The Crips are a Los Angeles-origin street gang whose South Carolina sets appear in court records and prosecutions from 2002 onward, with named sets in Columbia (Rollin 60s), North Charleston and Greenville (Rollin 20s) and Myrtle Beach (Rollin 90s). Federal and state cases from 2020 through 2026 have charged Crips members alongside Bloods and Gangster Disciples, and a 2019 Post and Courier investigation described the Crips as the first national gang to establish itself in South Carolina prisons. [1][2][3][4][5]
Origins
The Crips are a street gang that formed in Los Angeles. Britannica reports that some accounts credit Stanley Williams and Raymond Washington with founding the group in 1971, while others hold that Washington formed a group in 1969 that evolved into the gang; the group is traditionally associated with the color blue and is identified by its rivalry with the Bloods. A 2019 Post and Courier investigation described the Crips as founded in Los Angeles in the early 1970s and as the first of the national gangs to arrive in South Carolina prisons. [6][5]
Federal analysts have long treated South Carolina's Crips as loosely connected to the originating gang. The National Drug Intelligence Center's December 2001 South Carolina Drug Threat Assessment stated that South Carolina-based Bloods and Crips were affiliated loosely with the Los Angeles gangs, and relayed a Myrtle Beach Police Department report that most members of the local Crips at that time were Caucasian males from middle-class families with no ongoing ties to gangs in other jurisdictions. [7]
Footprint in South Carolina
Crips activity in the Midlands is documented in court records from the early 2000s. The South Carolina Supreme Court's 2006 opinion in State v. Price recounts a December 6, 2002 confrontation between Bloods and Crips at a fraternity party at Club Voodoo in Columbia that ended with Carl Smalls, described in the opinion as a member of the Crips, shot dead. A 2005 Free Times feature reprinted by Police1 listed a March 29, 2005 killing in north Columbia and the May 23, 2005 robbery of Palmetto Firearms on Broad River Road, which led to the arrest of at least three Crips members, followed by a break-in at Providence Hospital in which Crips members assaulted a witness in the case. [8][9]
Law enforcement in the Pee Dee and Orangeburg regions reported Crips presence through the late 2000s. In Orangeburg County, a sheriff's gang specialist said in January 2008 that markings found on Prospect Road were those of the Crips and Folk Nation. In January 2009, five Marlboro County defendants pleaded guilty in a federal case in which investigators found the shooters were each members of the Crips, and in 2010 the Fourth Circuit affirmed the conviction of a Dillon defendant whom prosecutors described as a member of the Crips street gang operating in Dillon. Sumter County and Florence investigators listed Crips among the gangs present in their jurisdictions in 2006 and 2019, with Florence police describing them as smaller than the Gangster Disciples. [10][11][12][13][14]
In the Lowcountry, court documents released June 4, 2021 tied the May 22, 2021 mass shooting in North Charleston's Deas Hill neighborhood, which killed a 14-year-old girl and wounded 14 others, to a rivalry between the Bloods and Rollin 20s Crips. In May 2021, a shooting victim at Azalea Square in Summerville told police the suspect belonged to the Grape Street Crips; that attribution is a victim statement and not an adjudicated finding. In the Upstate, a 2020 IACP site profile citing the Spartanburg Police Department stated that the Highland neighborhood contains multiple sets or cliques of traditional gangs, including the Bloods and the Crips. [2][15][16]
Horry County investigators have repeatedly named the Crips among the county's active gangs. In March 2019 a Horry County investigator told WPDE that the county deals primarily with the Bloods, the Crips and Folk Nation. A January 2024 federal release on a Myrtle Beach operation named the Rollin 90s Crips as a target, and a September 2024 Horry County Police sweep from Little River to Loris arrested Bloods, Crips and Gangster Disciples members. [17][3][18]
Structure and organization
Public records describe South Carolina Crips as sets tied by name to Los Angeles neighborhoods. A criminal complaint cited by FITSNews in June 2020 described the Rollin 60s Crips as a set connected to the Crips with roughly 6,000 to 8,000 members nationally, and FBI Columbia Violent Gang Task Force agents estimated about 100 Rollin 60s Crips in the Columbia area; agents also observed Rollin 60s Crips occasionally merging their criminal operations with other violent gangs. Other sets named in South Carolina records are the Rollin 20s in North Charleston and Greenville and the Rollin 90s in Myrtle Beach. [1][2][19][3]
Federal prosecutors in North Carolina have described a Carolinas-wide leadership tier for one set. A November 2022 release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina identified Dexter Maxwell as the leader of the Eight Tray Gangster Crips for North and South Carolina prior to his arrest, and a January 2024 release stated he was identified as the leader of ETGC throughout North and South Carolina with direct ties to gang hierarchy in Los Angeles. No South Carolina prosecution naming an Eight Tray Gangster Crips set was located in public sources. [20][21]
Identifiers and symbols
Public sources attribute two identifiers to the Crips in South Carolina. Britannica states the group is traditionally associated with the color blue. In January 2008, an Orangeburg County Sheriff's Office gang specialist told The Times and Democrat that the Crips use the six-point star and described the pitchfork or trident as a Folk Nation symbol, characterizing Folk Nation as an ally of the Crips. No other identifiers are asserted here beyond what these sources state. [6][10]
Notable South Carolina cases
The largest Crips-specific federal case in the state's recent record is the Columbia Rollin 60s investigation. The FBI Columbia Violent Gang Task Force began investigating in July 2018, and on June 23, 2020 the U.S. Attorney announced 14 arrests across Lexington, Kershaw and Richland counties; FITSNews reported that Maurice Leach and Anthony Britt were described as Crips members and Reginald Furgess and Christopher Melton as either Crips or Gangster Disciples. [1]
Multi-gang federal operations have continued to name the Crips. A December 15, 2023 release on a West Columbia ATF operation that began in June 2022 stated that defendants included members of the Bloods, Crips and Gangster Disciple street gangs. On January 29, 2024 the U.S. Attorney's Office announced that a Myrtle Beach multi-agency operation targeting the Rollin 90s Crips, G-Shine Bloods and Gangster Disciples produced federal charges against 13 defendants. On May 22, 2025 FBI Columbia stated that 16 defendants arrested by the Lowcountry Violent Crime Task Force included members of the Bloods, Crips and Gangster Disciple street gangs. [22][3][23]
State prosecutions in 2026 named the Rolling 20s Crips in both the Lowcountry and the Upstate. On August 24, 2026 the South Carolina Attorney General announced State Grand Jury indictments of over 30 individuals in Operation Last Stand, focused on the greater Charleston area, with targets associated with the Rolling 20s Crips, Piru Bloods, 18th Street, Tren de Aragua and two Mexican cartels. On September 25, 2026 the 13th Circuit Solicitor's Office announced that Kimron Keantea Lilly, 26, was sentenced to 27 years after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter and conspiracy for a July 16, 2021 shooting at a cookout in Conestee Park, Greenville; prosecutors said he conspired with other members of the Rolling 20s, described as a sect of the national Crips gang, to shoot at a Bloods cookout. [4][19]
Inside SCDC
The Post and Courier's December 2019 investigation reported that the Bloods, Crips and Gangster Disciples have steadily asserted their hold over the South Carolina inmate population, with the Crips the first to arrive. Corrections officials estimated that one of every ten prisoners was a validated gang member; a 2008 Department of Public Safety survey had identified some 1,100 gang members in South Carolina prisons, nearly five percent of the population, and a 2019 Legislative Audit Council report found that number had doubled over the decade. The article also reported that the Bloods and Crips maintain books of knowledge that lay out codes of conduct for members. [5]
The 2010 shooting of Lee Correctional Institution Capt. Robert Johnson is the most prominent documented Crips-linked act inside the state system. According to the Post and Courier, a Crip inmate ordered the hit in 2010 after Johnson's team seized a package of cellphones, chargers, marijuana and SIM cards, and used a cellphone and a Green Dot prepaid card to arrange Johnson's death for $6,000. Johnson was shot six times at his Sumter home on March 5, 2010 and survived; on August 14, 2014 The State reported that Sean Echols, 31, received 20 years in federal prison for conspiring to kill Johnson after receiving an initial $6,000 payment from plotters. In an April 2018 article after the Lee Correctional riot, the newspaper paraphrased Johnson as saying the Bloods and the Crips are the largest threats because they control much of the flow of contraband. [5][24][25]
Current status
As of 2026, Crips sets remain named targets in South Carolina enforcement at the federal, state and county levels. The 2024 Myrtle Beach federal case, the September 2024 Horry County sweep that produced 80 arrests including 40 gang members and 58 seized firearms, the May 2025 Lowcountry task force arrests, the August 2026 Operation Last Stand indictments and the September 2026 Greenville sentencing each named Crips or a Rollin set. Public records locate the named sets in Columbia and its surrounding counties, North Charleston, Greenville and Myrtle Beach. [3][18][23][4][19]
