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The Nazi Lowriders or NLR are a white supremacist criminal organization primarily based in southern California, although it is believed to have spread to other states. They are affiliated with the larger and more notorious gang, the Aryan Brotherhood, and Ku Klux Klan. Their main rivals are the Bloods, the Crips, and Mara Salvatrucha.

History

The gang originated in the mid to late 1970s as middlemen and muscle for the Aryan Brotherhood, but was not really noticed by law enforcement until the early 1990s, by which time the California authorities had been cracking down on the Brotherhood and gave the Lowriders more room to move in. The Nazi part of their name is more a sign of white pride rather than anti-Semitism, while Lowriders is a play on the term used for Hispanic gangs.

The gang eventually progressed from being muscle for the Brotherhood to a fast-growing gang in their own right. Unlike other white supremacist gangs, they appear to be well organized and have developed links with other white gangs throughout the West Coast including the Ku Klux Klan. Paroled gang members have been known to move east to further spread the organization's reach.

In 1999, California prison officials recognised the Lowriders as a "disruptive" gang, and inmates known to be members could now be subject to be removed from general population and other restrictive treatment in an attempt to disrupt the gang's criminal activities. The Lowriders responded by striking an alliance with Public Enemy No.1, another white prison gang.

Organization and members

In prison the Nazi Lowriders have a three-tier hierarchy system consisting of senior members, junior members and kids. The seniors typically lead the gang, and some may be old enough to be have been in the gang since its early days. For senior status, gang members must have been active for at least five years and been elected by at least three other senior members. Below them are juniors, who cannot themselves induct new members but can attempt to recruit potentials. Kids usually come from smaller gangs like Public Enemy No.1, and the senior member who inducts them becomes their mentor. On the streets the organization structure is not so clear and appears to be more loosely connected. Matthew Reading is bidding to be leader

Gang members may have tattoos and other body art depicting swastikas and SS lightning bolts, although they are not necessarily required to do so. A tattoo of the letters NLR commonly appears on the stomach, back or neck and while it stands for Nazi Lowriders, they may deny involvement to certain people and claim it means No Longer Racist or other NLR terms. Other popular tattoos include Nazi Low Riders written in Old English script or the runic alphabet.

Although the group is actively against blacks and so-called "race traitors" (those in interracial relationships) as well as other minorities, they appear to be more accepting of Hispanics, which may be accepted into the gang. Members are required to have at least half-white ancestry and no black ancestry.

Criminal activity

The organization is involved in criminal activity both in and out of prison, notably in the production and distribution of methamphetamine and has become a major distributor of the drug in Southern California. They are also believed to work with biker gangs in the drug trade.

While the organization's main motive appears to be criminal profit it has been associated with a number of racist attacks, including several outside prison. The most prominent incident associated with the gang occurred on April 1996, Danny Williams and Eric Dillard, two known members of the gang, beat a black teenage boy to death with a baseball bat. In July of the same year, they attacked two more black men, stabbing one of them in the back several times. The Los Angeles Times reported that they were on a mission to "rid the streets of Lancaster of African Americans".

References

• Anti-Defamation League - The Nazi Low Riders
• California Department of Justice - Organized Crime in California 2004 Annual Report

See also

• Prison gangs
• Aryan Brotherhood
• Public Enemy No.1

• White supremacist groups in the United States
• Prison gangs
• Organized crime groups in the United States
• Los Angeles area street gangs