The 60s and 70s were crazy. Junkies were getting thrown off buildings, dealers were kidnapping peoples kids who owed them money.
This is a Washingtonpost article that was written in 1980, but the same rhetoric people used to describe the kids to day was the same back then.
The Meanest Street in Washington
Around Condon Terrace Circle in Far Southeast Washington, there have been these casualties over the last year:
John A. Johnson, 25, was shot in the shoulder.
Michael Bottoms, 23, was shot in the face and killed.
Leondas Chambliss, 16, was shot in the back and paralyzed.
Milton Dobbss, 18, was shot in the knee-caps.
Barbara Young, 20, was shot in the head and killed.
"We hear gunshots all times of day and night out here," said one woman, a retired domestic in late middle age who lives in one of the three-story walk-ups around Condon Terrace Circle. "People with guns run and hide between our homes like it's a Western movie or something."
Condon Terrace Circle is probably the most dangerous street in town, District police say. There have been hundreds of shootings, knifings, rapes and a bizarre series of "kneecappings" there in recent years.
Police say the violence is associated with the sale of mariguana within the, circle, which has become something of a drive-in for drugs since the mid-1670's. Salesmen in their late teens to mid-20's stake out their turf around the circle. In their jockeying for the better positions, there are often shootings.
The youths who work the circle battle to keep official authority out. All eight members of a special tactical squad sent in to clean up Condon Circle last year were injured in chases and fights with the teen-age drug peddlers.