Anti-Gang Injunction Seen as Balm, Not as Cure

Life is less frightening these days along the tree-lined streets of northwest Pasadena, a neighborhood of stately old homes with graying paint, boxlike apartment buildings, lovingly tended cottages and a complex of low-income housing.

The community once notorious for its vicious gang violence and virulent drug trade has arrived at better times. Loud all-night parties are almost a relic. Children who roamed Summit Avenue at night are now in their homes after 10 p.m. The nightly gunshots that rained down on the neighborhood have been all but silenced and many of the hoodlums who held the residents hostage have moved on.

Since October, Pasadena has joined a growing list of communities--including Norwalk, Long Beach, Burbank and San Jose--trying to curb gang problems by using civil court orders. Within a 12-square-block zone in Pasadena, specific individuals are barred from a variety of gang-associated activities--some of which are otherwise legal, such as talking on a cellular phone, and some of which are illegal in any instance, such as dealing drugs.

Early crime statistics demonstrate that when police use the injunctions to crack down on the loitering, gambling, drug dealing, drinking and partying of the defendants, many either get in line or get out--at least for the time being.

But if it all seems too simple, some in and outside the community argue, it just might be.

“You want to stop gang activity on Summit Avenue? Bring in the National Guard,” said Bert Voorhees, a civil rights attorney in Pasadena. “But when the National Guard leaves, you still have bad lighting and an overgrown street. And the criminal activity that you said you were interested in stopping has just picked up and moved a few blocks.”

Many of the residents, however, are content to leave the questions of constitutionality and long-term effectiveness to the academics. Their neighborhood is quieter, and that’s enough for them.

“When I see the ACLU and all opposing us, well, what about the civil liberties of the victims?” asked Rudy Partida, a resident of the area for 12 years. “The shooting has dropped down to nothing. The gang members may be taking their trouble down the street, but I’m happy for us.”

Before the measures can be upheld or overturned by higher courts--including the state’s Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear an injunction case from San Jose--plans to expand the program throughout the county and the state are barreling ahead.

Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, whose Strategy Against Gang Environments program is behind several of the Los Angeles County injunctions, including Pasadena’s, is working on still more court orders for East Los Angeles, Lennox, Inglewood, Huntington Park and additional areas of Pasadena.

Gov. Pete Wilson, at a media event with Garcetti in Huntington Park last month, threw his support behind the initiatives, outlining a provision in his state budget proposal that would funnel $2.5 million to smaller communities that also want injunctions but cannot afford their hefty price tag.

Although there has yet to be an independent review of the program, anecdotal success stories and promises of victory over gangs have become a regular part of the pitch.

“Huntington Park residents are here asking for help,” Garcetti told the crowd. “We can give it to them with gang injunctions.”

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Before the injunction, the area just north of Old Pasadena each month logged hundreds of calls for police assistance.

Since October, calls for police service in the area have fallen 35%, said Deanne Ancker Castorena, the deputy district attorney who helped craft the injunctions in Norwalk and Pasadena. There have been only six arrests for injunction violations.

The district attorney’s office maintains that the injunction is designed not to increase arrests but to stop certain kinds of behavior.

“It’s much more effective to say, ‘Your name is on this court order and we’re not going to put up with your crap anymore,’ ” Castorena said, “than to say, ‘Obey the penal code.’ ”

Each injunction is tailored to address the problems of the community it covers.

In Long Beach, the order governs violence and narcotics; the Norwalk rules go after loud partying and graffiti. In Pasadena, the injunction was designed to combat the drug trade of the Pasadena Denver Lanes, an offshoot of the Bloods gang.

That means that in the target zone, those named in the injunction are forbidden to approach passing cars, carry pagers or phones, hang out on rooftops, signal that police are approaching, drink in public, gamble, sell drugs or be with anyone selling drugs.

Those younger than 18 must be inside between 10 p.m. and sunrise unless they are working or with a parent. Adults named in the order cannot be out after midnight unless going to or from a “legitimate” activity.

Violating the injunction can bring a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Of the 35 young men named in the injunction, only a handful actually live in the area. By making the neighborhood an undesirable place to be a gang member, authorities hope that those who don’t live there will stop visiting.

Six months after Norwalk instituted its gang order across 20 square blocks, police had made five arrests for violations.

“You see people walking around more, you don’t have the gangbangers out there shooting or intimidating people like you used to,” said Kevin Gano, Norwalk’s director of public safety. “We need to look at implementing it in other gang areas which are experiencing similar problems.”

A year after Norwalk’s injunction was in place, the Sheriff’s Department checked to see if their named gang members had been arrested elsewhere in the state. Only three had, Castorena said.

“If we can break them up, they are easier to arrest through regular, traditional law enforcement,” Castorena said. “It alleviates the problem in that neighborhood and lessens the problem as a whole. Yes, some of those guys are going to go somewhere else; some of those guys are going to stop.”

Not everyone is so sure.

Malcolm Klein, a sociology professor at USC and author of the 1995 book “The American Street Gang,” said there is a good chance the injunctions can do more harm than good.

By attacking the gang as a unit--including naming the gang in media accounts and court papers--authorities may well be enhancing the gang’s image among members and potential members, said Klein, who has studied gangs and gang culture for more than 30 years.

And even when the injunction is successful in alleviating the problems of a specific area, Klein said, it can only do so much.

“They don’t solve the gang problem,” Klein said. “The gang problem is going to be solved by trying to deal with the things that spawn gangs in the first place, not by dealing with gang behavior once there already are gang members.”

Even Pasadena police say the injunctions only serve a limited purpose.

“Many of those individuals who were a problem for that neighborhood have now become problems in adjoining neighborhoods,” said Pasadena Police Cmdr. Wayne Hiltz. “Clearly this is one stop in a long road to working on the gang problems.”

Klein also questioned whether the injunctions are a good use of limited funds. In addition to the salary of the deputy district attorney who creates and argues for the injunction, the orders necessitate additional policing, criminal processing and court time.

Among the opponents of the program is the Pasadena chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, which has questioned authorities’ focus on punishing young minority men, rather than helping them stay out of trouble in the first place.

And in a series of community forums, the NAACP has argued that this method of dealing with gang behavior goes too far.

Charles Bereal, the NAACP’s branch president and a resident of the target zone, does not deny that life there is quieter. But for some, he says, it’s also harder than ever.

Bereal has heard more than a few complaints like the one issued by 13-year-old Tremayne Davis, who says the injunction has given police carte blanche to harass innocent residents--especially younger ones who, like the defendants, are African American.

Tremayne, who has never been in trouble with authorities, was headed home from his aunt’s convenience store just before dusk one day when police trained their car’s headlights and a flashlight on him and asked the baby-faced teenager one question: “You selling dope?”

The boy, who has watched the ravaging effects of drugs on members of his family, adamantly declared that he had never been mixed up with drugs.

But the officers said they wanted to be sure and made him empty his pockets, Tremayne said. He dutifully deposited on the ground the pens and Snickers wrappers he had stashed in his jeans.

“Everybody knows me and everybody should know him,” said Georgia Hall, Tremayne’s grandmother and a 33-year resident of the area. “Can you imagine, asking a clean-cut, well-dressed young man a question like that?”

As Tremayne sees it, his behavior the day he was stopped was no different than any other day; the rules for stopping him were.

“I see both sides,” Tremayne said. “They’re trying to do their job and get the bad people off the street. But on the other hand, they mess with other people who aren’t doing nothing. . . . I wish they’d get people off the streets who are doing bad and leave the other people alone.”

Police and prosecutors say they wish it were that easy.

Normally, by the time police respond to a complaint of drug dealing, the perpetrators have been warned of their arrival by people giving signals, so the dope is stashed, the customers have fled and the dealers are standing around, knowing police are powerless to arrest them.

With the injunctions, congregating in a group with other defendants and violating any part of the court order is enough to bring on the police. And if you can’t participate in the dealing-related behavior, the argument goes, you can’t deal drugs.

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In addition to worrying about the injunction’s effects on innocent residents, the American Civil Liberties Union and others worry about what they call the vague, over-broad restrictions limiting the otherwise legal behavior of those named in the order.

Beepers, phones and parties, they say, are used for more than just drug deals.

“It’s just like putting these defendants on probation, with very restrictive conditions, without bothering to convict them of a crime,” said Mark Silverstein of the ACLU. “If you’re going to put people on probation, charge them with a crime, prove it beyond a reasonable doubt and let them have an attorney.”

Said Curtis Price, who is named in the injunction: “Hold me accountable for what I do, not what you think I’m going to do.”

But when it comes to constitutional issues, Castorena maintains that the city is on solid ground. Carrying a beeper, she said, is not protected by the Founding Fathers.

The ACLU and civil rights attorney Voorhees disagree and will leave that question to the courts.

Meanwhile, there are other concerns. By putting what are essentially criminal charges into the civil court realm, those named in the injunction are accused of serious infractions and yet have no right to an attorney. Voorhees also objected to naming minors in the injunction and not appointing an adult to speak on their behalf.

Most important, Voorhees said, he questions why some people are named in the injunction.

“At least half the people named in this thing simply do not have the evidence against them,” Voorhees said. “They’re members or associates or hangers-on with [the gang] and because of that, the city argues the judge has a right to restrict what they do. It’s totally guilt by association.”

Angel Clark, who sat on her front porch watching her two toddlers chase around the yard, said she wasn’t worried about the rights of the people named in the injunction. Nor would she care if her sons or husband were erroneously stopped and questioned by police if it were part of an effort to make her neighborhood livable again.

Before the injunction, Clark said, residents often weren’t allowed into their own driveways without paying off gang members. People couldn’t sleep because of the gunshots.

“I’m sure [gang members] don’t like these rules but something has got to be done,” said Clark, who lives just off Summit Avenue.

But allowing anecdotal evidence and short-term police statistics to serve as proof of the plan’s success concerns USC’s Klein, who said more research is needed to determine whether the injunctions are stemming the gang problem. Satisfied residents, he said, are not data.

“If I were a repeated victim, I might take that attitude, too,” Klein said. “That doesn’t mean they’re right; it means they’re fed up.”

At a recent community meeting in the Jackie Robinson Park gym, there was not much talk about the injunction. Rather than another debate, more than 100 residents of northwest Pasadena came to talk about what they see as the core issue: the gang problem.

Pasadena’s acting police chief, a former gang member, a minister and other neighborhood leaders spoke about the need to guide the community’s children. The rapt audience clapped its approval.

At the start of the meeting, the neighbors prayed for help for their community and their young people.

When the meeting was over, they prayed again.