Gang Sweeps a Rude Awakening for Probationers

If you are a convicted Ventura County gang member out on probation, you can count on it:

Armed officers will regularly burst through your door at dawn, roust you from bed, ask you a lot of questions and search your house.

Police will say they are not violating your constitutional rights, because you have already agreed in court--to avoid time behind bars--that you will sit still for unannounced searches any time of day or night.

And you understand that if they find any weapons, drugs, graffiti tools or other evidence, you have violated probation and they can send you back to Juvenile Hall or--if you are an adult--to jail.

It’s called a gang sweep.

Critics say the practice violates the rights of gang members’ law-abiding families, and that it may be illegal. But Ventura County police and probation officers say it has become one of their toughest tools for stifling gang violence.

Since police chiefs launched a countywide crackdown on gangs in 1992, sweeps have hit gang members’ homes in almost every city in the county--most frequently in trouble spots, such as Oxnard and Ventura.

A dozen sweeps in 1995 targeted 101 juvenile probationers and 45 were arrested, according to the county Corrections Services Agency.

Of those, 32 were cited for probation violations and released, and 13 were booked into Ventura County Juvenile Hall for serious violations, such as possessing a gun.

So far this year, eight sweeps have targeted 83 juveniles, ending in 38 arrests--21 of whom were cited and 17 booked into Juvenile Hall.

Veteran Probation Officer Michele Konkle remembers her first raid, back in 1992, when nearly 200 law enforcement officers hit 23 houses simultaneously.

“Our clients . . . were giving false names, swearing at police officers, spitting on them,” said Konkle, who oversees violent juvenile offenders from Ventura gangs. “They were telling them, ‘My probation officer won’t do anything to me,’ and then we’d walk up behind them, tap ‘em on the shoulder, and they’d say, ‘Uh-oh.’ ”

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Probation officers have always kept tabs on their clients with unannounced home visits and sent serious violators back to appear before judges who often impose stiffer sentences.

Probation terms allowing home searches have heightened the officers’ ability to pressure gang members into going straight.

But the sweeps--coupling home searches with armed police backup on a broad scale--have greatly strengthened the Correction Services Agency’s grip over convicted gang members.

“Each time we go out, there’s usually a probation violation or two we will discover,” said Cal Remington, the agency’s deputy director.

Remington said that not every search finds evidence of a probation violation.

“It still sends a message,” he said. “When those sweeps occur, it’s generally because something has happened in the community, like a homicide or an assault, and it’s a pretty powerful tool to sort of suppress and contain and control.”

In Simi Valley, incoming Police Chief Randy Adams called for sweeps starting last August after a gang slaying and a series of payback assaults pointed to an upsurge in violence.

One sweep last winter netted five probationers suspected in the savage beating of a rival behind a local bowling alley, and two other sweeps ended in the deportation of gang members living in the United States illegally.

Things are quieter now, said Lt. Dick Thomas, head of the special Simi Valley unit that works the gang beat.

“I’m absolutely convinced that the aggressive posture we take with gangs has had a positive impact,” he said. “I’m not so naive as to think it’s going to solve all our problems. But it has put the gang members on notice that we’re not going to tolerate their behavior and that the criminal actions they involve themselves with are going to be dealt with very forcefully.”

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Police and probation officers say the sweeps stymie gang activity on several fronts:

* They arrest gang probationers who persist in gang crimes and get them off the street.

* They yank dangerous weapons--such as the loaded AK-47 assault rifle found in a recent Ventura sweep--out of the hands of gang members. The same goes for graffiti tools.

* They dampen gang tensions for a while, and gang members often lay low for several weeks after a sweep, police say. “It’s a real quick reminder that ‘I’m on probation, I’ve got conditions and restrictions on me,’ ” said Ventura Assistant Police Chief Mike Tracy. “From a psychological standpoint, it has a real immediate effect on kids.”

* They show gang wannabes that anyone convicted of serious gang crimes can expect a loss of their rights.

* They unite police and probation officers, speeding the flow of information and the quality of intelligence on gang activities between them. “We know who their girlfriends are, where they hang out, where they sleep at home,” says veteran Probation Officer Inez Teteris, who oversees violent juvenile offenders in Oxnard. Information like this helps police ease inter-gang tension before it snaps.

* And the sweeps alert oblivious parents--or those in denial--that their teenagers are in serious trouble.

“Sometimes it’s a wake-up call for the parents,” said Oxnard Assistant Chief Tom Cady. “There are parents who maybe didn’t realize the depth of involvement of their kids, and all of a sudden the police are showing up at their door.”

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There, critics say, lies the major drawback of Ventura County’s gang sweeps.

A sweep affects the gang member’s entire family--rousing from bed anyone asleep in the same house, and disrupting the belongings of anyone who shares so-called common areas of the home with the gang member.

“If a person has given up their rights and consented to a search, that’s one thing,” said Chief Deputy Public Defender Duane Dammeyer. “But there’s a whole host of people around that person who are also being forced into giving up their rights. What about the parents? What about the grandparents, or the people they’re staying with?”

Dammeyer added, “I just get concerned when in the name of preventing some great wrong, we just give up all the constitutional rights that people have fought for years to get.”

Parents often complain that officers are illegally searching every room of the house, Teteris said. In fact, she said, they must check each room to ensure they find probationers who may be hiding from police or lying in ambush.

Some argue that the searches themselves violate the very laws that allow them to take place, and that most of the searches find nothing more than law-abiding--if bleary-eyed--probationers.

“California law prevents law enforcement from conducting a probation search if it’s done arbitrarily, capriciously or for the purposes of harassment,” said Jorge Alvarado, an Oxnard criminal defense attorney.

“When you’re talking about these gang sweeps that they’re doing, it’s the proverbial ‘Let’s round up the usual [suspects],’ ” Alvarado said. “They’re violating the law. . . . It’s just a wide brush: ‘Let’s get everybody who we think of in this area for the purpose of harassing them and intimidating them.’ ”

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Granted, Alvarado said, sweeps may help quell gang crime. “But when we look at it in the entire picture, there’s a substantial harm to our own constitutional rights.”

No one has sued the police or Probation Department yet over the constitutionality of the searches, said Remington. He said his officers try to be as professional and non-disruptive as they can.

“It’s important that they do it in a way that doesn’t cause any more grief for the family than is necessary,” Remington said. “We don’t want to just move into a home like the Gestapo and not be sensitive to the whole family.”

Meanwhile, the sweeps will continue. But probation officials said they will beef up their coverage by doing more individual searches, in which a probation officer with police backup will target half a dozen probationers in an afternoon, one at a time.

And as gang crime in Ventura County becomes more violent, as younger kids are committing worse crimes, probation officers have had to become tougher--and the sweeps more necessary--said Ventura Assistant Chief Tracy.

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Probation officers “are an enforcement arm of the courts,” said Tracy, himself a former probation officer.

“They say, ‘We’re going to keep you out of jail, we’re going to try to give you an opportunity to straighten up,’ ” he said. “And in exchange for that, you’re going to give up your rights against [warrantless] searches.”

The sweep program, he said, “is to make sure that people who’ve broken the law and are given an opportunity to mend their ways do in fact mend their ways.”