Test of Anti-Gang Court Order Postponed : Blythe Street: The defendant fails to show for a hearing. His constitutional challenge of the ban on certain activities must wait.

Jessie (Speedy) Gonzalez could have tested the law Tuesday. Instead, the 18-year-old reputed gang member let his feet do the talking; he failed to show up in Van Nuys Municipal Court and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Cynthia Solomon, the deputy public defender representing Gonzalez, an alleged member of the Blythe Street Dukes street gang, was prepared to challenge the constitutionality of a controversial court order banning gang members from congregating after 8 p.m. on Blythe Street west of Van Nuys Boulevard in Panorama City. It also prohibits alleged gang members from engaging in a laundry list of otherwise legal activities, such as carrying cellular phones, beepers, bricks and bottles.

Solomon was seeking to have the charge dismissed.

The arguments will have to wait for another day, said Solomon, who declined to discuss specifics of the case. Municipal Judge Martin Suits issued a warrant for Gonzalez’s arrest after Solomon told him that she did not know where Gonzalez is, and she has been unable to contact him.

Gonzalez was the first alleged gang member arrested for disobeying the order; if convicted he faces a maximum of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Gonzalez was seen participating in what police officers believed was a drug deal with the occupant of a van stopped on Blythe Street, said Deputy City Atty. Jule Bishop. Gonzalez and a companion vaulted over a fence, but later officers saw him shouting anti-police obscenities and hurling empty beer bottles at their patrol car, Bishop said.

He allegedly ran again, this time into an occupied first-floor apartment, where officers found him hiding in a closet.

Gonzalez was accused of violating several provisions of the 22-point injunction. Among them: dodging police by threatening residents while forcing his way into an occupied dwelling--a common gang practice, according to authorities. Gonzalez allegedly was carrying a beeper and obstructing traffic on Blythe Street, activities also barred by the injunction.

The city attorney’s office sought the court order in April to combat the Blythe Street gang’s grip on several blocks of run-down apartment buildings that make up its turf, where police say the gang deals drugs and controls residents through terror.

The injunction, the most wide-ranging of any issued by the city in a public nuisance case, remains legally untested.