The Westside Venice Shoreline Crips / VSL is a Crip gang in West Los Angeles near Venice Beach with territory along Venice Blvd, in the Oakwood neighborhood.
After a series of militant blacc riots in Venice in the late 1960s, the Shoreline Crips were founded around the same time as some of the original Crip gangs formed by Tookie Williams and Raymond Washington. In the 1980s, as cocaine was introduced and gangs began focusing more on money rather than their original politics, the Shoreline Crips became heavily involved in the narcotics business in Oakwood and on the Venice Boardwalk.
In the 1990s the Shorelines warred with rival Culver City 13 after Shoreline cliques were pushed out of the Mar Vista Gardens projects. Shortly after, Oakwood exploded as a war broke out between the Shorelines and Venice 13 over control of the Venice drug trade until a cease-fire was arranged between the two gangs. In the 1980s and 1990s, newly arrived white homeowners took residency in and around the area, causing Los Angeles officials to want to make the area safer and combat the gang problem. Even after a series of raids, injunctions, and other measures against them, the Shorelines have maintained a steady control over their territory with their numbers ranging in the several hundreds.
