Riordan Calls for Injunction Against 18th Street Gang

Mayor Richard Riordan, adopting one of his more aggressive tacks against street violence, has called for a court injunction as part of a major crackdown on 18th Street gang members in Los Angeles’ most crime-ridden area.

Citing the gang’s involvement in shakedowns, drug dealing, robberies and vandalism in the Pico-Union area, the mayor, who has made public safety the centerpiece of his reelection campaign, urged City Atty. James K. Hahn this week to join police, probation and other agencies in a new campaign to curb a reign of terror he said has sapped “life out of our neighborhoods.”

In a letter to Hahn obtained by The Times, Riordan said he has commitments from the Los Angeles Police Department and the county Probation Department to target gang leaders suspected of violating probation. He also called on Hahn to use his legal powers to shut down several houses identified as 18th Street hangouts.

Riordan’s proposal, details of which are still being worked out, comes as officials from President Clinton to members of the City Council have been grappling to find workable responses to the problem of gang violence--punctuated in Los Angeles by a series of recent shootings of innocent children.

“What this whole thing comes down to is quality of life that every Angeleno deserves: a safe neighborhood, a clean neighborhood,” the mayor said in an interview Thursday. “The gangs have taken over the parks, they’ve intimidated people. We owe it to everybody, and nobody wants it more than Pico-Union.”

Hahn declined to discuss specifics of the proposed injunction Thursday, but said he and Los Angeles Police Department officials have been exploring such strategies against 18th Street.

“We’re ready as soon as they give us the information,” he said. The wide-ranging criminal activity of 18th Street, the region’s largest street gang, was profiled in a recent Times series.

Hahn and the district attorney have used tough civil injunctions in other areas of less intense gang activity. But the tactic is untested in an epicenter of street crime such as Pico-Union. There, dozens of rival gangs--including some of the city’s most violent--are stacked up in daily battle for control of lucrative narcotics-dealing hubs and small toeholds of turf in the most densely populated neighborhoods west of the Mississippi.

Riordan, whom critics have attacked for failing to take a strong leadership role against gangs, won praise Thursday from some of those who have been victimized by 18th Streeters.

“We need help now,” said one merchant in Pico-Union. He asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation by 18th Street gang members who control a bustling drug trade outside his family’s small shop. “If the police take action and put these guys out, all the businesses will get better.”

But the mayor also came under fire from some community and civil liberties leaders for conjuring up what they see as a shortsighted political response to an entrenched social ailment.

“Mayor Riordan has chosen to jump on a political bandwagon . . . that is in our view a failed approach,” said American Civil Liberties Union spokesman Allan Parachini.

The mayor brushed off those suggestions, saying: “This is very consistent with what I’ve been doing for the last four years.”

He proposed that the injunction bar 18th Street gang members from intimidating, harassing, threatening, provoking or assaulting residents in designated areas of Pico-Union, just west of downtown. The court order also would prohibit the gang’s members from sitting, walking, driving or gathering with each other while in public view.

The provisions are similar to those in a 1993 San Jose injunction that the California Supreme Court upheld last month. In some communities where such gang-abatement measures have been used, residents and officials have reported a reduction in street crime.

The San Fernando Valley and West Los Angeles neighborhoods where the city attorney has successfully used civil injunctions have been more geographically isolated and controlled by a single gang, a spokesman for Hahn noted.

But in Pico-Union there are thousands of suspected 18th Street gang members mixed in with dope dealers and rival gangs. With police already stretched thin by high rates of violent crime, officials say significant new numbers of police and attorneys would be needed to effectively enforce the injunction and prosecute violators.

Because of the sheer size and dominance of 18th Street in some areas of Pico-Union, “you are basically talking about an injunction against an entire community,” said Councilman Mike Hernandez, who represents the area. “I’m not sure it’s doable.”

Hernandez, who learned of the mayor’s proposal from a reporter, said he would generally support it, provided sufficient staffing is allocated and individual rights are not trampled. Riordan said it would be up to the LAPD to figure out how to enforce a civil injunction.

The ACLU’s Parachini said the injunction would push the 18th Streeters to other parts of Pico-Union and result in a number of residents being inaccurately labeled gang members. “Injunctions like this put people in the position of being sucked into gang databases from which they cannot escape,” he said.

Moreover, Parachini and others said, such measures have questionable long-term effects because they ignore the causes of gang violence--poverty, broken families and high school dropout rates.

“Enforcement is needed, but you’re going to keep putting Band-Aids on the wound until you deal with the root problem, which is economic,” said Roberto Lovato, a consultant who works with the large immigrant population in the area. “How many jobs is the mayor going to put in Pico-Union?”