L.A. Asks for Restrictions on Blythe Street Gang Activities : Panorama City: A suit contends that hanging out and possession of certain tools aid violence and drug-dealing. The ACLU warns of liberties being trampled.

Comparing a Panorama City street gang to an occupying army that confines law-abiding residents to a prison of fear, attorneys for the city of Los Angeles asked a judge on Thursday to curtail members’ freedom to gather, travel and possess such otherwise innocent materials as pen markers, mechanics’ tools and flashlights.

Deputy City Atty. Robert A. Ferber told Van Nuys Superior Court Judge John H. Major that legal activities such as hanging out on the street enforce the cocaine-dealing gang’s virtual stranglehold on Blythe Street, and that traditional law enforcement methods have been an utter failure.

But the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California contended that the city is seeking to suspend the Constitution in an area around Blythe Street just west of Van Nuys Boulevard rather than attacking the gang problem by prosecuting crime.

ACLU staff attorney Mark Silverstein said the city had failed to compile evidence that any of the 350 or more unnamed gang members targeted by the lawsuit had broken the law. Instead, the city wants the judge to declare that mere gang membership justifies trampling on civil liberties, a tactic that he said has no legal standing.

Were the city’s proposed injunction granted, the ACLU brief states, “lifelong friends, even brothers . . . would be forbidden to associate with one another. Parents would be forbidden to take their children to stores, restaurants, hospitals, or churches after 8 p.m. Some defendants would be banished entirely . . . and would be forbidden to make overnight visits to relatives.”

After listening to the arguments, Major said he would issue a decision by Tuesday.

The Blythe Street case marks only the second time Los Angeles has filed a civil nuisance-abatement lawsuit against a violent street gang.

In 1987, the city sought a similar order in the Cadillac-Corning area of the Westside. The judge in that case, however, ruled that the injunction request was “far, far overreaching” and narrowed the restrictions on the gang sought by the city to six crimes, such as defacing buildings.

But Ferber defended the city’s current lawsuit as a “carefully drawn” tool that is “virtually the last resort” available for halting the terrorizing of the 4,000 mostly law-abiding residents of the street. He compared the gang to an organized crime syndicate that frustrates police by posting lookouts on roofs, setting up elaborate signaling systems and intimidating residents by assault, robbery, rape and murder.

The lawsuit contends that in the gang’s hands, flashlights become signaling devices, markers are used to cover any available flat surface with the gang’s “tag,” and mechanic’s tools are used to dismantle stolen cars.

The city attorney’s office began working on the lawsuit after the October slaying by alleged gang members of a popular Blythe Street landlord who was part of an anti-gang crusade.

The 23 specific activities the lawsuit seeks to enjoin are based on residents’ and property owners’ descriptions of the brutal and businesslike way in which the 350 alleged gang members ensure that nothing hinders their highly lucrative cocaine trade.

Ferber said that if gang members can be prevented from engaging in those legal activities--such as using cellular telephones, whistles and flashlights to signal approaching danger, standing in the way of cars and pedestrians or hanging out in large groups--it would help dismantle their criminal enterprise.

When it was filed, the lawsuit also asked for bans on gang hand signals, gang attire and any gang gatherings, on both public and private property. An amended suit, however, no longer mentions hand signals or attire and limits the restrictions on gatherings to public places and to those specifically for purposes of intimidation or threat.

If granted in full, the injunction would impose an 8 p.m. curfew on minors unless accompanied by their parents or they can prove they are going to school or work. A curfew would be established for non-residents regardless of their age in a two-square-block area that includes the block of Blythe Street that is under siege. The injunction also seeks to prevent gang members from arming themselves, intimidating their opponents, ferrying drugs in their cars or forcing residents to give them refuge.

Violators of the injunction would be held in contempt of court and would be subject to fines or imprisonment.

Major turned down ACLU requests that he appoint legal counsel for the gang members or require that they be notified that they have a right to an attorney. The city already has served notice of the lawsuit on 30 alleged gang members.

Rebecca Martinez, the mother of an alleged gang member, received such a notice on behalf of her son and attended Thursday’s hearing. She said she did not know whether her 16-year-old son, now in Juvenile Hall for violating his probation in an earlier drug-dealing conviction, was a gang member.

“He goes out,” Martinez said. “I don’t know what he does.” Still, she said, she is sure he is not a violent criminal.