None of the letter “¢’s” were crossed out, no familiar three dots in a “dog paw” pattern.Īs I examined the document I saw what appeared to be the word “Bloods” as shown in (Illustration #9). I was told by the agency that confiscated the following code sample that the document shown in (Illustration #8) was written by a member of the Bloods gang, but the document does not use commonly recognized Bloods gang identifiers like: “B’s ” or “C’s ”. Sometimes a gang member wants to hide his affiliation to a specific gang and does not use recognizable identifiers to connect them to the gang. The fourth line contained “All Is Not Well,” The second line contained “All’s Well” (Note the punctuation). The first line of this paragraph was “All Is Not Well” Specifically, I was able to determine the words identified in (Illustrations #4 through #7) because I knew that these phrases were important to the members of the BGD. The sample pages shown (Illustration #1 through #7) is part of a fifteen page sample confiscated by law enforcement. The Black Gangster Disciples are associated with the Folk Nation gangs and use a lot of identifiers associated with their Gang and Nation such as a “pitchfork”, the number “6”, the number “5” placed upside down (to indicate disrespect for the rival People Nation), the six-sided “Star of David” symbol (to honor one of the Black Gangster Disciple founders, David BARKSDALE), and numbers “74” (for “GD”). This gang uses very ornate and complex symbols. The document in this sample is a document produced by the Black Gangster Disciples. I have found that the method of “knowing what is important to the writer” can be a valuable tool in deciphering gang codes. I was able to begin the translation of this document because I recognized the symbols used by the BGD and then used that information to identify words and phrases that are important to the philosophy of this gang. If the science of counting the frequency of symbols was used to try to decode this document it would fail because the writer used multiple symbols to represent some letters of the alphabet (Illustration #3). The samples shown in (Illustration #1 & #2) are examples of a Black Gangster Disciple (BGD) code that I deciphered by developing the information shown in (Illustration #3). In the following code samples, I will explain how I used the “art of deciphering” and the “science of code breaking” together to decipher a coded document. History, identifiers and how a gang communicates are all components of the subjective analysis required to decipher the coded document. So too, the art of deciphering a gang code requires that the analyst knows what is important to the culture of the gang member who is writing the questioned document. A brew master or chef knows all the ingredients and the times and temperatures required to create a great beer or meal, but along the way, subjective analysis comes into play: “It needs another five degrees of heat” or “Add a little salt”. The art of deciphering a gang code, much like being a brew master or great chef, uses both science and experience. When the science of deciphering a gang code fails, it’s time to turn to art. Perhaps most troubling to the science of deciphering, is the fact that writers of documents written in a gang code don’t spell words correctly or use rules of grammar. A phrase like “Send me a kite” might not make sense to the code “scientist”, and make translation difficult. This hampers the use of letter frequency charts. Gang codes will sometimes use more than one symbol to represent a letter of the alphabet. In some cases, a version of this vision may be right, but analyzing a gang code presents definite problems for science. That’s how most people envision the “science” of deciphering a code. Technicians in white lab coats monitoring blinking lights on large banks of computers, or a large room divided into cubicles filled with assistants diligently counting symbols or words to be analyzed using letter frequency or word frequency charts. For example many larger, well established gangs have their own societal rules of behavior (laws), tribunals to punish rule-breakers (courts), dues collection (taxes) and even their own holidays! The way in which we try to decipher gang codes is also sometimes misunderstood. Gangs are cultures within our Culture and societies within our Society. If anything speaks to the fact that these groups are well-established and sophisticated, it is the way that they communicate using gang codes. Can you keep a secret? Gangs’ use of codes is one of the most fascinating and least understood aspects of gang investigation.
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