Judge Issues Sweeping Injunction Against Gang : Panorama City: The order prohibits Blythe Street gang members from engaging in many otherwise legal acts. It aims at stemming drug trafficking.

The city of Los Angeles added sweeping powers of arrest Wednesday to its legal arsenal in a battle to free a San Fernando Valley street from the grip of a drug-dealing gang that has been compared to an occupying army.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge John H. Major issued a 22-point injunction against the Blythe Street gang in Panorama City, forbidding gang members to engage in many otherwise legal acts, such as standing on rooftops or possessing portable telephones. The order is only the second of its kind in the city’s history and far broader than the first.

Deputy City Atty. Robert A. Ferber, who argued the case for the injunction at a hearing March 25, called it “the most powerful order in the country ever issued against a street gang.”

In its argument, the city attorney’s office said the area was “under the occupation of a concerted and organized group of criminals who virtually control the activities and lifestyles of all who dare to live and work in the area.”

Mark Silverstein, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, called the ruling “radical and extreme” and “legally indefensible.”

The injunction, which takes effect today, bans possession of a wide range of legal devices that police and residents contend the gang uses for illicit purposes. The order prohibits gang members from possessing portable radios, large flashlights, radio scanners or cellular telephones, for example, because police and residents say the devices are used to alert drug dealers to the approach of law enforcement officers.

Also banned are many common mechanics’ tools--such as hammers, locking pliers and screwdrivers--because gang members allegedly use them to dismantle stolen vehicles. Spray-paint cans or etching devices used to apply the gang’s graffiti tag are prohibited. So are a wide variety of items--such as hammers, crowbars, large belt buckles and razors--that have been used as weapons.

Violating those or any other element of the injunction would subject gang members to prosecution for contempt of court, which carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Before enforcing the injunction against the more than 350 gang members police say they have identified, the gang members will have to be served with Major’s order. Police say they will begin that task today.

Ferber said, however, that the injunction’s effectiveness will not be measured in arrests or in long sentences for violations. Rather, he said, its effect will be seen in how much of a dent can be made in the sales of heroin, cocaine and marijuana on Blythe Street, west of the Van Nuys General Motors Plant.

The order also establishes an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew for juvenile gang members in a 112-square-block area between Van Nuys and Sepulveda boulevards unless the juveniles are accompanied by a parent or guardian or can prove they are going to or coming from work or school. Regardless of age, all gang members who enter the two-block area immediately around Blythe Street after 8 p.m. are required to prove they live there or be subject to arrest.

Other parts of the order seek to stop the gang from harassing or intimidating residents, trespassing, blocking streets or driveways, or harboring anyone who appears to be fleeing police. Further, gang members are ordered to stay off rooftops, where they allegedly act as lookouts, unless they are making emergency repairs.

City Atty. James K. Hahn said the many legal activities banned by the order are precursors to illegal drug dealing and other criminal pursuits. He called the ruling a “big first step toward ending this gang’s ability to operate its drug-trafficking ring and dominate this neighborhood through violence and terror.”

But the ACLU’s Silverstein said the “sweeping and unprecedented” order “violates the most fundamental principles of due process” and predicted that it would be overturned if appealed.

The ACLU had argued against the injunction request as a friend of the court. It was not a party to the lawsuit, in which the city had asked Major to declare the gang a public nuisance and subject it to a long list of conditions. Before the ACLU can appeal the decision, however, it needs the cooperation of a member of the gang to act as a defendant.

Silverstein said police will have broad discretion to decide how strictly to enforce the order and predicted that it will lead to arbitrary actions, saying officers will “attempt to apply the court’s order to any Latino youths they believe to be gang members.” He had urged Major to require the city attorney’s office to identify the targets of its lawsuit by name.

But Major wrote in his ruling that the gang was an association that could be sued collectively, much as a social club or group of condominium owners could be.

“The Blythe Street gang shares common purposes to recruit new members, to control the . . . area as their ‘turf’ and to engage in activities designed to further their reign of terror,” Major wrote.

Major also wrote that criminal activities are not constitutionally protected and that the gang’s various methods of ensuring that nothing interferes with its lucrative drug trade violate the rights of the law-abiding residents of the street to free use and enjoyment of their property.

The city attorney’s office announced that it would seek such an injunction last November, within weeks of the murder by suspected gang members of a popular apartment owner who had worked with police to clean up the street. To build a case against the gang, police and Probation Department workers interviewed residents and owners of buildings on the street, where an estimated 4,000 people live.

In presenting its case, the city acknowledged that traditional law enforcement efforts to halt the drug dealing on the street had failed and that the residents of the block were afraid to even report much of the crime that occurred.

Police statistics for the 12 months that ended Nov. 4, for example, showed that 301 serious crimes--including assaults, auto thefts, burglaries, drug sales and robberies--were reported in the most dangerous block of the street, between Van Nuys Boulevard and Willis Avenue. But City Atty. Hahn said only one in 10 crimes there is reported because of the gang’s “grip of terror”.