Crips Gang Signs: What they mean (2025)

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Before dive in to Crip gang signs, we need to know what is a gang sign and what is the Crip gang. We already wrote a detailed article about what are the gang signs, for our readers. If you don’t know what the gang sign means, we recommend you to read that article before you begin..

Gang signs are gestures made by gang members to show they belong to a particular gang or to disrespect a rival gang. They use their hands and fingers to make these signs. Sometimes, gang members also use tattoos, graffiti, and specific colors or clothing to show their gang affiliation.

  • What is the crip gang
  • Types of crip gang signs
    • Crip hand signs
    • Crip Tattoos
    • Crip Graffiti
    • Crips Colors and Clothings

What is the Crips gang

Crip gang is the largest criminal group in the United States History. Also, it is the most spread out street gang in the United States. Highest number of gang members are from California, Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. It is estimated that round 30,000 – 35,000 members are involved with Crip Gang.They have a long rivalry with the Bloods Gang because they are a group of individuals who formed an alliance to protect themselves against the violence and intimidation of the Crips. Crip gang consist of number of small sub groups. These sub groups most of time act as individually, but represent their main gang as Crips.

Types of Crips gang signs

Crip gang signs are the most famous, cause there are a lot of members involved with Crip gang and that’s can be the reason for everyone looking for ways to identify Crip gang and Crip gang members. After we deeply look about Crip gang signs we can see there are different types of gang signals such as Crip hand signs, Crip gang tattoos and Crip graffities, etc. Below, we are going to discuss more about these one by one for everyone’s knowledge.

Crips hand signs

Hand signs are the most famous way to identify Crip gang and it’s members. These hand signs are made by hand and finger gestures used by gang members to present their gang. In a Crip gang, they hold their hand and create the letter “C” as their gang sign. “C” is the first letter of “Crips” word, most gangs throw their gang name first letter as their gang signs, like Bloods throwing “B” as their gang sign. also we can identify Crips gang signs as a “BK gang signs” which mean “Blood Killer Gang Signs”

For more information on Bloods gang signs, see this article

Crips Gang Signs: What they mean (1)

Crip gangs commonly use the above gang sign as their gang sign. Also, there are different varieties of Crip gang signs. You can get some idea about those after looking at the images below.

Crips Gang Signs: What they mean (2)
Crips Gang Signs: What they mean (3)
Crips Gang Signs: What they mean (4)
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Crips Gang Signs: What they mean (6)

Crips Tattoos

Tattoos are another way to identify gang members. In a Crip gang there are a lot of tattoos associated with them. These tattoos are mostly used to disrespecting their rival gangs, like bloods. Some tattoos are hard to understand to someone without proper knowledge. As a example check below..

  • They Inked “211” as a tattoo, number two represents the “B” in the alphabet , and number eleven represents “K” in alphabet. “BK” Mean “Blood Killa”
  • In some Crip gang members we can see tattoos like “3 18 9 16”, this one spells out “Crip” in alphabetic order.
  • Some members inked their hand signs as a tattoo. For more details look below images.
Crips Gang Signs: What they mean (7)

Crips Graffiti

Graffiti is something like drawing, scratched or painted unlawfully on a wall and other public surface. Some Graffiti are a bit like encrypted code, only the same gang member can decrypt and catch the meaning. Also, these graffiti are different from gang to gang. In a Crip gang we can see special symbols that belongs to them. Check out the image below for a better idea about Crip gang graffities.

Crips Gang Signs: What they mean (8)

In the above graffiti we can see something like “LOC” . It’s commonly used by Crips members and it means “Love of Crip”. Also, there is painted “BK” to disrespect Crips’ rival gang, which means “Blood Killer”. We attached more Crip graffiti for you to get a better idea.

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Crips Colors and Clothing

Gang members use some clothing like bandanas to represent their gang specially they focus on color when wearing these clothes. In a Crip gang we can see they use blue as the gang color. They use blue color for everything like clothes, graffiti, and some use blue color to ink their tattoos.Another special thing is Surenos and MS-13 also use blue as their representing color.

Mainly they wear blue color bandanas to represent they are involved with Crips and these bandanas are worn around their face, neck, head or put in half of their pocket. Also they use Grey, Black, Purple, White, Grey and even Yellow colors. To get a better idea about these crip colors and clothing check out below images.

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Crips Gang Signs: What they mean (13)
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Crips Gang Signs: What they mean (2025)

FAQs

What do the Crip signs mean? ›

For example, a Crip using their thumb and forefinger to form a large "C" indicates that they're a member. Likewise, positioning fingers in a particular manner with both hands and placing them together specifies which individual Crip gang a member is part of.

What do throwing up gang signs mean? ›

Hand signs are used by DBG gang members within the Proposed Safety Zone to blatantly represent their gang affiliation and to taunt, disrespect or threaten rivals or perceived rivals. 96. When a gang member uses hand signs, it is often called "throwing," "throwing up," or "flashing" gang signs.

What is the gang sign for GD? ›

The predominant symbol of this gang is the six-pointed Star of David. The Gangster Disciples also use the upward crossed pitchforks and the heart with wings.

What does the 6 stand for in Crip? ›

The number 5 is commonly used by the Bloods, and the number 6 is used by the Crips. The up arrow through the 5 is showing respect to the Bloods while the down arrow through the 6 is showing disrespect to the Crips. To the right is an example of Crip graffiti.

What is Crip short for? ›

Another source suggests "Crips" may have evolved from "Cripplers", a 1970s street gang in Watts, of which Washington was a member. The name had no political, organizational, cryptic, or acronymic meaning, though some have suggested it stands for "Common Revolution In Progress", a backronym.

What does throwing 4 fingers up mean? ›

4 fingers up means you're madly in love with 1 person.

Typically, people will hold up 4 fingers to signify that they're off the market—they're not looking to date anyone else right now. They might have just gotten into a relationship, or they may be pining after 1 specific person. X Research source.

What gang signs are Blood? ›

One of the most common Blood gang signs is contorting the fingers of both hands and placing them together to literally spell out "blood". Other Blood hand signs include making the letter "b" and "ck" for "crip killer". Furthermore, hand signs can be used to signal intent and hidden messages.

What does BK mean in gang? ›

The BK stands for Blood Killa, the PK stands for People Killa (the Bloods fall under People Nation, which is the rival of the Folk Nation, which is where the Crips fall). The HK stands for Hoover Killa. The below picture is an example of Hoover 74 Crips.

What are some gangster slang words? ›

Slang, brands and symbols
SlangMeaning
Paganperson who moves between gangs, or has no affiliation
Shankstabbed, a knife
Shooknervous, scared
Sketderogatory name for female
22 more rows

Are gang signs legal? ›

Throwing up gang signs is not against the law. It's protected by our Constitution which guarantees Freedom of Expression. However, if a rival gang sees you doing it, they might beat you down or put bullets in you. That can also happen with the gang whose sign you're throwing up if you're not in that gang.

What are Blood gang words? ›

Some Blood Phrases
  • Blatt Blatt.
  • “What dat red be like?” – a greeting.
  • Refer to each other as dogs.
  • DAMU = Brother/Blood.
  • DAMUETTE = Sister Bloodettes Ruby Red.
  • Blood Love.

What is the Crip sign? ›

An example of one crip gang sign is bending the index finger at the first knuckle and spreading the other three fingers and thumb. The whole hand facing outward toward the person. Another is forming a 'C' with your index finger and thumb, with the other three fingers separated.

What is the 27 gang sign? ›

For example, each Numbers gang has its own salute to greet each other. The 28 salute with a thumb, the index and middle finger, the 27 with the thumb and index finger and the 26 with a raised thumb.

What does 74 mean in GD? ›

The Black Gangster Disciples are associated with the Folk Nation gangs and use a lot of identifiers associated with their Gang and Nation such as a “pitchfork”, the number “6”, the number “5” placed upside down (to indicate disrespect for the rival People Nation), the six-sided “Star of David” symbol (to honor one of ...

What does the 22 12 vice lord mean? ›

Other common Vice Lords symbols include a top hat and cane, the "Playboy" bunny, and the numbers "22 12," which represent the 22nd and 12th letters of the alphabet, VL. The Vice Lords colors are predominately black and gold, although red is also incorporated to show their participation in the People Nation.

What do the Crips represent? ›

After the eventual destruction of the Black Panther organization, the CRIPS (Community Resources for Independent People) arose in South Central Los Angeles, California in 1969 with a message of resistance and justice during a time of hopelessness and desolation among the black community (Brown).

What are the ranks of the Crips? ›

The ETG Crips were organized hierarchically, with members climbing the ranks from “BG” (Baby Gangster), to “YG” (Young Gangster), to “G” (Gangster), to “OG” (Original Gangster), to “OOG” (Original Original Gangster), and so on. ETG Crips members were required to follow certain rules of conduct.

What is the Crip handshake? ›

An example of one crip gang sign is bending the index finger at the first knuckle and spreading the other three fingers and thumb. The whole hand facing outward toward the person. Another is forming a 'C' with your index finger and thumb, with the other three fingers separated.

References

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