L.A. to Target Blythe Street Gang in Suit : Panorama City: The legal action to be announced Monday would allow police to arrest those who merely gather in the neighborhood.

The city of Los Angeles will try to tame a cocaine-dealing street gang, which has terrorized residents of Blythe Street in Panorama City for years, by asking a judge to declare the members a public nuisance and to forbid them to congregate there, the city attorney’s office said Friday.

Plans to file a lawsuit against the gang will be announced Monday by City Atty. James K. Hahn at a meeting with residents of the street to be attended by Deputy Police Chief Mark A. Kroeker and Los Angeles County Chief Probation Officer Barry Nidorf.

A spokesman for the city attorney’s office declined to elaborate Friday on plans for the lawsuit against the gang, which was allegedly involved in the shooting death of a local landlord in October.

If the lawsuit is successful, it would create a major, and controversial, weapon in the city’s battle against violent street gangs. When the city attorney’s office announced in November that it would file such a lawsuit, police said it would allow them to arrest gang members for merely congregating on the street, without requiring officers to witness a drug transaction or an assault.

The city several years ago filed a similar lawsuit against gang members in the Cadillac-Corning area of the Westside that aroused strong opposition from civil liberties groups. But that lawsuit was dropped before an injunction was issued.

The injunction sought by the lawsuit is similar to one secured by the city of Burbank against gang members in the 100 block of South Elmwood Avenue. Burbank police say that injunction, which bars gang members from gathering together, has effectively halted what was once an active drug trade and cut down on graffiti and violent activity in the area.

To stop a war between rival groups, the city of San Fernando passed an ordinance in 1991 that prohibited members of two local gangs from entering Las Palmas Park. That ordinance expired last July after police said it had made the park safer.

The offensive by the city of Los Angeles against the Blythe Street gang comes nearly four months after the Halloween night shooting death of Donald Aragon, a popular landlord who had been involved in efforts by property owners to loosen the gang’s stranglehold on a long block of the street.

Police believe Aragon’s truck was surrounded by a large group of gang members before he was killed, but only one 17-year-old, an alleged gang member, has been charged with murder in his death. Another alleged gang member was convicted of possessing the stolen gun that Aragon used to shoot and kill another youth as he tried to defend himself.

Shortly after the killing, city officials vowed to mount an assault against the gang that openly sells cocaine to passersby and intimidates residents into silence. Increased police patrols on the short stretch of run-down buildings west of Van Nuys Boulevard resulted in numerous arrests, but residents and property owners on the street said that recently the gang has resumed selling drugs openly.