Injunction Against Gang
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Re Oct. 2 letter on the 18th Street gang injunction: Judge William Beverly’s decision to issue an injunction against the 18th Street gang came on the heels of a recent California Supreme Court case upholding the people’s right to protect the citizens of a community against gang terrorism. That court decided that association for criminal purposes is not protected by the 1st Amendment.
The 18th Street gang assembles to commit crimes of violence, to threaten, harass and intimidate the residents and business people in the community, to extort rent from legitimate businesses, to blatantly sell drugs at all times of the day, and to blanket the area with gang graffiti. It is a criminal street gang.
As the California Supreme Court has reasoned, “To hold that the liberty of the peaceful, industrious residents of the [target area] must be forfeited to preserve the illusion of freedom for those whose ill conduct is deleterious to the community as a whole is to ignore half the political promise of the Constitution and the whole of its sense.”
Anyone who claims that these injunctions are ineffective simply has to talk to those people in the target area whose gratitude and feedback we have received, who welcome the security and the freedom of living in a peaceful community.
NICOLE C. BERSHON
Deputy City Attorney
Gang Unit, Los Angeles
LISA B. FOX
Deputy District Attorney
Hardcore Gang Unit, L.A. County
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