This lengthy blog post with tons of source links and conjecture about past and present police gangs, keys off of a KTLA5 report on the "3000 Boys", a clique within the LA Sheriff's Department composed of Central Jail officers. According to the post,
the "3,000 Boys" are a group of tattooed thugs from Los Angeles who spend a lot of time in jail, share cryptic hand signs, have a cultivated sensitivity to being "dissed," routinely beat up people at parties and instigate fights in bars -- but don't you dare call them a "gang."
While law enforcement officials will concede that the group engages in "gang-like activity," they refuse to designate the group itself as a gang. This may have something to do with the fact that this little knot of miscreants is composed of LA County Sheriff's Deputies employed at the Men's Central Jail.
For years, inmates have complained about "horrific" conditions in the 3000 Block of the Men's Central Jail, particularly the routine abuses carried out by the violent clique of guards called the 3,000 Boys. Those protests were consistently dismissed as ACLU grievance-mongering -- until members of that officially sanctioned prison gang assaulted a fellow members of the sanctified guild of official coercion during a Christmas party at L.A.'s Quiet Cannon banquet hall last December.
The 3000 Boys get special tattoos, commit acts of violence as a group, and have special code words, language and symbols known only to themselves. That, and the evidence presented by KTLA and the post referenced above, sure does make the distinction between cop clique and gang hard to make-- except that only one is paid for by your tax dollars.
