Pasadena Studies Use of Civil Injunctions to Help Fight Gangs : Crime: Deputy Dist. Atty. Deanne Ancker hopes to win ban on what would otherwise be legal activity. But the tactic has come under legal challenges from rights groups.

Some Pasadena residents are so afraid to be seen with Deanne Ancker that they won’t go to her office, won’t let her come to their homes and, often, will see her only at a prearranged location outside their neighborhood.

Such is the toll exacted by fear of gangs.

Ancker wants to help end that fear in Pasadena, using a controversial approach: civil injunctions against gangs. The tactic, used before in Norwalk, Burbank and Panorama City, may soon be tried in Pasadena.

Ancker, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney in the Hard Core Gangs Division, has been meeting for the past six months with residents, police and probation officers to single out what she calls the “bad apples,” the city’s gang leaders who urge others to commit crimes, intimidate residents and create a climate of fear.

Once Ancker finds out who the gang leaders are, she said, she will go after about 30 of them, not with criminal charges, but with civil prohibitions against otherwise legal behavior. Such targeted behavior could include banning gang members from gathering late at night, carrying flashlights or tire irons, wearing gang attire or standing at certain street corners. Gang members will be given notice of a court injunction against certain behavior. Violators who disobey the court order become misdemeanor offenders, subject to six months in jail or a $1,000 fine.

“The gang activity has to be a public nuisance,” Ancker said. “You can’t get a court order against drive-by shootings. The activity has to be an ongoing, maintained problem that affects a neighborhood.”

But civil injunctions to stop gangs are not without controversy. Their use has been challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union in Northern California and in Los Angeles by attorneys defending alleged gang members.

“The issuance of injunctions makes some activities criminal that would not otherwise be criminal,” said Amitai Schwartz, a San Francisco attorney representing the ACLU in Northern California. “It’s a shortcut for law enforcement but an end run around constitutional protections.”

Schwartz said the passage of such measures against one group of people creates a legal precedent that would allow similar restrictions to be passed against other groups, such as the homeless, prostitutes, cruising lowriders or drunk drivers.

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In San Jose, the ACLU challenged the constitutionality of a 1993 civil injunction banning gang members from a four-block city area called Rocksprings. In a ruling last month, the state Court of Appeal in San Jose called the injunction a “meat cleaver approach.” The court upheld its use, but specified that only criminal behavior, such as trespassing or selling drugs, could be banned and only gang members with prior criminal convictions could be targeted.

Schwartz called the ruling a victory and said it would end, for all practical purposes, the use of civil injunctions.

Despite the legal cloud, Ancker’s work in Pasadena continues unabated.

“All the injunctions are different,” she insisted. “The ruling in San Jose was based on the facts in that case. . . . We have different evidence and different facts.”

Ancker was called in as part of the district attorney’s Strategy Against Gang Environments program. The program began as a pilot effort in December, 1993, when Ancker began researching Norwalk’s gang problem. In August, 1994, she filed a civil injunction against 22 members of Norwalk’s Orange Street Locos gang, one of 11 gangs in the city. Under the injunction, gang members had to abide by 19 restrictions in a 20-block area around Orange Street where they hung out. The restrictions included a curfew, a ban against carrying weapons in public and prohibitions against harassing people and trespassing.

Before the civil injunction was imposed, police were routinely summoned an average of eight times a day to the gang-plagued neighborhood, Ancker said. With the injunction in place, gang activity dropped dramatically. Police were called on gang-related incidents only six times in six months after the injunction was put in place, she said, an observation backed by Sgt. Larry Anderson, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department liaison to Norwalk.

“It’s been even more effective than I thought it would,” Ancker said. “Residents are taking evening strolls and people have taken out bank loans to paint their houses and put on additions because they now feel it’s worthwhile to put money back in the neighborhood.”

In Pasadena, the problem may be harder to tackle. Pasadena and nearby Altadena have diverse populations with more than 30 gangs and tagging groups that include up to 1,500 members, Ancker said.

The effectiveness of the civil measures depend in part on cooperation from Pasadena residents, she added. Those who provide information will remain anonymous and their identities protected with sealed court documents. But their information is essential to stopping the gangs because gang activities differ from city to city, Ancker said.

In Norwalk, underage drinking was a problem. But in Pasadena, Ancker said, gambling is a major problem. Pasadena gang members gather on street corners and alleys to throw dice and inevitably quarrel or fight over large amounts of money, she said.

Success in Pasadena also will depend on how strongly the gangs resist police, Ancker said. Burbank used a civil injunction in 1992 to stop a gang from dealing drugs and the problem was eliminated. But in Panorama City, the 1993 civil injunction not only has been contested in court but gang members still flout the law, Ancker said. Gang activity there was not stopped entirely but reduced by about 70% on the streets targeted, Ancker said.

Still, Peter Shutan, director of Pasadena’s Community Partnership Against Gangs, said he brought Ancker to Pasadena because city officials, frustrated in their efforts to stop gang violence and fear in some neighborhoods, wanted some new tools. City officials hope the civil injunction in Pasadena will duplicate the positive results seen elsewhere, he said.

The Strategy Against Gang Environments program is part of a broader anti-gang effort that includes visits to families to evaluate their needs, an anti-gang curriculum in first through fourth grades and improved tracking of gang members on probation to ensure they complete school and get job training. Ancker’s stint with the city will last three more months until the injunction is filed, she said. The city paid half of the $96,000 yearly fee charged by the county to cities seeking help with the injunctions.