The Devils Rebels, Brooklyn Teen Gang

“A part of Brooklyn that few people see anymore, it is a battleground for police and young street criminals.”

In this night footage from 1976, supposedly filmed in secret, NBC shows members of the teen gang the Devils Rebels (most aged 15 or 16) drinking, taking drugs, fighting and having run-ins with the cops.

The action takes place in Brooklyn’s 83rd precinct, better known as Bushwick. Then “as much a neighborhood of rats and stray dogs and burned out buildings as it is of people,” today it’s “arguably the coolest place on Earth.” Ah, how things change.

(via the Gothamist)