The dark days of the crack epidemic are over. Progress is steady, but South L.A. is still recovering
from crack's destruction. Crack's impact on our culture at large resonates today.
In order to move forward, sometimes we have to look back. "Snowfall" is a fresh reminder of L.A.’s deeply complicated history. Check out the trailer below, and be sure to watch the series premiere on Wednesday, July 5th at 10 p.m. on FX.
WATCH THE TRAILER
SPONSORED BY
SCROLL DOWN TO START INVESTIGATING
The Los Angeles Times was on the scene as it all happened. Now, FX is pulling from the Times archives to set the stage for its upcoming series "Snowfall," premiering Wednesday, July 5 at 10 p.m. on FX. The show explores South Central during the birth of crack and the intrigue surrounding the drug's origins.
As the '80s wore on, crack transformed South Central from a typical urban working-class district to a gangland war zone. By the end of the decade, the crack epidemic had also impacted U.S. drug policy. Through the '90s, it would change mainstream pop culture and investigative journalism forever.
It was 1983 in South Central Los Angeles when crack cocaine first hit the streets. The shockwaves still resonate today.
It’s uncertain whether South L.A. can ever return to its image in the opening scene of the “Snowfall” premiere, circa 1983 — that pleasant neighborhood of bungalows with well-kept yards, sprawling streets filled with kids riding bikes and buying ice-pops from the ice cream truck man seems lost forever.
One thing is certain, though: In the name of the Nicaraguan civil war, the CIA turned away as cocaine arrived in South Central and proceeded to wreak havoc as crack.
—Daniel Vasquez
The series sparked investigations by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, the Department of Justice, the House Intelligence Committee and the CIA itself. The results largely rejected direct CIA involvement in drug trafficking or the notion that agency alliances caused the crack epidemic in South Central and beyond. The series was denounced by most major media outlets, including, eventually, the newspaper that originally published it.
Secrets coming to light
In July 1998, a leaked CIA report acknowledged that throughout the 1980s, top officials continued to work with two dozen Contra rebels suspected of drug trafficking. Agency officials, according to the report, did a sloppy job investigating the allegations — or chose not to investigate them at all.
By then, South Central had been decimated.
In September 2014, the CIA released documents indicating that the agency used connections in the mainstream press to raise questions about the CIA-Contra series.
A visit to South Central, now called South L.A., reveals the lingering impact of crack today. While showing signs of recovery, many neighborhoods remain rundown. Crime is still an issue, and jobs in the district are scarce, beyond those at fast food restaurants and auto shops. Empty crack vials can be found discarded just steps from the Los Angeles Superior Court in Compton, the tallest building in South L.A. for miles.
Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts pursued the claims, opening a Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigation in 1986. Three years later, after a series of hearings, his office published findings that concluded drug traffickers paid the Contras in cash and weapons in exchange for aid in smuggling cocaine into the U.S. Kerry also reported that U.S. officials knew about the Contras’ drug dealing but did nothing.
The Kerry committee’s report was covered with only passing interest, if at all, by the major newspapers.
A crack pipeline established?
Enter the San Jose Mercury News with a controversial series in August 1996 that attempted to pick up where the AP stories and the Kerry committee left off and fill in the remaining blanks.
The series linked CIA operatives to Contra leaders who allegedly supplied California drug lords, including members of the Crips and Bloods, with tons of cocaine in exchange for drug profits that flowed back to their insurgents. Gangsters turned the cocaine into crack — a smokable, more addictive form of the drug — and sold it to a swelling pool of users. The articles seemed to suggest that the CIA partnership with the Contras created a direct cocaine pipeline into South Central at the expense of all who lived there.
CIA officials immediately and vehemently denied the allegations. Outrage erupted from the South Central community, where the series had circulated widely. Protests in front of L.A. City Hall and the Wilshire Federal Building decried CIA complicity.
By 1994, crack had cost L.A. County hundreds of millions of dollars in law enforcement resources and jail expansion alone, the Times reported in an in-depth series on the epidemic published that year.
During that first decade of the crack epidemic, social damage across the county spread well beyond addicts. The number of abused and neglected children removed from their parents nearly doubled to 40,000. Up to 30,000 babies were exposed to crack during pregnancy. Cocaine-related fatalities jumped tenfold.
Drug arrests also skyrocketed. According to the Times, 13,453 people were arrested on drug charges, overwhelmingly crack-related, in 1983 alone. Five years later, the number more than tripled to 52,942. In 1989, narcotics arrests hit a peak of 54,497.
Sniffing out a conspiracy
A decade into the crack epidemic, the level of destruction was baffling. Why had South Central in particular been hit so hard, and how did so much cocaine make its way there from Central America in the first place? Who in South Central had the means, the infrastructure or the connections to import tons upon tons of coke right into the heart of L.A.?
Answers had begun trickling out as early as 1985, when the Associated Press ran a story alleging that U.S.-backed right-wing Nicaraguan Contra rebels were smuggling cocaine into the U.S. The Contras then used profits to fund their civil war against the left-wing Sandinista government.
Is it true that South Central Los Angeles became ground zero for the disastrous crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s because of a secret alliance between the CIA and Nicaraguan Contras?
It’s an explosive question that’s never fully been answered, one still shrouded in controversy, mystery and conspiracy. Even after countless news reports, four major U.S. law enforcement investigations and the emergence of various declassified documents, the jury of history remains out about the true cause of America’s worst drug epidemic. The effects reverberate more than three decades later.
The CIA’s alleged role in turning L.A. into the nation’s hungriest cocaine market is a major plot point in “Snowfall,” a new series premiering Wednesday, July 5 at 10 p.m. on FX. Executive producer John Singleton, writer/director of “Boyz N the Hood,” returns to South Central for “Snowfall,” which explores the rise of crack in 1983. Singleton’s stylish-yet-gritty drama is complete with street gangs, flashy dealers and despondent addicts.
The series explores the unanswered question: What really happened when crack hit the streets of South Central — and who put it there?
A community’s soul extinguished
Within a mere 10 years of crack’s arrival, according to Los Angeles Times stories from the era, large swaths of South Central had been reduced to urban wasteland. The 18-square-mile district played host to rows of crack houses, transformed from a collection of working-class neighborhoods into a scene of drug dealing, gangland mayhem and broken homes. Fathers, mothers and children were lost to crack, either as addicts or as dealers.
READ MORE
Why did crack hit South Central so hard — and how did so much
cocaine get there in the first place?
April 1989
The crack epidemic is hitting its peak. Drug Enforcement Administration officials “acknowledge that the amount of cocaine reaching the United States has never been greater,” estimating an increase of 35% more tons over 1985 levels, The Times reports. While “middle-class users” have declined, 4 to 6 million Americans are now using cocaine, mostly in the form of crack, according to the story.
November 1988
The Times reports that President Reagan has signed the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Among other "unprecedented penalties on casual users," the law makes crack the only drug with a mandatory minimum penalty for a first offense of simple possession. The law will lead to mass incarceration for many young inner-city black men.
February 1987
The Times’ Washington Bureau reports on a U.S. Senate investigation into early reports that “Nicaraguan rebels and their American supporters … helped smuggle cocaine into the United States.” It would take until 1998 for the CIA inspector general to acknowledge that the agency did not investigate numerous accusations of drug trafficking among the Contras.
September 1986
The Times reports: “What undoubtedly has forced talk of a ‘national epidemic’ may well be the emergence of crystallized ‘rock’ or ‘crack’ cocaine.” But, according to the article, “The war on cocaine in California and across the nation is being lost—dramatically—despite massive influxes of money, manpower, equipment, strategies and even military resources ….” The crack epidemic is underway.
June 1985
In multiple reports throughout 1985, The Times writes about how the LAPD has begun confronting crack dealers and users in “fortified rock houses,” many of them in South Central, by utilizing a motorized battering ram to smash the houses up. Thanks to crack and public panic, the era of police militarization has begun.
November 1984
Hot on the heels of the cocaine syndicate cover story from the previous month, the first article appears in The Times about crack. It warns about the surging popularity in South Central of “the sale of hardened cocaine ‘rocks,’ which are smoked in a pipe.” One particularly prescient line refers to crack as a “social problem that some black community leaders say threatens to destroy South Central … for years to come.”
AS REPORTED IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
October 1984
As the crack cocaine boom begins, a cover story on warring South Central L.A. cocaine syndicates appears in The Times. It links 25 L.A. gang murders to drug sellers and reports on “drug-selling houses” and the “thousands of teen-age street gang members” who sell.
9
in L.A. County juvenile homicide arrests between 1985 and 1990
8
in dollars, of a rock of crack
in L.A. at the drug's peak
7
without parole for possession of crack with intent to sell
8
on average, contained in one rock in L.A.
6
in cocaine-related deaths in L.A. County
between 1982, right before crack, and 1989, when crack was widespread
5
in total violent crime in L.A.
between 1985 and 1990
4
how long the high from a hit of crack can last before a hardcore addict begins craving more
Until 2010, five grams led to a mandatory minimum of five years in prison. Today it takes
28 grams.
3
resulting in prison for
possession with intent
to sell
2
to go through withdrawal
from crack addiction
It can take
Numbers current as of 2015
1
still doing time for crack convictions who wouldn't be in jail today under new sentencing laws
Sources:
1 "Obama grants clemency to 46 nonviolent drug offenders." Los Angeles Times; 13 July 2015.
2 AddictionCenter.com; consistent Web-wide anecdotal data.
3 U.S. Department of Justice memo to all federal prosecutors regarding the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010; August 5, 2010.
4 National Institute on Drug Abuse; “Cocaine” section.
5 FBI Uniform Crime Reports and Index of Crime in Los Angeles, California; data for 1990 over 1995.
6 “The Region: Cocaine Death Rate Soars.” Los Angeles Times; 16 July 1986. / "Emergency room drug overdose cases soaring." UPI; 6 Nov. 1989.
7 H.R. 5484: Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986.
8 "Few Get Rich, Most Struggle in Crack's Grim Economy.” Los Angeles Times; 20 Dec. 1994.
IN THE EARLY 1980s, THE MIDDLE-CLASS
NEIGHBORHOODS OF SOUTH CENTRAL
LOS ANGELES BECAME GROUND ZERO
FOR THE CRACK COCAINE EPIDEMIC.
The following fast facts illustrate crack cocaine’s physical effects, its legal ramifications and its impact on Los Angeles throughout the 1980s and beyond.
average curbside price
percent increase
Grams of crack
mandatory minimum years in prison
percent increase
percent increase
minutes
grams of crack
months
estimated number
of prisoners
HOVER OVER STATS TO LEARN MORE
Displayed across one wall is a larger-than-life homage to a cartoon panda. A few feet away, an intensely colorful, indecipherable design recalls the classic stylized work of the Westside taggers. Farther down the same wall is a series of crossed-out gang tags that serve as a reminder of L.A.’s criminal underground and persistent gang activity.
When one gang crosses out the name of another, it denotes a lethal promise: “We’re out to get you.” It’s a blunt reminder of the timeless power inherent in applying a spray-painted message to a wall.
—Daniel Vasquez and Alex Weber
In 1990, the Times covered a gallery opening that focused on “attacking the system.” Central to the exhibit was “a series of wooden planks with photos of graffiti reflecting such themes as blood and murder.” Many of the photos were taken in South Central — as well as more posh locales.
The artist said she noticed the same colors and images when photographing graffiti in South Central one day and in Beverly Hills the next. The Westside taggers from 1988 had left a legacy, it would appear.
Around the same time, gangster rap exploded onto the pop scene. Hollywood got in on the fun with a spree of gang-and drug-related films in the wake of the crack epidemic, including the 1991 hit “Boyz N the Hood,” set in South Central and written and directed by “Snowfall” executive producer John Singleton.
The gangland excitement fared well with audiences far from the hood, scoring unlikely fans in privileged suburbia.
In 1992, the Times published a story about local graffiti artists putting their designs on T-shirts. A nearby clothing company whose executives gushed about how the graffiti artists had captured a trendy street-wise look, had already contracted with them. Soon, teenagers across the country had these designs on their clothes.
By 1994, the Times reported on million-dollar local companies designing graffiti images for T-shirts and caps.
Graffiti persists in modern-day South Central
In the South Central neighborhoods now included in the larger designated area of “South L.A.,” crack has mostly faded away, but graffiti is more popular than ever. In an alley near the bottlenecked intersection of South Broadway and West Manchester, a crazy quilt of disparate graffiti styles consume more than 20 feet of wall space.
The Westside taggers appropriated the block-lettered graffiti that gang members used in South Central, according to the Times article. Those same stylistic forebears probably also gave the taggers the initial idea of adopting street pseudonyms and throwing them up on walls. The Times explored this phenomenon in a 1985 article on the “bizarre nicknames” of East L.A. and South Central gang members.
Borrowing the aggressive, utilitarian elements of gang scrawl and giving them a colorful and stylized twist, the Westside taggers took traditional L.A. gang graffiti concepts and made them consciously artsy. The taggers practiced their new aesthetic throughout West L.A., the San Fernando Valley and Santa Monica, according to the 1988 article.
That article credited the new crop of taggers with covering an impressive amount of ground. Even L.A.’s ritziest areas weren’t spared: “Anyone who doubts that graffiti has gone uptown need only look at the service entrances to some of the trendiest stores in Beverly Hills, which often bear the marks of spray-paint saboteurs,” The Times reported.
Near the end of the article, a former tagger boasted: “This stuff is moving straight to the art galleries. People will pay for it if you get your name out in public often enough.”
He was right. L.A.’s hardcore, underground strain of gang graffiti was about to go mainstream.
Graffiti as art and commercial design, South Central as entertainment
Fast-forward two years, and graffiti is hitting L.A.’s art scene.
Gang graffiti is coded, but usually distinguishable by its legibility. Gangs like Loco Park paint “LP” or “Loco Park.” The 66th Street clique of the East Coast Crips sign something more like “66 ST CC,” which indicates the street the gang declares as home base and their affiliation with the Crips network, whose ranks swelled to 30,000-plus at the height of the crack epidemic.
To law-abiding South Central residents, gang graffiti became a menacing blight on the community. To most outsiders, it remained a forboding set of mysterious, crudely scrawled glyphs.
But to a small group of well-to-do Westside taggers and artists, gang graffiti was an inspiration. They paid close attention to the writing on the wall in South Central in the late ’80s, just as the crack crisis was hitting its peak, and they made it a central part of their own work.
“Gentrified vandals” terrorize the Westside with South Central style
In 1988, when crack gangs ran rampant with spray paint in South Central, the Times published “No Longer a Gang Monopoly: Upscale Youths Making Their Own Marks With Graffiti.” The article described “gentrified vandals,” many of them well-off juveniles from Westside neighborhoods. They “traded their surnames for surrealistic monikers such as ‘Drone’ and ‘Vector’” and tore around L.A. County spray-painting private property with their “bizarre and imaginative” murals and tags. Most graffiti consisted of heavily stylized variations on their monikers.
Crack cocaine invaded South Central Los Angeles in 1983 and began transforming the district into a gang-run drug distribution hub. That place and time is the setting for a new series, “Snowfall,” premiering Wednesday, July 5 at 10 p.m. on FX. The show chronicles the birth of the crack epidemic and its impact on American culture.
Before 1983, nobody seriously analyzed L.A.’s rampant graffiti for meaning, let alone considered it art — at least not in the pages of the Los Angeles Times. But when crack flooded into South Central, graffiti gained new power. More L.A. youth got in on the fast-cash action of slinging crack, and graffiti became their ubiquitous calling card as both individuals and gang affiliates.
As the ’80s gave way to the ’90s and the crack epidemic peaked, gang graffiti — along with West Coast gangster rap and style — leapt from the outlaw streets of L.A. right into the heart of mainstream pop culture. First, it showed up in Beverly Hills. Then art galleries got on board. Eventually, so did the fashion industry.
How did South Central’s graffiti aesthetic gain such visibility?
The meaning of graffiti
In the underground drug economy, gang graffiti served multiple purposes. Much less about bright colors or street celebrity, it was more about ownership of a neighborhood and protecting drug-dealing territory. Graffiti also telegraphed threatening messages to rivals and honored fallen friends.
READ MORE
As the crack epidemic peaked, South Central gang graffiti was exported from the mean streets to the clean streets, then to art galleries and shopping malls across America.
10003
South Normandie Ave.
THE L.A. DONUT WARS OF THE 1950s BEGAN RIGHT HERE IN SOUTH CENTRAL
At what was then known as the Big Donut Drive-In, the proprietor propped a massive 32-and-a-half-foot model donut on the roof to draw business. The Big Donut Drive-In has since been rechristened Kindle’s, where the oversized Texas Glazed is so fresh and so clean that it should be illegal.
1827
E. 103rd St.
MUST-TRY MENU ITEM:
On the 1 Gangsta Breakfast, consisting of one chicken wing, one salmon croquette, one pork chop, one hot link and four eggs.
Tucked inside a former community recreation center, Watts Coffee House oozes history, from the posters of classic black comedians and fiery political leaders to the tiny TV playing old-school music videos and live performance clips.
11328
S. Vermont Ave.
1824
TWO LOCATIONS:
W. Manchester ave.
Plenty of chicken joints dot South L.A., but fast and friendly Jim Dandy deserves credit for keeping it inexpensive yet delicious. The Mississippi-style menu items include generous-size pieces of regular or spicy fried chicken, banana pudding, powdered sugar-dusted fritters and more. And at
$5, a two-piece meal (with a side, plus a roll or fritter) is a steal.
600
State Drive
Designed by two African American architects and opened in 1981, the California African American Museum boasts three large exhibition galleries and a library. The museum’s purpose is "to research, collect, preserve and interpret for public enrichment the history, art and culture of African Americans with an emphasis on California and the western United States," according to the museum's mission statement.
1537
West Florence Ave.
If you’re into a low-key vibe, free peanuts and chili powder-dashed cucumbers, and the coldest beer this side of the 110 — the west side of the 110, that is — then duck into friendly El Chaflan Jr. Music played on the big sound system ranges from 80's pop to mariachi and beyond, genre be damned. If the place is empty, challenge the bartender to a game of nine-ball.
1727
E. 107th St.
It took 34 years for an Italian immigrant construction worker and artist who settled in Watts to create the iconic Watts Towers.
Finished in 1954, the grouping of 17 giant spires and sculptures is made of steel, mortar and broken bits of pottery, glass and seashells.
They continue to draw steady streams of tourists fascinated by how South Central first made art from rubble.
THE CORNER OF:
Western & Manchester Avenues, and elsewhere
It's well known that scrappy unlicensed street vendors set up shop throughout South Central at busy intersections with a stretch of fencing on which to hang T-shirts, purses, pants, art and local b-ball team swag for sale at a deep discount to passersby. Some vendors get suspicious if you ask too many questions or inspect their merchandise too closely, though, so show some respect.
240
West Compton Blvd., compton
At 13 stories, the Compton Courthouse is the centerpiece of the Civic Center and the tallest building for miles. It's nicknamed “Fort Compton” because during the crack days, criminals shot out its windows for fun. The Civic Center is a modernist achievement built in the 1970s, and it includes a spacious pedestrian plaza with a large sculpture dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr.
CHICKEN
FRIED
DANDY
JIM
AND
FLEA
BAR
DONUTS
CIVIC
COMPTION
CENTER
COFFEE
WATTS
WATTS
CHICKEN
FRIED
DANDY
JIM
MARKETS
NIGHTCLUB
TOWERS
HOUSE
KINDLE’S
OPEN-AIR
EL CHAFLAN JR.
AFRICAN
MUSEUM
AMERICAN
CLICK LOCATIONS TO LEARN MORE
CALIFORNIA
In the new FX series "Snowfall," executive producer John Singleton revisits South Central Los Angeles. Technically, South Central became South L.A. 14 years ago when the L.A. City Council renamed the district to improve public perception. Today, crime is down from its peak in the crack days, and old-school South Central lives on in the best of ways: through its many long-standing local establishments and cultural destinations.
![](http://media-s3-us-east-1.ceros.com/motiv8/images/2017/06/21/ea2789c6e5efd290525587fe09ced8ef/background.jpg)