Experts Warn Gang Sweeps May Have a Negative Effect

The Los Angeles Police Department’s anti-gang sweeps may be needed to re-establish authority in high-crime neighborhoods but paradoxically they run the risk of strengthening the gangs, some university-based crime researchers say.

If most of those arrested in recent weeks are freed without serving more than a few hours in jail, that may increase their status in the neighborhood, their solidarity with the gang and their confidence that they rule the streets, the researchers warn.

The LAPD disagrees. Even three or four days in jail will pressure gang members to modify their behavior in important ways that might lessen the likelihood of violence, said Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon, who supervises the sweeps.

The experiences of other police departments show that “symbolic acts” like sweeps may be needed to re-establish police authority in high-crime neighborhoods, said Jeffrey Fagan, associate director of the Criminal Justice Center at John Jay College at City College of New York.

“If the symbolic acts meaningfully establish that the community won’t tolerate gang warfare and going about in public with weapons, that’s a rational goal,” he said. “But if all these guys are turned loose in 48 hours, it may have a neutral or even negative effect.”

If the sweeps are quickly perceived by gang members as the work of a “paper tiger,” because no serious punishment follows, “there may be the negative effect that these guys learn that the cops actually don’t have the resources to fully enforce the law everywhere,” said Fagan, author of several studies on youth gangs and urban violence.

Police and prosecutors said statistics on disposition of the 1,453 people arrested in sweeps two weeks ago are incomplete because many cases take as long as four weeks to work their way through the system.

Elusive Numbers

The statistics “may never be complete” because not all the arrests were noted as the products of the sweeps, said Al Albergate, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office. But in 132 felony arrests tied directly to the sweeps, charges were brought in 66, which is the normal rate of 50%, Albergate said.

At the misdemeanor level, the city attorney’s office usually brings charges in about 70% of cases presented by police, said spokesman Mike Qualls. Of the 82 known misdemeanor arrests tied to the sweeps and presented for prosecution, charges were brought in 47, a rate of about 57%.

The ultimate disposition of the cases lies months in the future. Researchers agree, however, that there may be at least a temporary beneficial effect--prevention of the “badlands syndrome,” in which some areas of a city are seen as immune from the law.

“There is something to be said for a massive show of force at the point where the kids, and everyone else, think they own the streets and there’s nothing the cops can do about it,” said Mark Kleiman, a policy analyst with the criminal justice policy and management program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

“The question is, what’s the actual consequence of the arrest?”

It is not only prison terms that influence the outcome, he said, but also other, perhaps more creative, punishments.

“If these kids are crack users as well as dealers, a urine testing program could make them come in and give a sample every week for six months. If he gets, say, a misdemeanor plea with six months tight probation, that may be just fine if it sets him up for a tougher penalty the next time he gets arrested.”

However, “If the sanctions aren’t severe enough to make a difference, it boomerangs,” said a respected academic researcher on gangs who asked not to be identified.

“The guys go around bragging that they beat the system. The last thing you want to do,” he said, is to “increase their sense of identification and solidarity, reinforce their special (tough) nature.”

Being caught in a sweep “will be a way of getting esteem and prestige” for gang members, predicted Diego Vigil, a USC anthropologist and author of “Barrio Gangs: Street Life and Identity in Southern California” and “From Indian to Chicano, the Dynamics of the Mexican American Culture.”

Like an Adventure

“They wind up looking on it as an adventure. It gives them something to talk about when they get out.”

Gang counselor Stephan J. Fleisher disagreed. Even if charges are not filed after an arrest, the experience of being arrested and booked sends a signal that lawlessness will not be tolerated, he said.

“It’s long overdue--to enforce probation conditions and curfew,” said Fleisher, head of the adolescent and family division of Valley Child Guidance Clinic in Northridge. Fleisher is a counselor in a program that tries, through counseling, to get gang members off the streets and turn them into responsible citizens.

“I think the police have been lax, and I think they know it.”

When placed on probation, gang members are often ordered to obey curfew--which forbids those under 18 to be outdoors without adult supervision between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.--and to not associate with other gang members. These restrictions are rarely enforced, Fleisher said, and the sweeps are “a way to enforce probation requirements.”

Problem Explored

Assistant Police Chief Vernon replied that police officers on the street have no way of knowing specific probation requirements put on individuals by judges--such as an order not to associate with certain companions or to avoid certain neighborhoods--but that authorities are looking into the problem.

The county Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee--which includes representatives of the Police and Sheriff’s departments, city and district attorneys and the courts--has discussed the possibility of requiring those on probation to carry plastic identification cards stating any such conditions, Vernon said.

Vernon described the sweeps as “legal and professional harassment” of identifiable gang members “to make them reduce the overt identification” they wear, such as “bandannas, T-shirts, caps, that sort of thing.”

“That’s what’s causing the killings,” Vernon said.

“In drive-by shootings, quite often the person they kill they’ve never seen before. They shoot at the colors. They just say, ‘There’s one of them. Get him!’ ”

He said the sweeps are meant to force gang members to think: “Every time I wear my colors, they stop me, they go over my car, they impound my car. I don’t want to wear that gang hat anymore. I don’t want to lose my car.”

Killings Decline

“We find that’s working,” Vernon said. “The sweeps began in late February. In March of this year we had 16 killings, and in March of the prior year there were 26.”

Disagreeing with the academic researchers, Vernon said even short jail stays are having an impact on gang members.

“If a ‘gangbanger’ knows that every time he identifies himself as a gang member he’s going to do three or four days in jail, he stops being overt about it. He doesn’t want to go to jail every weekend. He wants to party and have fun.”

Another goal of the sweeps is to head off the “badlands” phenomena described by the researchers, in which both criminals and honest citizens come to believe that the law is not enforced in some areas, Vernon said.

Officers were told “to fly the flag, to reassure the 95% of the citizens in South-Central Los Angeles that the LAPD is there to serve and to help them. We gave stern admonitions to the officers to be gentle with the victims,” Vernon said. Officers were encouraged to turn loose those they stopped for minor traffic infractions or other minor offenses if they turned out not to be gang members.

Short-Term Reduction

Most researchers interviewed said sweeps would probably result in a short-term reduction of crime, almost certainly followed by increases in crime in other areas.

“We can predict as researchers in criminology that the problem will move,” said C. Ronald Huff, director of the Program for the Study of Crime and Delinquency at Ohio State University.

Gang members, particularly drug sellers, “learn where the sweeps occur and they move into nearby areas perceived as safer for them. It becomes a shell game,” he said.

A low percentage of prosecutions or convictions also would provide ammunition for those who argue that the basic idea of the sweeps--searching out individuals predetermined to be gang members--is unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union is “very concerned” and waiting to see how many arrests lead to trials, said Joel Maliniak, spokesman for the ACLU of Southern California.

“Are we really getting criminals or are we just creating publicity?” he asked.

R. Samuel Paz, an attorney and chairman of the Hispanic Advisory Council to the Los Angeles Police Commission, said the gang sweeps remind him of the mass roundups in the 1940s of Chicano zoot-suiters, who were arrested primarily because of their dress.

Paz, a board member of the ACLU Los Angeles chapter, said he is also concerned about the public’s willingness to suspend individual liberties in a crisis. “People are willing to say, ‘Let them (police) stop all the kids,’ ” he said. “That’s my real concern. That could be my kid.”

Some attorneys argued that the very concept of targeting gangs is flawed.

Unlike task forces that target specific crimes--such as auto theft, prostitution or drug dealing--the recent gang crackdown has focused on individuals. “Mere membership in a gang is not unlawful,” noted Hugh R. Manes, an attorney who specializes in police misconduct suits.

It is not unconstitutional for police to target gangs and their members as a group, said Erwin Chemerinsky, a specialist in constitutional law on the USC School of Law faculty.

It is, however, “real clear that, under the law, you can’t arrest somebody unless you believe they have committed a crime,” he said. “Making mass arrests on the basis of affiliation is clearly unconstitutional.”

Arresting someone because of their appearance would violate not only Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable seizure but First Amendment provisions protecting the right to peaceful assembly.

The problem is that “probable cause is a pretty loose standard,” he said, often caught up in subjective decisions.

Liability Question

Chemerinsky warned that “if the city is pursuing a policy of mass arrests without probable cause, and there is some indication that’s what they’re doing, then the city faces civil liability for violating the rights of gang members.”

In response, police say that clothing and hand signals commonly used by gangs are not the sole reasons for the arrests, although clothing and movements may help an officer establish probable cause.