socioeconomic changes in the United States. Manufacturing jobs had been decreasing across the U.S. for over twenty years, and as the American economy turned increasingly turned toward the technological and service industries, unemployment rates among young men of color soared in urban areas. Unable to find work in this changing economy, drug markets became the only source of survival for these displaced workers, as the rising prices for crack cocaine became a way for desperate youth to make money. Over time, however, drug markets were monopolized by organized gangs, which actively recruited increasingly younger African American and Chicano youth. Traditional American pathways away from a "gangster lifestyle", such as marriage, family, and stable employment, were largely unavailable to these youth, and in many black, Chicano, and immigrant communities, gang influence emerged as "a dominant informal control and socialization force". Chicano youth gang activity in the 1990s rose notably in Los Angeles and Chicago, two of the cities with the nation's highest numbers of Mexican Americans, but gang activity rose in almost every U.S. city, including throughout Texas. The political response to gangs such as the Mexican Mafia and 38th Street was a dramatic escalation of the Reagan administration's War on Drugs. Racialized fears of black and brown "superpredators" resulted in tough-on-crime policies in the 1990s, culminating in the infamous Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The law provided local funding to hire over 100,000 new police officers; created grant programs to incentivize drug-related arrests; gave states funds to build massive new prison facilities; and disproportionately criminalized crack cocaine over cocaine. Some have argued this bill led directly to the U.S.' rise of mass incarceration. The ramifications of police militarization were extremely severe, particularly in cities like Los Angeles. In the late-80s, LAPD had responded to gang violence with a series of extremely violent community raids, including Operation Hammer, which was organized under the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH). In the 1990s, as many as 2,000 people a year were killed in Los Angeles County due to gang violence. In September 1993, a mass meeting in Elysian Park organized by La Eme was called to put an end to "violence between Mexicans", however such truces were not usually long-lasting. So, after the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill, the LAPD responded by ramping up its anti-gang tactics, including home and apartment raids, street sweeps, and civil gang