Assembly Tries to Hit Gangs in Pocketbook

Over strong opposition from African American lawmakers from Los Angeles, the Assembly on Friday approved an expanded way of stifling gang activity that hits gang members in the pocketbook.

Under the legislation, which now goes to the Senate, state prosecutors could seek civil court orders to collect cash damages from known gang members who are declared “nuisances,” even though they haven’t committed a crime.

The money collected would be returned to gang-infested neighborhoods for community improvement projects.

The power to initiate such action would be vested with the state attorney general. The author of the measure, state Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), is running for that office in the November elections.

Lockyer aide Nathan Barankin said the measure would result in a new role for state attorneys general, “who rarely get involved in crime prosecution.”

City attorneys and county district attorneys, he said, already have the authority to seek civil damages against gang members, but in high-crime urban areas they are busy bringing criminal cases and don’t often use that civil authority.

With the attorney general and his staff stepping in, Barankin said, another level of authority would be available to stem gang activity. The bill “will put some teeth into injunction powers that local law enforcement has now,” Barankin said.

Enactment of the bill would fall short of allowing the outright seizure of gang members’ assets, an enforcement tool used for years against drug dealers. But the proposal was characterized by Assembly opponents as just as harsh, and aimed only at ethnic minorities.

All four of the Assembly’s African American members, who are from the Los Angeles area and are Democrats, voted against the Lockyer bill, after a blistering denunciation of the measure by South-Central Assemblyman Rod Wright.

The bill “borders on racism in a district like mine,” Wright said. “When skinheads or white groups participate in unlawful activity, they’re not called gangs. No one does injunctions against them.”

Innocent people could get slapped with an order demanding money, Wright said, in a process that he said would leave “gang members with no representation.”

Gang membership does not equate automatically to criminality, Wright said.

“In my neighborhood, often you either have a blue rag in your pocket or you get killed,” Wright said, meaning a person may be a member of the Crips gang only for self-protection.

The Assembly nevertheless passed the measure 42-18, prompting Republicans to charge that Lockyer was running a “political drill” to boost his campaign.

The measure does “make the attorney general expressly a key player in carrying out these civil actions,” said Barankin, but it is not the first time the senator has backed anti-crime legislation, he said.

Lockyer introduced legislation that later evolved into California’s three-strikes sentencing law and, among his other efforts, cast a vote 20 years ago to prevent outlawing of the death penalty, Barankin said.

Mike MeCey, a spokesman for Dave Stirling, the chief deputy attorney general who is Lockyer’s Republican opponent, said of the bill: “This is what happens when Bill Lockyer changes spots. He is trying to portray himself as tough on crime when in fact he is not.”

MeCey said Lockyer is a “foe of victims’ rights” and that he exaggerates his claim to originating the legislation that led to the three-strikes law.

Assemblyman Robert Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks), who led the floor debate Friday for passage of the measure, said that as a lawyer he defended clients against asset seizures, but that today the courts have “reached a balance in civil forfeiture, and applying that to gang activity is appropriate.”

Among the bill’s aims, he said, is to “protect neighborhoods that are torn apart by gangs and drugs.” It would “help poor people--people in Mr. Wright’s district,” Hertzberg said.