- 3/6/2025
Dive into the darkest chapters of criminal history as we explore the most brutal and devastating gang conflicts that have left an indelible mark on society. From international turf wars to organized crime battles, these conflicts reveal the shocking violence that lurks beneath the surface of criminal underworlds.
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00:00Once one of the city's most populated areas, it's now a ghost town.
00:04Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the most violent clashes
00:08between antagonistic criminal enterprises.
00:10The president of El Salvador has pledged to dismantle the country's gangs
00:14and called upon members to leave them or perish with them.
00:19The Colombo crime family wars.
00:21For the first time, one of New York's five families
00:25would be led by an American-born mafioso, Joseph Colombo.
00:29It would be a jockeying for power that defined instability
00:32within the Colombo crime family.
00:34Three separate internal conflicts erupted after the sect once known
00:37as the Profaci crime family shifted to leadership under one Joseph Colombo.
00:41You gotta remember, this guy whacked out a lot of other mafia guys.
00:46That was his job, and the Colombo family was murder for hire.
00:51The latter was shot and left paralyzed in 1971,
00:54leading to the rise of Carmine Persico as family head,
00:57taking over for the hospitalized Colombo.
00:59Finally, the 1990s ushered in yet another chaotic upheaval,
01:03as acting boss Victor Arena attempted to capitalize
01:06upon Persico's imprisoned status.
01:08The end results lasted two years and totaled 12 corpses,
01:12yet it would be Persico that would remain boss,
01:14running the family until his death in 2019.
01:18Nigerian bandit conflict.
01:20In northwestern Nigeria, armed groups nicknamed the bandits
01:23and local citizens, the famed militias,
01:25have been engaged in a violent conflict for decades.
01:28Gang wars don't necessarily need to be contained
01:31solely within criminal enterprises.
01:33The Nigerian bandit conflict has been ongoing since 2011,
01:37as gangs of Fulani and Hausa bandits continually clash with Nigerian police.
01:41Local law enforcement agencies have struggled to de-escalate the conflicts
01:45between Nigerian farm and herding populations.
01:47Mere months ago, Hassan was a wanted man.
01:50For eight years, he led a force of over 1,000 so-called bandits,
01:54camping out and planning raids from the region's dense forests.
01:57Meanwhile, environmental concerns have hampered both industries
02:00to the point where armed militias and bandits
02:03have engaged in bloody battles with vigilante groups
02:05as well as armed forces.
02:07Gunmen rampage through Anka and Bukuyum districts,
02:10murdering dozens of people,
02:12and dealt a heavy blow to authorities struggling to restore order.
02:15Over 12,000 people have been killed in nearly 15 years of instability,
02:20while 450,000 people have been displaced from their homes.
02:25Honduran gang crackdown.
02:26War taxes are imposed by the gangs.
02:29People must either pay, leave, or be killed.
02:32The situation of gang violence in Honduras
02:34was a problem that became too dangerous to ignore back in 2022,
02:38when the country's government effectively cracked down
02:40on dangerous activity within its borders.
02:42Gang threats occur nearly everywhere in Honduras.
02:46Five months ago, an armed gang entered this neighborhood
02:49and forced 34 families out in one night.
02:52This became known within Honduras as the Regimen de Excepción,
02:55whereby certain constitutional rights were suspended
02:58in support of public safety.
02:59Armed security forces, including military,
03:01were deployed to assist local police in the streets,
03:04while Honduras' prison system was expanded
03:06in order to house more inmates.
03:08Many neighbors here say the military presence makes them feel safe,
03:12but this is only one of a few neighborhoods around the country
03:16where soldiers are patrolling.
03:17It remains up for debate how effective these policies
03:20have been in curbing Honduras' notably high crime rate,
03:23although statistically, the crime rate has dropped
03:26since the crackdown was initiated back in 2022.
03:29Patriarca takeovers.
03:31Organized crime in the Northeast United States
03:33doesn't only reside within New York City.
03:35New England also possesses an infamous history,
03:38including the Patriarca crime family of Providence, Rhode Island.
03:41Organized crime began to grow in many cities,
03:44particularly here in Providence,
03:46because we had a large immigrant population.
03:49Raymond L.S. Patriarca was a powerful and feared man
03:52within the criminal underworld who kept Providence a stronghold
03:55against out-of-state crime influences.
03:57Worked his way up, first doing so-called low-level kinds of crime,
04:01but eventually became the crime boss of New England.
04:04That said, the 1960s saw Patriarca shed a lot of blood
04:08from local challenges to his power.
04:09He had one guy who was a henchman by the name of Joe Barbosa
04:13who was responsible for carrying out 19 hits
04:17and murdering people that were ordered by Raymond Patriarca.
04:21His son, Raymond Jr., however,
04:22was unable to live up to his father's legacy.
04:25The latter was eventually forced out of his position,
04:27resulting in yet more bloodshed
04:29for the heir apparent to the Patriarca throne.
04:32I never felt that his heart and soul
04:34were really into becoming the crime boss,
04:36but because of heritage, he, in fact, became that crime boss.
04:40State police, in the meantime, have referred to the family's current state
04:43as, quote, a shell of itself.
04:56We've all been to parties that got a little out of hand,
04:58but none of them probably escalated to the point of gang warfare.
05:02The impetus of the Irish gang wars
05:04arose from a drunken dispute over Labor Day weekend in 1961,
05:08but it wound up costing many New England mobsters
05:10their lives over the next six years.
05:13One of those associated with this initial incident
05:15was the actor Alex Rocco, who appeared in The Godfather,
05:18among many other high-profile productions.
05:20Yeah, let's talk business, mate.
05:22First of all, you're all done.
05:23The Coyote family don't even have that kind of muscle anymore.
05:26The main conflict between Charlestown's McLaughlin gang
05:28and Somerville's infamous Winterhill gang
05:31ultimately resulted in over 60 mob associates
05:33in the New England area placed six feet underground.
05:37The Crips-Bloods gang war.
05:38If we're born into it, you can't dodge, run away,
05:40or get out of this. This is what it is.
05:429-1-1, what's your emergency?
05:44The conflict between these L.A.-founded gangs
05:47has been going on in one form or another since the early 1970s.
05:51The Crips are slightly older, having been established in 1969
05:55via an alliance between leaders Raymond Washington
05:58and Stanley Tookie Williams,
05:59while the Bloods formed largely in response
06:01to violent Crip activity during this era.
06:03Truces have come and gone over the years,
06:05with some factions of both Crips and Bloods
06:08uniting against local police crackdown
06:09against their illegal activities.
06:11These have included everything from robbery and sex work to murder,
06:14while the number of dead was estimated in 2014
06:17to be around 20,000.
06:19If you had 15,000 people killing each other
06:23in any other country, there would be diplomats,
06:25there would be mediators, it would go to the U.N.
06:28The war against gangs.
06:30The president of El Salvador has pledged
06:32to dismantle the country's gangs
06:34and called upon members to leave them or perish with them.
06:37The case of 2022's crackdown against Salvadoran gang violence
06:41is similar to the situation in Honduras,
06:43specifically with its Regimen de Excepción.
06:46This state of emergency has effectively authorized
06:48both local and governmental forces in El Salvador
06:51to widen their net of arrests and prosecution
06:54for suspected gang activity.
06:55This includes members of the infamous MS-13 and 18th Street gangs,
07:00who have dominated the Central American criminal landscape for years.
07:03Carlos Montaño is marked for life,
07:06branded a member of Barrio 18,
07:09one of two notorious gangs in El Salvador.
07:12Nearly 84,000 people have been arrested
07:14under El Salvador's Regimen de Excepción
07:16at the time of this writing,
07:18resulting in the country's prison system
07:19substantially swelling under the pressure.
07:22These alleged gang members are the first prisoners of the complex
07:25named the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism.
07:27The gang war in Haiti.
07:29Now to Haiti, one of the poorest countries on Earth,
07:32with the capital Port-au-Prince largely controlled by criminal gangs.
07:35The numbers don't lie,
07:37and in fact speak a terrible, troubling fact
07:39about Haiti's crisis of gang violence.
07:41It was estimated back in 2023
07:43that approximately 90% of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince,
07:47was under the control or dominating influence of gangs.
07:50Once one of the city's most populated areas,
07:53it's now a ghost town.
07:55A vigilante opposition dubbed the Bois-Calais has emerged
07:58in an attempt to stem this tide,
08:00alongside armed support from other countries such as Kenya.
08:03There have been over 10,000 casualties
08:05as a result of the gang war in Haiti,
08:07with a further 700,000 others being displaced
08:10over this chaotic and violent conflict.
08:12So just that building over there, the red with the blue,
08:14is where the snipers are shooting at you.
08:16You hear their shots?
08:17Yep.
08:17The Yamaichi War.
08:19The Yamaichi War rattled the Kansai region of Japan.
08:22It still serves as an example
08:23of some of the most horrific crimes the Yakuza are capable of.
08:26It was a gang war that almost felt cinematic,
08:29the sort of bloody violence one might have witnessed
08:31in one of Japan's notable Yakuza films from the 1970s.
08:34The Yamaichi War took place in the 80s, however,
08:37and left over 36 members
08:39of the country's criminal underworld dead.
08:41During the worst of the war,
08:42newspaper front pages had daily scorecards
08:45tallying up the deaths and serious injuries
08:47caused by the Yamaichi War.
08:49The Ichiwakai was a splinter offshoot group
08:51from Kobe's Yamaguchi Gumi Gang,
08:53one that defiantly made its mark
08:55with the assassination of the latter's leader,
08:57Masahisa Takenaka.
08:58Japanese journalists were said to have routinely written
09:01about the recurring series of deadly gun battles
09:03between forces of the Yamaguchi Gumi and the Ichiwakai.
09:06This war would ultimately end in favor
09:08of the Yamaguchi Gumi,
09:09although the numbers of both gangs
09:11were decimated by deaths and arrests.
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09:29The Castellammarese War
09:31Bullets, bodies, and windows
09:33all lay strewn among the wreckage
09:35of the Castellammarese War.
09:36This bloody mafia conflict
09:38also resulted in a birth, however,
09:40specifically that of what's now known
09:41as the Five Families.
09:43In 1957, the Five Families were nearing
09:4630 years of existence in New York City.
09:5030 years of success,
09:52largely because there had been
09:5430 years of relative peace.
09:56Salvatore Maranzano's forces
09:58would end up seizing control
09:59of mafia operations
10:00from its former leader, Giuseppe Masseria,
10:03in just under a year.
10:04Maranzano wouldn't be able to enjoy
10:06his self-appointed status
10:07as capo di tutti i capi,
10:09aka boss of all bosses,
10:11for very long, however,
10:12as his associate Lucky Luciano
10:14would soon lead a new,
10:15younger generation of mafioso,
10:17orchestrating Maranzano's death.
10:19And establishing a new structure
10:20for organized crime.
10:22Which gang conflict do you feel
10:24had the longest lasting effects?
10:26Let us know in the comments.
10:27My neighborhood was taken over by gangs.
10:29I left and went to live in Solino for safety.
10:32Today, again, I'm on the run
10:34to save my life and my children.
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