The Families is an African-American street gang based in South Central Los Angeles, California. The gang was founded during the 1980s and was named due to its close-knit sets, which originally included the Grove Street Families, the Seville Boulevard Families, and the Temple Drive Families. The sets engaged in gang warfare against each other, as well as against the Ballas and Vagos, into the 1990s, during which their leader Carl Johnson led The Families to take over the whole of Los Angeles County from the rival gangs.
However, the leaders of the GSF set later moved on with their lives and gave up the gang lifestyle, with Johnson and other GSF leaders becoming businessmen. The power vacuum which followed was filled by the Ballas gang, blood rivals with The Families; the Ballas took over Compton (including Grove Street itself), while new sets of The Families formed during the 2000s. By 2013, these sets included the Chamberlain Gangster Families, Forum Drive Families, Carson Avenue Families, and the Davis Neighborhood Families, with the CGF and FDF being the larger two sets.
The Families were once allied to the Los Varrios Aztecas and the San Francisco Triads during the 1990s, during which time they were enemies of the Ballas, Vagos, occasionally the Aztecas, the Russian Mafia, the Leone crime family, the Forelli crime family, the Rifa, and the Da Nang Boys. By the 2010s, The Families were rivals with the Ballas, Vagos, Aztecas, The Lost MC, and The Professionals, while they were allied with the Kkangpae and Trevor Philips Enterprises.
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