Hahn Seeks Injunction Against Valley Gang

Targeting what he said is the center of the rock cocaine trade in the San Fernando Valley, City Atty. James Hahn revealed Monday that he filed a request for a court injunction against the Langdon Street Gang in North Hills, his eighth such lawsuit.

“This is the center of the crack cocaine trade in the San Fernando Valley and we want to strike at the heart of it and put this gang out of business,” Hahn said in an interview.

He said that the LAPD last year made 4,000 narcotics arrests in the Sepulveda corridor area dominated by the gang--one-third of all narcotics arrests in the San Fernando Valley.

The suit seeks to bar the gang and 31 alleged members with street names like “Lil Termite,” “Fester,” “Triste” and “Lil Monster” from associating in public, hanging out on private property, flagging down cars, using walkie-talkies and other activities. It also seeks to impose a 9 p.m. curfew on the gang, which the city attorney alleges has ties to the Mexican Mafia.

The gang, which authorities say has been around for about 15 years, has been a serious problem in the North Hills neighborhood. Law enforcement officials said the injunction was prompted by increasing violence by the gang, attributed in part to a street war with the Bryant Street gang. This has resulted in a number of shootings, authorities said.

In the latest shooting six months ago, a Bryant Street gang member and Langdon Street gang members got into a fight at a bus stop outside James Monroe High School as several other students stood nearby. One innocent bystander was shot in the foot, LAPD Capt. Joseph Curreri said.

He said aggravated assaults and robberies have also increased recently. “They rule by intimidation in that area. They kind of feel that they’re above the law and rule that area,” Curreri said.

Civil libertarians often criticize the lawsuits, saying that they are ineffective and needlessly trample the defendants’ 1st Amendment rights. “First of all, there are already laws on the books to arrest people for all the crimes enumerated” in the lawsuit, said Elizabeth Schroeder, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “We have a strong concern that [the injunctions] violate the 1st Amendment right of association.”

The injunction request was quietly filed on Friday. Hahn said he did not release details until Monday to allow officers to find gang members and serve them with copies of the lawsuit.

All seven previous nuisance injunction requests filed by the city attorney’s office have been granted by the courts.