac did not want to move

you work every day with gang members. you were once a gang member yourself. why do you think you are effective working with young people and what does this mean to you and how we know that this is working. first of all, i want to thank god for his grace. i work with united players. i do reentry and the youth involved in juvenile delinquency. the majority of the kids i work with our gang members. i was formally -- formerly a gang member who grew up in san francisco. we all have stories of guys involved with the gang. everyone has a different story of why they joined. my thing is, i believe it works for me to be involved with kids who were in gangs -- i worked with all of the shot colors and i had a goal while i was there. it took me 10 years before i started to transform my life. in the meantime i have the goal that i wanted to be out here. i wanted the opportunity. i was given a life sentence in 1979. i was involved in gang and i caught a murder case. 15 years to life -- and i came here in 1979 and i got out -- and i have been out for almost five years. in my

i work with gang members, and they never knew that they were gang members. things have changed their. they isolate themselves. this is so small that they cannot go anywhere. the thing with me, with the kids, is just being able to love them. this does not take you yelling at somebody. all they need is the information. sometimes you go through this maze, and there is a dead-end street. i am just coming back. i am giving them information that this is not the way to go. there is no certificate for you. you were the gangster of the year. it does not work for everybody. i save the community a lot of heartache. with the crime that he would comment, just one is worth it for me. [applause] >> commander beale. we hear a lot of discussion about gang interventionists. how should san francisco's gang task force work with these programs? >> well, i'll tell you. i became the commander of investigations a year ago. this is new to me. what i saw was what the men and women do. this was nothing less than amazing. what the task force does is the majority of the contact that the

what people defined as a gang, that must be a gang member right there. i have tattoos on my arm and neck and hand, and none of them are getting associated. they all tell personal story in my life. somebody would say that this is a gang member. there would be the artistic side. i think that this comes to a place where there has to be a level of understanding. they have the school system and the politicians. everyone plays a part. [applause] >> you have worked as a police officer -- and now you're the prosecutor. you now prosecute all of the gang cases. what is your >> imagine you are 21, you are from mississippi, going through the police academy. it is 1989 and you are now working in los angeles. after being a patrol officer for just a few months, you are placed on gang detail. you have arrested a youth. instead of taking him to jail, you taken to his mother. the mother says, can you make him more afraid of you that of the gang members? the academy does not prepare you for that. i take that experience and i realized in the gang environment, most of these

>> you have to join a gang.g 15 to life ♪ ♪ 15 to life ♪ ♪ 15 to life ♪ ♪ doing 15 to life ♪ doing 15 to life. that's it. >> in an isolated part of california's central valley is corcoran state prison, one of the state's largest maximum security institutions, housing many of its most violent criminals. now, corcoran first opened in 1988 and was the site of so-called gladiator fights in the mid-1990s in which inmates fought to the death in concrete yards while guards allegedly looked on. the guards were charged and acquitted of subjecting prisoners to cruel and unusual punishment. but when we first brought our cameras into corcoran in 2000, the prison was still recovering from that scandal. in this hour, we'll take you back into the highly charged facility to see whether it has overcome its notorious past. >> home again. ♪ >> my life's in danger. if i stay in there, then i end up getting stabbed. >> that's stored under extreme pressure. it's a powder keg. it's a powder keg. >> basically, it's pure hell. it's hell

as being prison gangs. no ester familia is known as nf. or the family. the junior high school to their high school would be the northern structure. >> the northern structure is composed of california hispanics from north of los angeles. >> the nazi low riders, they refer to themselves as the nlr. >> the nazi low riders is a white supremacist gang formed in the '60s. membership can only be achieved by killing someone, and death is the only way out. >> the bgf is the black guerilla family. >> the black guerilla family is the only recognized black prison gang. street gangs like the crips and bloods are merely regarded by prison officials as disruptive groups. but the most notorious gang in the california prison system is called the mexican mafia. >> the mexican mafia is known as m.a., la m.a. they will be recognized by the eme, which is the spanish letter m. >> the mexican mafia was born in california prisons in the mid 1950s. its members, who swear allegiance for life, are mostly mexican-americans from southe

we're a street gang. they consider us a street gang. it's not structured, we're not considered, you know, like mafiawise -- we don't control the outside, money laundering and things like that, you know what i mean? they can't validate us. >> what do you want to do with the bulldogs? >> whatever it takes. this is my life now, there's no chance for me to get out. i'm going to have to die sometime. i might as well go out with a bang, you know? >>> coming up, even in the shu, robert's always ready for battle. >> this is my shu soul. i don't mess with my hands. i count, it's as close as we're going to get to pullups. >> and later a gang dropout struggles with life on the sensitive needs yard. commitment by what's getting done. the twenty billion dollars bp committed has helped fund economic and environmental recovery. long-term, bp's made a five hundred million dollar commitment to support scientists studying the environment. and the gulf is open for business - the beaches are beautiful, the seafood is delicious. last year, many areas even r

here's my bias, gang. to understand more about these things is to appreciate more about these things. now that's a bias. i could be wrong. and that's individual. i'll give you an example. the person who appreciates music most is a person who understands music, who knows what to listen for. and i think, too, the person who can appreciate the world most is the person who understands most what's going on. what i'm gonna be doing in this course is not telling you how beautiful the world is. i'm gonna be telling you what to look for. and when you look for things, you'll see that, "hey, that's a beauty," that you would've-- wouldn't have noticed otherwise. so we're talking things like that. and then we're gonna talk a little bit about nuclear physics: fission, fusion, radioactivity. what do you suppose makes the earth hot? volcanoes. where's all that heat coming from? would you believe it's nuclear power? nuclear power under the ground? would you believe it's radioactive decay? you know, if this were a piece of

to get out of a gang inside a prison. and in order to do that, there's a whole debriefing process they have to go through. and it basically entails the inmate coming in and confessing everything's he's done with the gang and sometimes even throwing some people under the bus and confessing against other people. so it's really a deadly thing for someone to do inside a prison. >> when inmates debrief, they must write a lengthy account of their criminal history both in and out of prison. the review process can take months. but if accepted, the inmates will be allowed to live in the safety of a protective custody unit and be granted many more privileges than they would have had as confirmed gang members. >> because of your march 11th, '99, incident with another inmate that you almost killed, came very close to killing, we have a question about your sincerity about debriefing. >> "lockup" cameras were at california state prison corcoran when thomas spiller, a long-time gang member, went before the inmate review board to request

the victim was a southern mexican gang member. but all violence in prison is gang-related. especially when you're talking about an assault where weapons were used where a guy was hurt this badly. i mean, it just doesn't happen without it being ordered or authorized by the gang. we believe right now that it was other southerners that attacked him. you know, he was probably in trouble for one thing or another that he did in his past, vite lated gang rules. you can hear them doing their little solidarity inside the unit there. we don't know exactly what he did. hopefully we'll know in the next few days. >> if it's really important for you to get somebody, you're going to get to him. coming to prison made me more violent than what i was. it's about getting basically your little piece of america, but in prison. if a new yard opens up, you're going to fight for that handball court. you're going to fight for some tables. we're going to get our peace for our people and we're going to secure that area. if you ain't a northerner and you come into the areas, you know what i'm saying,

i seen gang unit come here due to the fact that i am a gang member. i block my window.st seconds. the things that i could reach for -- >> take the window down. >> -- i flushed them. but i'm not knowing that when i put the shield up, he seen what i was doing. >> take the window down. >> so i told my roommate, man, forget it, man, i'm going to go out there and put dirt on dirt. >> our interview with him and everett went very well. he's admitted to the fact that he's been insane gangsta disciple since he was 14 years old. however he said it wasn't really about gangs. it was about unity. they delude themselves into thinking it's to huggy, feely type of gang when it's not. >> the manifesto also included a key to the gang's secret codes. >> we have shampoo. that's code for weed. conditioner, heroin. we use these things to control contraband. if it says that you used my shampoo in the shower, and he signs it 0-31 it's pretty basic that he's a blood and he's delivering something to the shower, marijuana, heroin, something. basically, you put a time on it. so i'll know what time

that's right, it's one second, gang. 'cause if it's gonna take one second for something to fall five meters and you toss it out, it's still five meters vertical. it's like this thing over here. if this is five units down, this one comes out, it's still five units down stretched out, huh? so it's gonna take one second. so 25 meters divided by 1 second gives you 25 meters per second. isn't that neat? there's some good physics there, gang. do you like? let me ask you a question. would the ball be in the air for a longer time if there were a hill like this? yes. would the ball be in the air for a longer time if the earth's curvature came into play? yeah. it turns out if he throws that thing really fast, it might go so far out that the curve of the earth is falling away. you see that? in fact, if he keeps throwing faster and faster and faster, he might throw it off the earth altogether. isaac newton, physics type in 1700, figured it out like this. consider a mountain on the earth that's so high that it's up above air drag and

down. >> byrd gang.that what you are? why didn't you tell us in the first place? >> little bit of cooperation is better than none. >> during the search, knight and demerey also found a lighter hidden in the mattress of sandier's cell mate, alfredo roca moreno. knowing he has a lengthy history, correctional officers now want to take a closer look at the mattress. >> what have we got here? >> i need this mattress checked for contraband, please. >> we have to break this whole mattress down. regulations require that security check mattresses when they're brought in like this. lieutenant? this was the area that was concerned, right? >> yes. >> roca moreno is a known member of a puerto rican prison gang called the nietas. he joined during an earlier prison sentence he served in puerto rico, but he insists the nietas are not a gang. but a fellowship of sorts. >> it was a word from the warriors. they used to send it to the gods three times. that's why it means the birth of a new warrior. >> roca moreno says puer

in addition to outreach efforts by the mayor's gang prevention task force, gang violence is now a priority for the police metro unit. >>> 911 recordings from moments after the massive chevron refinery fire in richmond. kron4 has obtained calls from concerned residents. you'll hear frightened people calling to report the black plume of smoke. >> police and fire department. are you calling about the chevron refinery? >> yeah, what's going on there? >> we don't know what's going on. chevron has a full response to us. >> i'm reporting a lot of black smoke that i'm looking out a window -- >> ure talking about the richmond refinery? >> yeah. >> they have firemen rolling out there. there's something going on. the refinery is not even sure what they've got going on, but they are on their way. >> these recordings come on the heels of yesterday's report from the federal chemical safety board. it says that it was about two minutes in between the vapor cloud that showed up when the fire was ignited. the agency says it leads to questions about whether there was something different chevron could have do

they segregate inmates based on color and gangs. why do prisons not work on educating inmates on social relations, racial tolerance, and why don't they find a way so the different races can get to know each other? >> i would like to enter that. segregation has -- i would like to answer that. segregation has always been a problem in this country. i grew up in new orleans. we believe that education is the key. we all need to sit at the table. i do not believe in segregation for inmates. they need to tear that barrier down and put people together, no matter what. when we go inside the walls of san quentin, it is not just black inmates. it is hispanic, pacific islanders, white, native americans, it is everybody. when they leave that room, they go back to their communities that are segregated. they, too, do not like it. it is a barrier that has to

that's how the prison gang system works.o me and two friends of mine, fellow gang members, went into his cell to play cards with him. the plan was for his partner in pinochle lose on purpose and to get him down to do push-ups. and when he got down to do push-ups, i got down on his back and applied a little pressure. that was my excuse to get up next to him. at which time, i put my arm around his throat, kind of choked him out a little bit to make him weak. but he wasn't dead yet because i wanted him to feel exactly what was going to happen to him. i didn't want him to make a lot of noise, because the co is 15 cells toward the front of the tier. he could have heard me at any time. and another inmate passed me a razor shank, and i slashed his throat repeatedly. blood was everywhere. and then another inmate passed me a shank about that long, with a handle on it. and i just started stabbing him. stabbed him over 100 times, in the back, sides, neck, he was crying, telling me to stop, begging for me to stop. and he was still alive

a front for white supremacist gangs. asatru members have been allowed to hold services at some prisons but wabash has banned such gatherings. >> the white supremacy gang members are using the services to have their gang meetings within the services themselves and it's been quite disruptive at the other facilities. >> murray denies any ties to white supremacist gangs and has decided to file a grievance to appeal the ban of group meetings. >> it's not gang. it does not promote gang mentality or any criminal elements at all the. it's a religion based on virtue and knowledge. >> the ban also hasn't stopped murray from recruiting new members. his latest, william jones jr. >> marcus has been teaching me about what the hammer means. what the different gods and goddesses are. >> jones, who also denies being a white supremacist, came to wabash three years ago at age 18 and sentenced to six years for burglary. >> i was hanging out with the wrong people and i strung out on drugs and broke into a house and took a tv and a bunch of o