Juggalo gangs

Not to be confused with the Juggalo music subculture from which the gang was birthed.

Juggalos

File:Hatchetman.jpg The hatchet man logo of Psychopathic Records, used as an identifier by Juggalo gang members as well as non-criminal Juggalos
Founding location	Detroit, Michigan United States
Years active	Mid-2000s-present
Territory	United States, Australia
Ethnicity	Multi-ethnic
Membership (est.)	1,000,000+ non-criminal Juggalos 100,000–150,000 Juggalo gang members
Criminal activities	Murder, extortion, drive-by shootings, home invasion, drug trafficking, arson, burglary, armed robbery, assault, aggravated assault
Allies	Gangster Disciples, Folk Nation, Insane Cobra Nation, Bloods
Rivals	MS-13, People Nation, Sureños (certain sets) (gang affiliations and rivalries differ depending on the individual set)

Juggalo (or Juggalette for females) is a name given to dedicated fans of the rap group Insane Clown Posse or any other Psychopathic Records artist. Although the Juggalo subculture stems from this horrorcore hip hop music fandom, a rapidly expanding criminal gang faction has broken off from mainstream Juggalo culture in recent years. As a result, Juggalos have been classified as a criminal street gang by government and law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Gang Intelligence Center, and the states of Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, and Utah. Juggalo gang sets have been documented by law enforcement in at least 21 states, including those that do not recognize Juggalos as a gang at the state level.

Juggalo gangs band together under the Juggalo banner in order to engage in patterns of criminal activity. Unlike members of the general Juggalo subculture, these gangs often use traditional gang initiation rituals such as "jumping in" members, have handbooks detailing gang ranks and responsibilities, and commit crimes for financial gain.

The National Gang Intelligence Center has also predicted that "The formation of rivalries or alliances to gangs outside of their group will allow the Juggalos to evolve into a more sophisticated criminal entity through associations with hardened, experienced gang members."

Criminal activities

According to the National Gang Intelligence Center, there are more than one million self-proclaimed Juggalos across the United States. It is estimated that 85–90% of self-described Juggalos are peaceful, non-criminal music fans. The other 10–15% make up the Juggalo subculture's criminal element, which has been linked to numerous crimes including extortion, murder, domestic terrorism, drive-by shootings, drug trafficking, arson, burglary, home invasion, armed robbery, aggravated assault, and weapon offenses, and has been documented collaborating with a wide array of street and prison gangs.

A series of arsons on a Navajo reservation have been linked to a local Juggalo gang set, which uses arson as a way to increase Juggalos' rank within the gang.

In 2008, members of a Blood-affiliated Juggalo set known as the Southwest Bloods were convicted of aggravated assault after one member was required to stab a man in order to leave the gang. The National Gang Intelligence Center has noted a high number of Juggalo sets with ties to the Los Angeles-based Bloods gang, although the reason why Juggalos align themselves with Bloods sets remains unclear. In at least one case, the gangs aligned because they share the same gang color (red). Bloods and Juggalos have also collaborated to commit drive-by shootings. In Utah, however. Juggalos have associated themselves with a local Crip set named the "Salt Lake Posse".

Juggalos in Rose Hill, Fairfax County, Virginia have been linked to the Gangster Disciples.

In 2009, Michael Goucher was found dead in the woods after having been stabbed more than 20 times with a meat cleaver by Juggalo gang members. The culprits were discovered after a member of the gang wrote a horrorcore rap song about the incident and posted it on MySpace.

On June 28, 2010, three youths in Sydney, Australia believed to have been Juggalos attempted to rob a 20 year old woman waiting outside of a club.

In 2010, a Juggalette who was not affiliated with any gang was assaulted by a new Juggalo gang called the Juggalo Killers, who knocked her unconscious before carving the letters "JK" into her chest, because they wanted to be the only group wearing Insane Clown Posse merchandise in their territory.

Juggalos in Oregon are known to extort homeless and homosexual individuals on the street with the threat of beatings.

Juggalos have also been documented in a prison gang context. In Pennsylvania, the Bloods and Crips dominate the incarcerated Juggalo gangs and use them for recruitment. In addition, certain Juggalo gangs have allied with violent prison gangs, including the Aryan Brotherhood, Aryan Circle, 211 Crew, and Aryan Brothers Liberation.

Juggalo gang members are also notable for their tendency toward extremely brutal and wanton violence. Juggalo gangs generally prefer edged weapons such as hatchets and machetes to firearms, and said gangs have been linked to a string of grisly murders throughout the United States.

Arizona Department of Public Safety Detective Michelle Vasey has also expressed concern at the Juggalos high potential for violence, stating "The weapons, they prefer, obviously, hatchets ... We've got battle-axes, we've got machetes, anything that can make the most violent, gruesome wound," and "Some of the homicides we're seeing with these guys are pretty nasty, gruesome, disgusting homicides, where they don't care who's around, what's around, they're just out to kill anybody."

A verified law enforcement officer at the popular police support forum RealPolice.net has stated that, "The ones around here definitely act like a gang, and since they prefer edged weapons, we've had a bunch of stabbings and cuttings ... Members here have robbed 7-11's and random people by displaying knives and hatchets, and have assaulted members of other gangs as well."

Juggalos are listed in Montana's official handbook of security threat groups, which states that Juggalos are "a threat to law enforcement" and "very violent, many like blood."

In 2013, the FBI released documents indicating that Juggalos in California are holding their own in a gang war against the notoriously violent Los Angeles gang MS-13.

In August 2013, a Juggalo street gang member was arrested on charges of attempted murder, battery with a deadly weapon and possession of a controlled substance for attacking a cyclist with two meat cleavers in northeast Las Vegas, calling the man a "snitch". The month before, a Juggalo and former member of the guerrilla insurgent group Irish Republican Army was arrested for a stabbing in the same area after a group of men accosted him for wearing a Juggalo-related T-shirt.

In 2013, a Juggalo member was arrested for possession of weapons and explosives after allegedly forming a terrorist group called the Black Snake Militia with the intent to engage in a violent revolution and raid the local National Guard armory to obtain weapons. According to court documents, one of the members of the terrorist group became an FBI informant after realizing that the leader intended to go through with a violent terrorist act.

Differences between criminal and non-criminal Juggalos

Juggalo gang experts have stressed that not all self-proclaimed Juggalos are criminals or gang members. Detective Michelle Vasey has commented, "I don't want people to go out there and look at every Juggalo and say, 'Oh, he's a gang member, he's got a machete and he's going to slice and dice everybody.' But people need to be aware that there are huge issues that have evolved in just the last three years both in the eastern and western United States where we've got multiple individuals committing gang-related crimes, gang-motivated crimes, and they're using the name Juggalo."

According to law enforcement research, including an interview with an admitted Juggalo gang member, the Juggalo subculture has recently split into two very different groups: the music fans and the criminal street gang. Some members of the Juggalos street gang even look down on non-criminal Juggalos, considering them to be weak, and criminal Juggalo gangs have committed attacks on non-gang-related Juggalos.

These criminal Juggalo subsets are being formed by a new generation of Juggalos who are attempting to evolve the Juggalo subculture into a collection of smaller gangs or cliques.

The Juggalo subculture has several features in common with traditional gangs, including throwing hand signs, wearing matching clothing, and getting matching tattoos. However, criminal Juggalo subsets contain gang-like features that the general Juggalo population does not, including gang initiations, handbooks detailing rules and punishments for gang members, formal leadership structure, gang colors, and the tendency to engage in organized patterns of serious criminal activity.

Reaction of artists and FBI lawsuit

The FBI's classification of Juggalos as a gang has caused confusion, resulting in many peaceful, non-criminal Juggalos being discriminated against both by police and by ordinary citizens, including at least one incident in which an innocent Juggalette was kicked out of Wal-Mart for being a "threat". This type of discrimination, along with the fact that Hot Topic will no longer stock Psychopathic Records merchandise in states that legally consider Juggalos to be a gang, has prompted Insane Clown Posse to file a lawsuit against the FBI. In December 2012, ICP and Psychopathic Records quietly agreed to withdraw as plaintiffs in the case, and the FBI later released a report justifying their decision to classify Juggalos as a gang. However, ICP later announced that they would follow through with the lawsuit anyway. On August 23, 2013, the FBI asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit against them.

In an interview given in 2013, Shaggy 2 Dope of Insane Clown Posse addressed the Juggalo gang classification and the impending FBI lawsuit. He stated that at first he believed that the classification of Juggalos was "pretty dope" because it would afford the band a tougher image, but later changed his mind after realizing the negative repercussions of being labeled a gang, such as gang enhancements for Juggalos who commit crimes. He also expressed concern about innocent Juggalos being targeted in "Shithole, Nebraska" by MS-13 members. He argued that while some Juggalos are criminals and gang members, he does not believe that Juggalos as a whole constitute a gang.

Gang identifiers

Gang identifiers used by Juggalo gang members include, but are not limited to:

• Gang colors, depending on the individual set, especially black, white, and red
• Psychopathic Records clothing and paraphernalia
• Tattoos related to Insane Clown Posse and Psychopathic Records, including the six "joker's card" album covers and the record label's "Hatchet Man" logo.
• Throwing gang signs
• Evil clown-themed face paint

Perspective of law enforcement officers and gang investigators

The emergence of Juggalo gang subsets has created a sharp divide between gang investigators in the United States, with some considering the entire subculture to fit the definition of a criminal gang, while others stress that the subculture's criminal element makes up only a small portion of the Juggalo population. A report released by the National Gang Intelligence Center in 2010 supports the latter assertion.

A report released by the Rocky Mountain Information Network states that, "Just because we do not understand this phenomenon fully, we can’t as gang detectives ignore it ... We in law enforcement must be willing to take that extra step in our intelligence gathering to see if we are in fact dealing with a gang member or just a crazed fan."

Detective Michelle Vasey has stated that not all Juggalos are violent or criminals, and the music is not to blame: "We can't necessarily say that [the music's] to blame. But I think it definitely does have some influences. As an officer we have to decide when we're talking to these guys, who do we need to worry about and who don't we need to worry about."

Police Lt. Scott Conley has stated, "Those involved in the criminal side of (Juggalos) cause us some concern. If they are not involved in criminal activity, they can do their own thing, as long as they haven't crossed that criminal element line ... The attraction to that music, or those people following that music, I have no problem with. When they start breeding disruption in the community, showing up in libraries to harm people with butcher knives up their sleeves, I have a problem. I have to get involved with the community."

A verified law enforcement officer at popular police support forum RealPolice.net has stated, "In order for them to be a real gang in my opinion, they would have to associate with one another with the intention of committing crimes on an ongoing basis. Maybe in some areas that's the case, but I wouldn't consider Phish fans a gang and I'm sure some of those guys commit the occasional crime."

The official web site of Montana's department of corrections contains an explanation for Juggalos' classification as a security threat group: "the Juggalos are a recognized STG group (sic) that would never classify itself as a street gang. They are more like a cult that follows mimics and idolizes the music group, Insane Clown Posse. The music encourages and condones extreme acts of violence, which some Juggalos carry out. Juggalo members paint their faces black and white, dress in black clothing, attend raves together that often end violently, and consider themselves a family."