Council Directs Police to Clamp Down on City’s Gangs

For the second time in two years, the San Diego City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to direct police to focus their limited resources on gang “hot spots” in order to rid San Diego’s streets of gang activity.

Acting on a two-page memorandum by Mayor Maureen O’Connor and Councilman Wes Pratt, the council called for the deployment of mobile command posts and strike teams in gang-infested areas. They also asked that gang members be given high priority in the allocation of scarce jail beds.

“We simply can’t--and won’t--tolerate this level of violence in San Diego,” O’Connor said. “If these steps don’t stop the random violence, we’ll take tougher ones.”

San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen told the council that there have been 97 homicides in 1991, up from 81 at this date last year. There also have been 46 drive-by shootings this year, 11 of them this month, he said.

To respond to troubled areas, Burgreen said, the police will make greater use of their two mobile command units. On Tuesday night, for example, a unit was scheduled to be posted at 30th Street and Imperial Avenue until midnight.

In order to staff those units longer, as well as assign extra officers to gang and drug teams, Burgreen plans to use about 30 off-duty officers daily on an overtime basis.

That plan will cost about $9,000 daily--or about $300,000 through Labor Day--an expense that Burgreen said he believes can be absorbed in his budget.

Several council members wondered whether, in light of the county’s jail crowding problem, there will be room in jail for the extra people these units may arrest.

Burgreen said he and Sheriff Jim Roache will be meeting with Superior Court Judge James A. Malkus, who has set jail-population limits in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, in hopes of freeing beds. Apparently, the law enforcement officers will ask the judge to relax the standards temporarily.