When Marines get tattoos, they use official emblems, he said. California Highway Patrolmen get killed in the line of duty more often than sheriff’s deputies, he says, and they don’t get tattoos. The preponderance of female shinigami may reflect the Shinto belief in a goddess of deaththat is, Izanami. He said it wasn’t racially motivated-he recalls a black man and some Latinos being tattooed-but looking back, he thinks “maybe Vikings weren’t a good choice.”īaca wishes deputies would just stop joining the tattoo subculture. not skeletal or hooded only their scythe indicates a connection with the Grim Reaper. He got one, and when he showed his buddies, they got them too. One day, he was at a tattoo parlor in Long Beach when he spotted the helmeted Nordic marauder on the wall. He and a buddy were talking one day and decided they wanted a tattoo for their station. “If they want to see my leg, they’re going to have to get a warrant.”Ī white department veteran in a position of authority claims he got the first Viking tattoo back in 1980, when there were very few women or blacks in the department. “If we had a tattoo with a doughnut dipped into a cup of coffee, they’d criticize us for that,” he said. The county paid $9 million in fines and training costs to settle the lawsuits in 1996. Membership swelled in the 1980s at overwhelmingly white sheriff’s stations that were islands in black and Latino immigrant communities.Ī federal judge hearing class-action litigation against the department described the most well-known of the groups, the Lynwood Vikings, as a “neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang” and found that deputies had engaged in racially motivated hostility. Senior officers say they began with the creation of the Little Devils at the East Los Angeles station in 1971. Grim Reapers with scythes have been portrayed frequently in popular culture, such as in 'Bill & Teds Bogus Journey,' 'Family Guy' and 'The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.' In honor of the rich history of scythes, take a look at 75 spectacular scythe tattoos from talented tattoo artists around the world. The groups-with macho monikers like the Pirates, Vikings, Rattlesnakes and Cavemen-have long been a subculture in the country’s largest Sheriff’s Department and, in some cases, an inside track to acceptance in the ranks. Then a street cop at the Lennox station, this deputy has risen to a key position in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department-along with other members of his “club.” The somber image of Death’s hooded skull and scythe tattooed onto the inside of the deputy’s left ankle in 1989 initiated him into a select fraternity called the Grim Reapers.
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