Gangs Law Enforcement

The Gang Injunction: Upsides and Downsides

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In this morning’s LA Times there is an interestingly nuanced article
by Scott Gold about a new gang injunction located in a ten mile square area located between Sylmar and San Fernando. The injunction targets a large, long-established Hispanic gang called San Fer.

Injunctions are civil actions that function in a way similar to a restraining order. Certain people or groups of people—namely members of a certain gang—are served with a list of prohibitions, like, say, gathering in groups of more than two. (Here’s a short piece I did on gang injunctions for the LA Weekly in 2003 that explains a bit more.)

Injunctions have often proved to be useful tools for law enforcement and for communities when used intelligenly. But like most tools, they are only as good as those weilding them. When enforced without regard to individuals or circumstances, an injunction can quickly become a blunt instrument that harms as much as it cures—sometimes pushing kids who are not gang members, or those who are teetering in the edge, into the arms of the gang.

Here are some clips from the article:

Daniel, 15, lives on a tree-lined street at the northern tip of the San Fernando Valley.

It is a place of whiplashing contradiction. In one direction there are elegant Craftsmans, their roots as deep as the area’s historic olive groves, and tidy cul-de-sacs with driveway basketball hoops. In the other there is a poor, old-world barrio — barren lots overtaken by weeds, a tiny house with a hand-painted sign hung from a coat-hanger that reads: “RANCH EGGS.”

Daniel is no less confounding.

Around his neck, he wears a cross etched with the words of the Lord’s Prayer. He is spellbound by narrative writing and excels in martial arts and Aztec dancing. Still, he has become numb to violence and crime. A gang, San Fer, has long defined his neighborhood’s cultural and social structure. His father, a gang member, is in prison; his uncle was shot dead, by another gang member.

Daniel has been in trouble — for poking a kid with a stick, for possession of a cigarette. He is not a gang member, but lately, he has looked the part — oversized T-shirts; baggy jeans.

[SNIP]
By the end of the night, he was sent home with papers indicating that he could be a target of the gang injunction. A relative who raised him said she fears this could be the moment that pushes Daniel down the wrong path.

Gang injunctions come with daunting complexities in communities where a criminal enterprise has touched thousands of people — many of whom are not hard-core criminals or gang members themselves.

What should be done about teenagers who identify with a gang but do not participate in its criminal activities? If a gang spans generations, like San Fer, should an uncle be prohibited from speaking with his nephew if both are gang members?

There’s much more—all of it worth reading.

Photo by Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

6 Comments

  • What’s are the available alternative’s to the gang life for these kids? Are there resources or positive programs that reach out to these kids? Boys and Girls clubs, Library programs for young kids to get them interested in reading and spending time off the streets? How much money is being spent to provide alternative lifestyle choices for these at risk youngsters? (At risk, that’s a funny choice of words since it seems their all at risk today),.
    Gang injunctions and rousting any kid on the street may make a temporary difference but in the long run they just criminalize more kids by getting their name on a police list and jump starting an entry into the “System”.
    A system that is now bankrupting the taxpayer, but making huge profits and mucho dinero for the operators of the “System”.
    The “System” as described perfectly by author Tom Wolfe in his classic book “Bonfire of the Vanities”, as the district attorneys sit in their offices of the Bronx Judicial Courthouse looking out the window at the young men walking into the courthouse, all swagger and cockiness, and so young, not realizing they are about to become “chow for the system”.
    Kind of an apt description of our current dilemma with gangs and class and a justice system now so bloated with chow that it’s ready to have it’s stomach pumped.

  • “Gang Injunctions” have never made much sense to me. I’ve worked with enough of these kids to know that “membership” is fluid, to say the least. The guys aren’t keeping an excel spreadsheet on the current members. They’re hanging around with their friends from the neighborhood, maybe claiming membership on and off, maybe getting into trouble on and off. Then a lot of them get older and do different things and/or move away.

    I can see targeting crime. I can see trying to make the community safer and more livable. But I don’t see any way that gang injunctions end up being much different than profiling.

    It would be interesting to hear from someone in law enforcement about how this works on a day to day level and if they think it does any lasting good.

  • i am not saying i agree with gang injunctions for every gang neighborhood there is, but sometimes the gang becomes to big of a problem and to powerfull in that neighborhood that there is not much other choice.as far as other programs to help it would be nice if the families would help but they seem to just promote the gang life and it is passed down to the next generation and that is when programs won’t work if the family of the child advocates the gang life.

  • I knew as soon as you described this articles as “nuanced” that it would lean absurdly toward the gangbangers and their families. Fact is that Dep. Chief Michel Moore whose in charge of that area has been quoted in the (now) also gangbanger-favoring Daily News, that this is a valuable tool: hitherto, the SanFers had been openly taunting the cops, and if they were removed from one block, would just move to another one, hence the need for an area-wide injunction. They’ve shaken down/ extorted merchants and ordinary citizens for years, in many cases making them afraid to walk their streets, send their kids to the parks, etc. In many cases, this is a family business, of brothers and uncles and fathers, even mothers and aunts and grandmas, involved or serving as enablers. They use younger wanna-be youths who don’t have serious rap sheets yet, and aren’t on gang lists, as foot soldiers to “prove themselves” and if caught, take the lesser rap. A youth who hangs out with someone over 18 is technically “with an adult” for purposes of avoiding truancy charges, so making it illegal for gangbangers to hang out with each other or influence younger kids is a significant bonus. Boo-hoo that the ACLU is worried some gangbanger’s rights will be infringed upon, or if his friends all happen to be from the gang and his “social life” will now suffer. Use the time to study, crack a book instead of selling crack. I thought it was disgraceful for CM Alarcon to publicly oppose this injunction and even hold community meetings to question it, and arguably foment dissent — while of course, wanting more and more taxpayer dollars to provide programs for apprentice gangbangers (maybe some of your poetry classes can get a grant, too). These programs are fine when they’re dealing with younger kids who truly want an option to joining gangs, but they must go hand-in-hand with tough law enforcement.

    (Of ccurse, Alarcon also sponsored a motion to have our financially-strapped city put up a $5 million fund to bail out homeowners in Pacoima who are facing foreclosure, because, as he openly said, most don’t speak or read English and didn’t bother to get translations of loan documents they willingly signed. His area has the most foreclosures of any in L.A. — wonder how many belong to illegals, and how many of them have gangbanger kids?)

  • That is right the LAPD is responsible for increasing gang membership in Sylmar. The older cholos havs been working really hard to keep the little bald headed, baggy pants, and large white tee-shirt wearing good kids out of gangs.

    It is the robber baron gavachos and the LAPD and gang injuntions which have been pushing young mocosos into the cholo life-style. The glamorization of gangster music, clothes and etc. is being perpetuated by the prison industrial complex, rober baron gavachos and the LAPD. All the robber baron gavachos in city hall, city council and the city attorney’s office are all part of the robber baron gavacho conspiracy.

    We should never enforce any laws against young wanna-be cholitos, we all know this only pushes them into gangs. And of course never put any wanna-be cholito in any jail because this will only make it worse.

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