Anti-Gang Court Order Survives Its 1st Challenge : Blythe Street: Judge denies request to dismiss complaint that an 18-year-old possessed a pager and glass bottle.

A far-reaching court order that forbids members of a Panorama City street gang to engage in otherwise legal activity survived its first court challenge Thursday when a judge refused to dismiss charges that an alleged gang member illegally possessed a pager and a glass bottle.

Carefully sidestepping the issue of whether the temporary injunction is constitutional, Van Nuys Municipal Court Judge Lloyd M. Nash denied a defense request to dismiss a criminal complaint against Jessie (Speedy) Gonzalez, 18, a Panorama City resident and alleged member of the Blythe Street Dukes gang.

The American Civil Liberties Union earlier lost a battle to prevent the city attorney’s office from getting the injunction, which was formally issued April 7 by Van Nuys Superior Court Judge John H. Major.

Civil libertarians have continued to denounce the court order, which bars 22 specific actions by alleged gang members in the area around Blythe Street. It prohibits those the police class as gang members from taking part in otherwise legal acts which police say are associated with the gang’s drug trafficking, such as standing on rooftops and possessing cellular phones.

Thursday’s ruling resulted from a legal motion made by Gonzalez’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Cynthia Solomon, questioning the legality of the criminal complaint filed by the city attorney’s office.

However, Solomon went on to argue that the injunction should be declared unconstitutional because of its strict limitations on personal behavior. “You cannot find anyone in violation of the law if the law is unconstitutional,” Solomon said.

Nash said however that under the specific circumstances of the hearing, he could not rule on the validity of the injunction itself.

“I believe I am limited in certain respects to the four corners of the complaint,” said Nash, adding that the constitutional issues will have to be argued in another proceeding.

Gonzalez, the first to be arrested for violating the court order, was charged with committing five specific acts barred by the injunction, including possessing a pager, obstructing traffic and possessing a dangerous weapon--a glass bottle. He faces two other criminal charges unrelated to the injunction.

Solomon said an appeal of Thursday’s ruling is almost certain.

Withstanding its first court test “is a sign of hope” that the injunction will stand, said Deputy City Atty. Jule Bishop. The city’s use of the tactic “is not as blatantly horrible as people say it is,” she contended.

City prosecutors sought the injunction to loosen the gang’s grip on the Blythe Street neighborhood, saying the prohibited acts are the means by which the gang deals drugs and intimidates local residents.

“I think it is working well,” Genny Alberts, a building owner and manager who has worked hard to clean up the street, said in an interview. She now sees far fewer gang members hanging out on the street, she said.

“The people are more comfortable and we don’t have as many problems as we used to have.”

Even so, Alberts and others said, the gang remains a prominent force on the street just west of the closed Van Nuys General Motors plant.

Los Angeles Police Detective Wayne Dufort, an investigator with the Van Nuys Division’s CRASH anti-gang unit, said in an interview that the injunction is not strict enough. “The things that existed before still occur, but not in as great numbers,” Dufort said. “My feeling is that it hasn’t shut it down.”

He said drug dealing is now concentrated in the middle of the block just west of Van Nuys Boulevard--instead of all along that stretch--and some of the activity has been driven elsewhere, particularly to Willis Avenue to the west and Valerio Street to the east.

However, he said, gang members are quicker to flee when police approach and drive-by shootings are rarer.

Dufort said 38 gang members have been legally notified of the injunction and its prohibitions. Police cannot arrest people for violating the injunction until they have been formally presented with the document.

Bishop said 13 members of the gang have been arrested so far for violating the injunction. Of these, 10 are juveniles and two are adults who failed to appear in court. Arrest warrants were issued.

Gonzalez, who pleaded not guilty, is scheduled to appear Aug. 9 for a trial that will probably be delayed. After failing to appear at a hearing last week, he is being held in County Jail in lieu of $15,000 bail.

Richard Lee Colvin is a Times staff writer and Thom Mrozek is a correspondent.