Two reputed thugs nabbed yesterday in a predawn Boston police raid may have picked up the tools of their trade by reading gang-glorifying books seized in the bust, paperbacks the cops called “handbook(s) for first-time gang members,” the Boston Herald reports. Police seized a tote bag stuffed with 73 rounds of bullets that fit five different types of weapons, a digital scale and three paperback books that prompted one veteran investigator to comment that the suspects “had a summertime reading list that was like Gangbanging for Dummies.”
Among the titles found alongside the cache of ammunition and the type of scale often used to measure drugs was the nonfiction title “Do or Die,” which police called a “handbook for first-time gang members.” The paperback, by Leon Bing, boasts the subtitle: “For the First Time, America's Most Notorious Gangs, the Bloods and the Crips, Speak for Themselves.” Also found were the books “Dopefiend” and “Inner City Hoodlum,” both by Donald Goines. A Detroit native, Goines was a prolific black author whose gritty, largely autobiographical books have found an audience among young readers of all races, but especially in the inner city. “Dopefiend” tells the story of “the desperate rage and suffering of a hardcore junkie,” says Amazon.com.
Link: http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=1017672