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The Fastest Runners is composed of younger boys who fight with switch-blade knives. When they grow up they graduate into adult gangs. All these organizations have female auxiliaries, membership in which requires the young colored girls to solicit on the streets and turn the proceeds over to the boys. Girls as young as 11 participate and at 12 are “debs,” with full standing.

Among offenses which are practically Negro monopolies in Washington are the following:

Numbers and policy slips. Almost all numbers sellers, even in white neighborhoods and in government office buildings, are colored men and women. In other cities Sicilians, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos and Mexicans get in on this activity, but there are no sizeable groups of such in Washington. The modus operandi of numbers selling will be described in the chapter on gambling.

Sale of reefers. Almost all marijuana retailers are colored, which also is unique to Washington.

Theft and conversion of government checks at the lower level. The men, because so many are janitors and elevator boys, have entree to apartment buildings and tenement houses and access to mail-boxes. These thieves strike at the middle or at the end of the month, when checks are sent out by the Treasury for G.I. remunerations, Social Security benefits, pensions, army subsistence and similar regular allotments. Those who do the manual stealing seldom attempt to cash the checks, which are turned over to fences, often white, including storekeepers and sometimes bankers.