Praise, Protests Greet Suit Against Blythe Street Gang

The copper-colored cane 75-year-old Vera Leeman uses to help her walk is as good a symbol as any of the grip the Blythe Street gang holds on the law-abiding residents of this block-long stretch of despair.

She said she walks with the cane because six months ago, gang members “knocked me down and started kicking me because they knew I was watching them and they didn’t want me to.”

Leeman, who now limps out of her apartment on Blythe only during the day and even then loops the strap of her blue purse securely around her neck, acknowledged that her attackers achieved their goal.

“They thought that if they beat me up I would back off, and I more or less did,” she said. “I can’t keep up with those kids anymore.”

So Leeman was pleased Monday with the news that city officials filed a lawsuit in Van Nuys Superior Court seeking powerful legal ammunition in the form of an injunction to limit the activities of the Panorama City gang.

If granted, the civil injunction could make it illegal for the 350 or more members of the gang to congregate, arm themselves, stop cars or engage in other activities that enforce their domination of the street.

The city’s lawsuit compares the gang to an occupying army that controls the area’s residents through intimidation and violence.

It is only the second time the city has gone to court seeking to have an organized street gang declared a public nuisance. In 1987, Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn asked for a broad injunction against a gang in the Cadillac-Corning area of the Westside and won a six-point preliminary order that he says was a key factor in reducing crime there.

Deputy Los Angeles Police Chief Mark A. Kroeker and Barry Nidorf, the county’s chief probation officer, also vowed Monday to mobilize the resources of their offices to enforce the injunction against the drug-dealing gang. Kroeker said that if the injunction is granted, he will authorize overtime so that gang-detail detectives, foot-beat officers and other police assigned to the area just west of the now-shuttered General Motors plant can enforce its restrictions.

“There’s no question . . . that Blythe Street is going to be a little bit tougher,” Hahn acknowledged at a gathering of residents of the street. “They’re more violent and they’ve been here longer.”

But, he said, “we intend to be successful.”

The legal maneuver was immediately attacked as unconstitutional by the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed Hahn in the Cadillac-Corning lawsuit against the Playboy Gangster Crips.

“The judge in the Playboy Gangster Crips case clearly indicated that you cannot bring this kind of action against all these unknown people and try to transform the criminal law into a civil action to try to prevent people from doing things that are constitutionally protected,” said Paul Hoffman, the Los Angeles ACLU’s legal director.

“If they have evidence to support the things they claim in the complaint, then they ought to go after specific people for specific offenses.”

He added that the organization will consider going to court to argue against the injunction.

Hahn acknowledged that the 26-point injunction, if granted, would infringe on the rights of the gang members. But, he argued, the gang’s tactics of intimidation and violence already deny constitutional rights to property owners and residents in an area between Van Nuys Boulevard, Chase Street, Sepulveda Boulevard and Valerio Street.

The city attorney’s office began working on the injunction in November, after a well-liked landlord was killed during a shootout with gang members.

“We have to stand up for the rights of every person who lives in this area,” Hahn said.

Whether an injunction is effective will turn, in part, on whether residents alert police to violations by gang members. Arnold Goldman, co-owner of an apartment building on the street, said he would show up in court to help persuade a judge to issue the injunction.

“This is the best thing they could do, and whoever opposes it ought to come and walk on the block,” he said. “It’s complete anarchy. We have a situation on the street like Beirut or Somalia, yet it’s in the city. They ought to call out the military.”

Manuel Flores, who owns the only store on the street, a tiny one-stop shopping center that sells everything from boomboxes to baby clothes and meat to medicine, also hopes the injunction is the answer.

“I want it to work,” he said. “It would mean a new life for Blythe. The people have been waiting a long time.”

Hanging around with a group of youths outside Flores’ store was a 14-year-old gang member who sneered at the lawsuit and the promise of a police crackdown. He said he had been in the gang for five months and was proud of it.

“The gang will never leave,” he said. “We’ll stay and fight back. We’re No. 1.”