The Latin Kings in New York: King Blood, King Tone and the Gang That Tried to Go Legit
A man serving time for manslaughter wrote a manifesto in an upstate prison and built a gang by mail. His successor tried to turn it into a civil rights movement. Both stories ended in federal court.
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New York's Latin Kings were founded in 1986 inside a New York state prison, Collins Correctional Facility, by an inmate named Luis Felipe, who called himself King Blood.1 They borrowed the name, the crown and the black and gold of Chicago's Latin Kings, but they were never a branch office: Felipe's chapter grew into a separate faction, the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation.1 2 After Felipe went to federal prison for life, his successor, Antonio Fernández, known as King Tone, tried to turn the gang into a political movement, and that experiment is what made the New York Kings famous.3
Felipe's own pitch, as a federal appeals court later summarized it, was that the group would "promote a sense of Hispanic identity among prison inmates" and protect Puerto Rican and other Caribbean inmates from other prison groups and hostile guards. A street wing made up largely of former inmates came later. Prosecutors described the same organization as a racketeering enterprise built on robbery, drug dealing and murder.1
New York's Latin Kings Operated Independently From the Chicago Original
The New York Latin Kings operated primarily in East Harlem (El Barrio), the South Bronx, and parts of Brooklyn and Queens, the neighborhoods that had absorbed Puerto Rican migration during the great mid-century waves.
What made New York's Latin Kings distinctive was the political consciousness that ran through their leadership during certain periods, more explicitly developed and more publicly articulated than in most street gangs. The most significant figure in the chapter's history is Felipe. He founded it in 1986 at Collins Correctional Facility in Helmuth, New York, where he was serving a nine-year sentence for second-degree manslaughter over a 1981 death, and he was moved to Attica after state officials caught him smuggling letters in 1993.1 He ran the group by "corresponding with, receiving visits from, and sending 'written directives' to various members."1
King Blood Ran a Criminal Enterprise From a State Prison Cell
Felipe was serving a nine-year state sentence for manslaughter. Running the Latin Kings from his cell was not a side project; it was his full-time occupation. Orders passed through visitors and letters, and the court found that his intercepted letters ordered the killing of six people, two of which were carried out.1
Felipe was arrested in June 1994, convicted on all 18 racketeering counts against him on November 19, 1996, and sentenced on February 14, 1997 to life plus 45 years. The judge added special conditions: solitary confinement and no contact with other prisoners, no communication with any Latin King or Queen, and visits and mail limited to his lawyer and approved close family.1 The trial record showed more than 60 letters written to or by him at Attica, and the appeals court called the restrictions "extreme" and upheld them anyway.1
Can a Street Gang Actually Transition Into a Community Organization?
In the late 1990s, the New York Latin Kings underwent a public transformation under new leadership that emerged while Felipe was being prosecuted. Fernández took over in 1996 and publicly told members to stay away from drugs and crime.3 4 He gave media interviews and took part in community events, and he drew supporters including his lawyer Ronald Kuby and the Rev. Luis Barrios, who hosted the Kings in his Harlem church and called Fernández a prophet.3 Authorities called the new King Tone a fantasy propped up by rhetoric and the media.3
The experiment looked a lot like what the Vice Lords tried in 1960s Chicago. In May 1998, Operation Crown, a joint law-enforcement operation, ended with the arrests of more than 90 suspected Latin Kings.2 In January 1999, Fernández pleaded guilty in Brooklyn federal court to conspiring to sell heroin and cocaine between September 1996 and June 1997, the same months he was preaching against drugs, in a deal that called for 12 to 15 years in prison.4
The Five-Borough Structure Didn't Map Onto Chicago's Alliance System
The Folk and People alliances were born in Illinois prisons around 1980, and this research found no reporting that places New York's Bloodline chapter inside either one. New York's gang landscape developed its own logic, with the Bloods, Crips and various Dominican and Jamaican groups operating differently from Chicago's prison-generated alliance system. (More on that system in Folk vs People.)
Federal prosecutors went after the leadership early: by 1995, 39 Latin Kings and one Latin Queen had been indicted under RICO, and Operation Crown followed in 1998.2
The New York Latin Kings represent a recurring question in gang history: whether a criminal organization's internal culture and infrastructure can be redirected toward legitimate community ends, or whether the attempt is always either naive or cynical. The two times the question was seriously posed in New York, under King Blood's iron discipline and under King Tone's political turn, both ended in federal prison. The organization continues to operate in the same communities in East Harlem and the Bronx that produced it, in a city where the housing pressure and economic exclusion that the gang grew up in have been replaced by gentrification pressure operating through different mechanisms.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are the New York and Chicago Latin Kings the same gang? No. They share a name, colors and the crown, but New York's chapter was founded separately in a New York prison in 1986. It became its own faction, known as Bloodline, while Chicago's organization is the King Motherland Chicago faction.1 2 The Chicago page covers that side.
Who was King Blood? Luis Felipe, who founded the New York Latin Kings in 1986 while serving time for manslaughter. A federal jury convicted him in 1996 of racketeering crimes that included ordering murders from his cell, and he was sentenced in 1997 to life plus 45 years under orders that cut him off from almost everyone.1
What happened to King Tone's reform movement? Fernández took over in 1996 and preached politics and staying clean, and for a while he had clergy, activists and a high-profile defense lawyer in his corner. In January 1999 he pleaded guilty to a heroin and cocaine conspiracy that ran during his reform years, in a deal for 12 to 15 years in prison.3 4
What was Operation Crown? A joint law-enforcement operation against the New York Latin Kings that ended in May 1998 with the arrests of more than 90 suspected members.2 It came less than a year before King Tone's guilty plea.
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Sources:
- United States v. Felipe, 148 F.3d 101 (2d Cir. 1998). courtlistener.com
- "Latin Kings (gang)." Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
- "N.Y. Gang King Claims Princely Motives." Los Angeles Times, February 8, 1998. latimes.com
- "Plea Deal Gets Latin King Chief 12 to 15 Years." New York Daily News, January 16, 1999. nydailynews.com
Further reading:
- Brotherton, David C., and Luis Barrios. The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation: Street Politics and the Transformation of a New York City Gang. Columbia University Press, 2004.
- Kontos, Louis, David Brotherton, and Luis Barrios, eds. Gangs and Society: Alternative Perspectives. Columbia University Press, 2003.
