Shutting Down Gangs, One Area at a Time : * Crime: The district attorney’s program for seeking civil court injunctions against individual members is working.

No one disputes that we have to stop gangs and the terrible toll they are taking on our communities. The district attorney’s office not only convicts 95% of the gang members prosecuted through our Hardcore Gang Division; we are also restoring gang- plagued neighborhoods to the law-abiding residents. We are doing this through the district attorney’s Strategy Against Gang Environments program, seeking court-ordered injunctions to stop gang terror.

The County Sheriff’s Safe Streets Bureau reports that gang-related felonies increased almost fivefold from 1986 to 1994. Our hardcore-gang prosecution division tries 13 serious gang cases every month, almost all of them murders. And 25% of all gang murder victims are complete innocents with no gang affiliation.

SAGE most recently sought to help a Pasadena neighborhood that has been ruled for years through fear and intimidation by the notorious Pasadena Denver Lanes gang. One resident told us about a group of gang members blocking his car in his own driveway and extorting money from him to exit. Another described the terror of his 5-year-old daughter who was playing in her front yard when a drug fight erupted across the street. Windows were being smashed with a baseball bat, and a drug dealer ended up hurling the bat at the child. Other Pasadena residents described gunfire erupting at night and parents moving their kids’ beds away from the windows to prevent them from being hit.

Still, there is hope. Last week, the Pasadena Superior Court issued a preliminary injunction enjoining the Denver Lanes and more than 30 of its members from participating in gang activities, including use of their beepers and walkie-talkies to make their drug deals, using drugs and drinking in public, writing graffiti and terrorizing the neighborhood. Through SAGE, an experienced gang prosecutor is hired by a local community government to assess the severity of the gang problem, identify the gang members and their illegal activities and seek a specifically tailored civil injunction to stop the gang activities. Police can then arrest a named gang member for violating the court order rather than having to wait until more drugs are sold or more neighborhoods terrorized.

Our SAGE prosecutors work with local residents, who are willing to come forward despite their fears of gang retaliation, and with elected city officials, the Police Department and community leaders.

The Pasadena program comes on the heels of our success with SAGE in Norwalk, where a civil injunction has stopped the reign of terror of the Orange Street Locos gang. Additional SAGE programs are up and running or in the works in Long Beach, East Los Angeles, Inglewood and Lennox.

SAGE is expanding because it works. One Norwalk resident summed it up in a letter to the Norwalk director of public safety: “Now, since the injunction against the Orange Street Locos . . . , our neighborhood has started to turn around. There are children playing outside again, no graffiti and the neighbors are finally coming out of their shells.” More than a year into the program, the Orange Street Locos have not simply moved to another street. The gang is virtually out of business.

Critics of SAGE raise the issues of constitutionality and race. When we seek an injunction, we look at the terror wrought by gang members and not the color of their skin. One concern has been random sweeps, purportedly infringing the rights of the innocent along with the gang bangers. SAGE is not about random sweeps but about legally stopping specific gang activity of named gang members. There is no constitutional right to sell drugs or terrorize residents. And critics forget that the Pasadena Superior Court heard evidence about each named gang member, who had the opportunity to persuade the judge that he was wrongly included in the suit.

While no one discounts the problems of gangs, SAGE offers hope. We are making a difference. Just ask the residents of Norwalk and Pasadena.