Asking the Right Questions on the Anti-Gang Beat : LAPD: Officers use persistent field interviews to probe the strata of gangland, separating members from ‘associates.’ But youths and activists complain that the procedures often violate civil rights.

It did not matter that Omar Valdez was not a gang member. His gangster looks--shaved head and baggy clothes--were enough to attract the attention of two carloads of authentic gang members looking to avenge an earlier attack, police said.

As the high school senior stood alone at a pay phone on Laurel Canyon Boulevard last month, he was shot several times in the chest and back, and died a few hours later.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s North Hollywood Division called in its gang experts. They quickly surmised that Valdez was, in police parlance, a “gang associate”--someone who hung around with gang members but was not a formally initiated participant.

How do police know that? Gang members, after all, don’t have to register with anybody. When officers unhesitatingly identify suspects or bullet-riddled bodies in the street as gang members or associates, what database are they using to justify such fine distinctions?

The answers lie in an effort to track gang membership down to the wanna-be level by the LAPD’s Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) program.

The longstanding practice, based on persistent “field interviews” with suspected gang members who may simply be hanging out, is a controversial one.

Some youths complain they are constantly rousted by CRASH officers based simply on their ethnicity and clothing. Civil liberties activists complain that the criteria officers use to pick subjects for questioning are arbitrary, and that the classification process borders on being unconstitutional.

Police insist that the CRASH teams’ aggressive methods are the only way to gather intelligence on the city’s 400 gangs and more than 50,000 gang members, who make up more than half the estimated gang members in Los Angeles County.

Before he was killed, Omar Valdez had been interviewed four times on the street since March by officers who were able to establish that he had connections to a local gang, said CRASH Detective Mark Aragon.

Valdez described to officers a relationship that is common in virtually all gang neighborhoods. He said he hung around with members of the area’s gang because he grew up with them, but never took part in gang activities.

It is a dangerous game, Aragon said. “They draw attention to themselves,” he said. “If Omar was wearing a polyester suit, this probably wouldn’t have happened.”

By the time they are 18 years old, about 90% of gang members in the LAPD’s files have been arrested, and 75% have been arrested at least twice, police say. By the time they reach age 20, more than half of those in the file are dead or in prison.

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To gather information for those files, CRASH officers stop and interview people, usually boys or men between the ages of 14 and 25. In a Latino neighborhood like Valdez’s, their targets have shaved heads or slicked-back hair, wear large pants, white T-shirts, baseball caps with gang insignias and big jackets.

The interviews can take place “at a traffic stop, or for any legitimate reason,” said Aragon, adding that popular gathering spots for gang members are parks, alleys or in front of apartment houses.

Police fill out a field interview card on each person they stop. A name, address, description and any gang affiliation is required. A brief description of who the person was with and what they were doing at the time of the stop is compiled by the officer.

Police sometimes check for tattoos, drugs and weapons in such field interviews, but only after asking the subject’s permission, Aragon said. If someone claims to be a gang member, a picture is taken and filed with the information card in the station’s gang-membership files.

“It is not like the police just pick out any Hispanic kid and give him an affiliation to a gang,” Aragon said.

But others say stopping youngsters--and often conducting searches without warrants--is legally questionable.

“It has never been clear what the guidelines are” for stopping and identifying gang members, said Manny Velasquez of Community Youth Gang Services, a government-funded agency that works with gang members. “I think the police are walking a really thin line there.”

Velasquez said officers stop and photograph even youths who don’t claim gang membership, harass other youths and search them without permission. Often police consider youths guilty simply by association, he said.

“I don’t think it is right that they are labeling a lot of kids who don’t need to be labeled,” said Velasquez. “If you do, you are empowering the kid to become a homeboy when he wasn’t going to before.”

Jerry, 19, an admitted North Hollywood gang member, said he is constantly being harassed by police.

“It happens because the police see four or five Mexicans standing around and see the way we are dressed,” he said. “They stop us because we are gang members. It doesn’t matter if we are doing anything.”

But police say it is just such aggressive questioning, constantly tracking gang membership, that pays off in investigations of serious crimes--like the slaying of Omar Valdez.

It was through gang files, Aragon said, that CRASH officers came up with Valdez’s suspected killer, a 17-year-old member of a Sun Valley gang who was arrested Dec. 15.

Aragon, a 12-year LAPD veteran, freely uses gang lingo gleaned from the street and the routine training seminars mandatory for all CRASH investigators in Los Angeles. But he also knows the culture on a more intimate level: At 12, he was initiated into a gang. By 16, he was a father and husband. Not until he was 20 did he leave. Gang tattoos cover his arms and shoulders.

“The biggest lure to gang life is the sense of power you get,” he says. “Not everyone can get 100 people behind them with a single phone call” for a fight.

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Eugene Price, a professor of constitutional law in the Cal State Northridge political science department, said the LAPD’s field interviewing practices--questioning and photographing suspected gang members on the street--have yet to be challenged in courts.

Courts have held that “warrantless searches” are valid only if a police officer “acted in good faith” and no irrevocable harm was done, Price said. Even here, however, the officer must have “probable cause”: the belief that a crime is about to take place, that someone’s safety is in jeopardy, or that the evidence might disappear unless a search is conducted immediately, he said.

If police engage in an informal conversation with suspected gang members, “and then find something on them when they decide to search them, the case could be thrown out because there is no probable cause,” Price said. “When police stop a group of gang members, they could just be patrolling. But if a search takes place, they need probable cause or (the youths’) permission.”

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Aragon acknowledged that gang members’ style of dress does attract attention from police, but said suspected gang members are usually stopped because they are in a neighborhood where gangs are prominent or for drinking in a public place. Simply striking up a conversation with a suspected gang member, asking him about life in the gang world--about new members, animosities or relationships--does not qualify as a field interview, and thus requires no probable cause, he said. Price agreed.

Gang membership information takes on added importance when arrests lead to trial. If police can establish that a defendant is a gang member, it is easier to obtain a conviction, according to both prosecutors and defense attorneys.

“The average citizen sees gang members as violent and they are prejudicial against them because of that,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Shellie Samuels, who specializes in prosecuting gang-related crimes.

For defense lawyers, a gang label can be devastating.

“We want to try to prevent the jury from hearing that they are a member of a gang,” said Marty Mizel, a deputy county public defender. “Just because a person is in a gang, it doesn’t mean he runs around every moment of the day raping and pillaging. But the juries’ general reaction to gang members is highly prejudicial.”

Velasquez of Community Youth Gang Services said youths need to protect themselves when being questioned on the street by police.

“When they have the spotlight in their face, the kids know they have to come up with the correct answer. They might say something that they didn’t really want to say,” he said.

A correct address and prompt answers are the most effective way to deal with the police, he said. “They empower police when they give answers like ‘I don’t know,’ ” Velasquez said. “If (police) ask them why they are wearing a Raiders jacket, you either say you are cold or you are a hard-core Raiders fan.”