The Avenues (gang)

The Avenues

The Avenues (AVES) depicted in blue among other North-East Los Angeles gangs. Toonerville is Green, Thee Rascals is Black, Frogtown is Red and Cypress Park in Yellow.
Founded	1940s
Founding location	Los Angeles
Years active	1940s – Present Day
Territory	Mainly in Los Angeles, Highland Park, Cypress Park, Glassell Park, and Eagle Rock
Ethnicity	Hispanic
Membership	800–1000.
Criminal activities	Murder, Assault, Arms trafficking, Drug trafficking,extortion, hate crimes,kidnapping, Racketeering, Motor vehicle theft, Robbery, Burglary, Vandalism, Witness intimidation and human trafficking
Allies	Sureños, Mexican Mafia Barrio Azteca
Rivals	Cypress Park, Thee Rascals, Highland Park, 18th Street, Tooner Ville Rifa 13, some Sureño sets, Crips, MS-13, Bloods

The Avenues, also known as Avenidas or AVE's, is a Mexican/Mexican American criminal street gang mostly in Los Angeles County, California. They originally started as a social club for local Hispanic youths to protect themselves from other violent youths. The Avenues, like most Mexican gangs in Los Angeles, are under the direct control of the Mexican Mafia when sent to State, County, or Federal prisons. They have a long history, but not all of it is riddled with violence and hate.

The Avenues were not always violent when they started and rarely engaged in illegal activities. They were started by the Flores brothers in the 1940s, but little is known about the brothers. The greatest of their crimes during the 1940s were simple assaults. As time progressed and their numbers increased, they became more violent and started to act more like a criminal street gang and less like a social club. In the late 1960s, when heroin started to flood the streets, they turned for the worse and would be forevermore labeled a criminal street gang. They increasingly took part in the illegal drug trade and these actions have continued to the present day. By the time the 1970s rolled around the Avenues had grown from a neighborhood social club into a highly organized gang whose territory stretched nearly 6 miles. By the late-70's the Avenue's hood began to shrink in size as two new gangs, Cypress Park and Highland Park, established themselves in Avenue territory. The Avenues also began to clash with neighboring gangs, such as Toonerville and Thee Rascals, in an attempt to assert their dominance. At first, it was common for rival gang members to fight one another to settle scores, but once cocaine hit the streets, gangs noticed that huge amounts of money can be generated from its distribution and shootings/stabbings became more prevalent. In the 1990s the main drug of choice in the Avenue's hood switched from cocaine to methamphetamine due to the establishment of industrial-sized meth laboratories in central-Mexico as well as the increased scarcity of cocaine after the fall of the Medellin cartel. During this period of time drug-addiction and violent crime became an everyday fact of life in northeast Los Angeles as rival gangs began fighting over drug turf. In the last half of the 1990s northeast Los Angeles had more homicides than any other part of the city with 500 gang-related shootings. The Avenues Gang are well known for their hatred of and hate crimes committed against African-American residents of their neighborhoods. Reflecting their hate-filled attitudes, they tried to keep even non-gang affiliated African-Americans from moving into the Highland Park area.