Mate, you're getting downvoted because folks think you're joking, but your history shows that you ask some pretty good questions around here.

The answer is yes, but not very many, and Southcentral Alaska doesn't have its name because of that. The dictionary of Alaskan English contains references long before the 1980s.

Back in 1996, Lawrence Trostle concluded in a paper written for Society: An Alaskan Perspective: "None of Alaska's relatively small cities can be said to have an "inner city." While Anchorage, which with a population of about 250,000 is the largest Alaska city, has some identifiable low income neighborhoods, such as Fairview and Mountain View, there is no evidence of organized street gang activity in those or any other neighborhoods. Alaska's gang problem appears to be an illusory one."

In the 1980s, that wasn't apparent. Alaska was no more immune to "gang panic" than the rest of the United States, which soaked in reports from southern California and New York City. By the late 1980s, the concern had risen to the point that the Anchorage Police Department created a special task force called the "Crips and Bloods Selective Enforcement Team."

There was some cause for concern. Gang members identifying with the Crips and Bloods were present in Seattle, Portland and Vancouver by 1988 — they'd seen an opportunity for selling crack at higher prices than competition-rich Southern California offered — and police thought they'd spread to Anchorage, too.

Ironically, the police probably outnumbered the actual number of gang members.

A 1988 report by the Anchorage Daily News found that police had identified only about 10 gang members who traveled back and forth between Anchorage and southern California. In six months of work, the task force made about 60 arrests — mostly of non-gang members — and engendered complaints from the local branch of the NAACP, who said black children were being detained and photographed by police.

By and large, southern California gang members traveled to Alaska to sell drugs, then left. They didn't bother to set up shop.

Five years later, however, Anchorage police officers testifying before the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee, declared confidently that gangs had arrived in Anchorage. In testimony to the committee they identified six groups — the Hamo Tribe, the Tiny Rascal Gang, the Bitches Most Wanted, the Local Boy Crips, the Leader of Crips and the Full Time Criminal Gang — with a combined membership of more than 200. They told the committee that fewer than 50 were hardcore members.

During the 1993 hearings, however, police were very careful to play down links to southern California gangs. They were burned in 1988, and one of the officers told David Holthouse of the Anchorage Daily News: "We're being careful not to hype this situation. This department has cried wolf on gangs in the past."

There were some links to southern California — similar tags and one or two people who lived in the area before coming up to Alaska. A 1997 affidavit filed by FBI agent Dale Anderson states that the Tiny Rascals arrived in Anchorage in 1990 or 1991 as three Long Beach, California men: Loto ''Sunshine'' Tith, Sina ''Bo'' Su and Mao ''Bandit'' San.

Su and San were arrested two years later, Tith left Anchorage, and the remaining presumptive leader, David "Joker" Powers, was arrested along with nine other people in a high-profile 1997 raid by APD and the FBI.