[1] Washington formed the Crips as a minor street gang in the late 1960s in South Los Angeles, becoming a prominent local crime boss.

In 1971, Washington formed an alliance with Stanley "Tookie" Williams, establishing the Crips as the first major African-American street gang in Los Angeles, and served as one of the co-leaders.

[5] According to neighbors of Washington, he developed an affinity for fist-fighting as an adolescent, and was constantly in trouble with the Los Angeles Police Department for various offenses.

"[1] A friend stated that Washington was a good football player, but never participated as a member of school sports team due to his poor grades.

Crime was especially prevalent in the three housing projects located in Watts, known as "the Bricks": Imperial Courts, Nickerson Gardens, and Jordan Downs, where violent street robberies were common among adolescent criminals.

Older African-American street gangs in South Central, like the Slausons, the Businessmen, and the Gladiators, had been ended by activist groups such as the Black Panther Party and the US Organization.

In late 1969, Washington organized his own gang called the Baby Avenues, recruiting a group of other neighborhood youths in South Central.

The Crips quickly established themselves as the largest street gang in Los Angeles, with increasing numbers and territory as their influence spread across low-income black neighborhoods.

Street gangs that had resisted being absorbed into the Crips soon formed their own confederate alliance, the Bloods, to protect their independence and their interests in the criminal market.

The Police also said that this gang has been spreading "like an octopus" and now has members throughout South-Central Los Angeles, Inglewood, Gardena, Compton, Lynwood, Lancaster, Palmdale, the Firestone [unincorporated] area and the San Fernando Valley.

On February 23, 1973, Curtis "Buddha" Morrow, a close friend of Tookie Williams and a high-ranking Crip enforcer, was shot to death in South Central following a petty argument.

[citation needed] Since Washington's imprisonment, the organization had totally broken down into loosely-affiliated decentralized sets that often fought each other, as the Crips' original leadership had disappeared.

Williams had been injured in a drive-by shooting in 1976, and developed a growing addiction to PCP that caused his authority to wane until he was arrested for four counts of homicide shortly before Washington was murdered.

According to law enforcement, former gang members and close friends, Washington had decided that the Crips needed to be brought back under one umbrella organization to stop infighting, and then to work towards a truce with the Bloods.