O.C. Police Decry Gang Photo Ruling

A court ruling declaring improper a police practice to detain and photograph suspected gang members for police dossiers threatens to rob investigators of an important weapon against street gangs, police and prosecutors said Friday.

The opinion, issued this week by the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana, sent police chiefs scrambling to review their policies on detaining youths who are suspected of gang involvement but not arrested for any crimes.

The ruling declared that a policy by the Orange Police Department was a violation of the youths’ civil rights because it “constitutes too significant an intrusion on individual liberties.”

Orange Police Chief John Robertson said he found the justices’ comments “disheartening because we spend a lot of time battling gangs and this is a step backward.”

Robertson said he was surprised that the court sought to take away an effective tool from law enforcement officials. He noted that the justices stated in their opinion that “public concern and outrage over the crime and senseless violence caused by street gangs is understandably strong.”

Robertson said, “I have never received one complaint about taking (people’s) pictures for a gang book, but I have received dozens, if not hundreds, of complaints about gang crime from citizens who believe that government is not doing enough to protect (them) from these menaces.”

The chief said his department’s 10-member gang-prevention unit used its gang book to make about 130 gang-related arrests a month, ranging from malicious mischief to murder. “It’s an excellent tool for controlling gang violence,” Robertson said. “If we lose it, it’s going to affect gang prevention policies countywide.”

Laguna Beach Police Chief Neil J. Purcell Jr. also disagreed with the justices’ comments. “The issue of gangs and senseless violence being committed on members of the community is justified by the public interest,” Purcell said. “I don’t see the mere taking of a suspect’s photo violating his 4th Amendment rights.”

Acknowledging that merely detaining and photographing suspected gang members could lead to “potential” civil rights violations, Purcell said his department is careful not “to mix gang book photos in photo lineups or commingle them with arrest files.”

Purcell said his department was not likely to change its policy unless it received new guidelines from the Orange County district attorney’s office, which now uses a sophisticated computer system that stores profiles and photos of 17,000 suspected gang members. Prosecutors have declared it one of their best weapons in fighting gangs.

Prosecutor Douglas Woodsmall, who heads the district attorney’s gang unit, said the court’s ruling does not prevent police from maintaining gang books if officers obtain pictures of suspected gang members through police mugs and other legal means.

“I would have liked to see the decision go the other way,” Woodsmall said. “But we can still ultimately accomplish the same thing if we obtain these pictures in a way consistent with the opinion.”

The gang book policy sparked controversy recently in Fountain Valley where parents of Asian American youths complained that their children were being unfairly branded as gang members.

Fountain Valley Police Chief Elvin Miali said Friday his department does not keep a gang book, but merely pictures of about 400 suspected gang members in a file drawer.

“We take pictures (of suspected gang members) only if we get permission and only if we have probable cause,” he said.

Daniel C. Tsang, who heads the Alliance Working for Asian Rights and Empowerment, a group formed earlier this year to fight police agencies’ gang book policy, said his group welcomed the ruling.

“We feel vindicated,” Tsang said. “You can’t single out people and take their pictures just because they dress alike or hang out together. It’s wrong.”

Although they criticized police detention tactics, the justices did not overturn the conviction of Mynor Arnold Rodriguez, a 17-year-old who was tried as an adult. The appellate court found there was ample evidence, aside from the gang book, to convict the teen-ager, who was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for the 1990 shooting death of Roberto Eddie Gonzalez, 20, of Corona.