Anti-Gang Squad Is Revived as Crime Surges : Oxnard: The special police unit has proven highly effective. But some residents complain that safer streets come at the expense of civil liberties.

Their mission is to make life for gang members as miserable as legally possible.

And with three gang-related homicides in just 15 days, the highly effective--some say excessive--Gang Enforcement Team of the Oxnard Police Department is back in business.

They stop suspected gangsters for anything: a broken taillight or a broken curfew. They shake them down, check if they’re violating probation. They photograph them and take down their names for a growing police database.

And, if at all possible, they arrest them.

“We arrest gang members for anything they can be arrested for,” said Sgt. Dan Christian, head of the gang unit. “We cite them for anything they can be cited for.

“We take them in for anything--anything that gets them off the street. There are no second chances.”

Created in March after an earlier spate of gang-related homicides, the Gang Enforcement Team has proven that it can put the squeeze on violent crime.

“The [gang members] hate us,” Christian said. “We disrupt their way of life. They can’t assault people, they can’t drive around and kill each other.”

For 15 weeks in the spring, the eight-officer squad cruised the streets working exclusively on gang crime. During that time, the unit made 60 felony arrests, 313 misdemeanor arrests, 137 curfew arrests and issued nearly 400 citations.

But as public interest and funding faded, the unit was essentially deactivated.

Now, with gang violence once again on the rise, the team has returned for at least four weeks.

The unit is a tough-looking group of officers. At times it’s to hard to tell who is more intimidating, the cops or the young men they’re hunting.

Some questioned whether the balance between police power and civil liberties has been tipped.

“I’ve seen them harass gang members for nothing,” said Carmen Cabral of La Colonia, who acknowledged that her eldest son is a gang member. “If they saw them do something, fine. But they weren’t doing anything.”

One minute they were playing handball, the next minute the police had them lying prone on the ground, she said.

“Gang members have civil rights, too,” Cabral added.

But in the weeks during which the squad was in force, gang members stayed indoors. And the number of gang-related crimes--such as murder, drive-by shootings, assaults, thefts and vandalism--dropped dramatically.

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In February, just before the unit was formed, there were 82 instances of gang-related crimes in Oxnard, according to police statistics.

By April, those figures had dropped to 33 and never rose above 50 incidents a month while they were active.

“They prevent crimes before they happen,” homicide Detective Mike Palmieri said. “They lessened our workload considerably.”

Crime scene investigator Bob Morgan said he is usually called out to collect evidence about five nights a week.

“But when the gang unit was in effect, the calls in the middle of the night stopped altogether,” Morgan said. “The gangs weren’t out there killing each other.”

Gang members hated the hard-nosed cops dressed in jeans, white polo shirts and Oxnard Police Department baseball caps.

One gang painted a naked woman with a pig’s head and the caption: “The Gang Taskforce’s Mother.”

After the squad was disbanded, several members were returned to patrol, and the rest went back to performing surveillance on all types of crimes.

A smaller unit worked the streets just four times a month to maintain some sort of presence.

Instances of gang-related violence rose to 56 in August, then 78 in September.

In the first 15 days of October alone, there were three homicides and 37 other instances of gang-related crimes.

In response to the public’s fear of an escalation in violent crimes, the gang unit was reactivated for one month, beginning Oct. 14.

“We need to demonstrate to the gangs that our tolerance for their violence is zero,” Cmdr. Joe Munoz said. “We are not going to let them impact the quality of life in this city.”

After one month, the unit’s impact will be re-evaluated, but few in the department are optimistic the unit will become permanent.

“We don’t have the money or the manpower to keep it running all the time,” Munoz said.

The gang unit costs more than $10,000 a week to operate.

“We also need to concentrate on the long term with programs that work to break the cycle of violence like DARE [a drug education program], community policing and the Police Athletic Program.”

Christian said he is frustrated with the department’s lack of commitment to his unit.

“Doing sweeps just once in a while doesn’t get the job done,” he said. “We need to be a consistent presence.”

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Although Munoz believes the pared-down gang unit works well enough, he said the department will consider allowing the surveillance unit to work exclusively on gang issues.

The creation of a full-time Gang Enforcement Team doesn’t sit well with critics who claim that the unit is nothing but a bunch of cowboys getting their kicks out of harassing Latinos.

Although the squad tries to concentrate on known or suspected gang members, innocent bystanders sometimes get caught in the cross-fire.

Alfred Camarillo, 16, is fed up with being stopped because of the way he looks. Like many teen-agers, Alfred thinks he looks his best wearing baggy pants, white T-shirts and sporting a crew cut.

He insists that he is not a gang member and has no desire to ever be a gang member.

“I don’t want anything to do with all that,” he said.

Although police confirm that he has no criminal record, Camarillo is often stopped and questioned by the police.

On Aug. 11, Alfred was arrested by the gang unit as he and his older cousin dropped a friend off at his home.

As the car pulled into the driveway, four unmarked police cars surrounded it. The gang unit swarmed over the Chevy Blazer, asking questions.

Did the boy they dropped off actually live at this address? Yes. Prove it.

The boy rang his doorbell and his mother confirmed that he lived there.

And what about the other boys? Let’s see some IDs.

Alfred didn’t have an ID--not a crime, but he looked suspicious, officers said, and was six minutes past curfew.

Seconds later, a set of shiny handcuffs were slapped on his wrists and the teen-ager was taken to the police station. He was photographed and asked to remove his shirt so the police could check him for gang tattoos. There weren’t any.

“Sometimes we make mistakes,” Christian said. “I guess he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, dressed the wrong way.”

But such arrests might actually prove beneficial, Christian argued.

“Maybe we’re catching a kid right on the edge and making him think twice about joining a gang.”

Alfred, however, doesn’t see his night of humiliation in the same light.

“I’m mad,” he said of the incident. “I was just taking my friend home. That’s it.

“You’d be mad too if you were arrested for no reason, right?”

It has only colored his attitude toward the police, he said.

“I hate them,” he said. “They’re always stopping me for no reason. I ain’t no gang member.”

Although Alfred’s story is not unique, police insist that their interrogations are not random--and for the most part they are right.

The unit has a precise set of criteria they must follow before they identify someone as a gang member.

Unless the youth admits he is a gang member or is wearing a tattoo of the gang’s name, he must fit at least five of 12 criteria--such as wearing gang clothes, knowing gang hand signs or associating with known gang members.

If someone doesn’t fit the criteria, the police generally leave them alone.

Many Latino residents waver between praise and criticism for the gang unit.

They readily admit that Latino youths are targeted because they represent the large majority of gang members in Oxnard. And they appreciate the police making their streets safer.

“I think the [gang unit] can be excessive, but crime goes down a lot,” said La Colonia resident Larry Martinez, 22. Although the gang unit has stopped to question him, they were “polite” and generally only bother gangsters, he said. “They know who the hard-cores are.”

Many residents fret over perceived excesses, such as harassing innocent teen-agers like Alfred, and being too tough on real gangsters.

“They’re too tough on the kids,” said John (Perico) Cabral, Carmen’s husband. “The police are only aggravating the situation.”

Munoz admits the gang unit is a public relations Catch-22 for the Police Department.

“Any time you take an aggressive posture, people will accuse you of being discriminatory and of using excessive force,” Munoz said.

No formal complaint, however, has ever been lodged against the gang unit, despite some angry telephone calls, Christian said.

“They chose to be gang members, we chose to enforce the law,” he said.