Anti-Gang Injunction Is Approved

A judge Thursday awarded the city attorney’s office its second injunction against a San Fernando Valley gang, over the objections of civil libertarians.

Members of the Langdon Street gang, which authorities allege is at the heart of the Valley’s crack cocaine trade, were ordered to abide by a 9 p.m. curfew and prohibited from hanging out in public together, communicating via walkie-talkies and a host of other activities.

The temporary injunction, signed by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mary Ann Murphy, arose from a lawsuit Los Angeles City Atty. James Hahn filed against the gang in March. In a written statement, he called the street gang “a cancer which has survived more than 15 years of law enforcement efforts to excise it from the community.”

The American Civil Liberties Union opposed the injunction--as it has similar past efforts--as a violation of citizens’ civil liberties.

“Civil injunctions criminalize otherwise lawful behavior” such as talking to other people, riding bicycles or other everyday activities, said Michael Fleming, an ACLU spokesman. “We condemn them.”

He said various members of the North Hills community covered by the injunction protested the court order outside the Van Nuys courthouse Thursday.

“If these are so good for the neighborhood, why doesn’t everyone in the neighborhood support them?” he asked.

Fleming said his organization’s review of past injunctions shows that rather than eliminating crime, they simply move it over to other neighborhoods.

But city officials disagree, citing a 50% drop in gang-related crime in the Pico-Union district after an injunction was ordered against some members of the 18th Street gang there.

The injunction against the Langdon Street gang focuses on neighborhoods on both sides of the San Diego Freeway, as far north as Tupper Street in one area and south to Roscoe Boulevard in another, with the 9000 block of Orion Avenue at the center of the gang’s activities and alleged drug sales.

Police say one-third of all narcotics arrests in the Valley last year were made in the gang’s turf.

In 1997, The Times published a series of stories chronicling life on Orion Avenue. Two reporters lived in the neighborhood for several months and concluded that law-abiding residents were essentially prisoners in their homes, unwilling to venture out or let their children play outside for fear of the street gang, which ran a successful open-air drug market.

Parents of young children have spoken out in favor of Hahn’s effort. However, parents of teenage boys who lived in the neighborhood have complained to reporters that the injunction allows police to harass their children.

Police have said some of those doing the complaining include the parents of some of the alleged gang members named in the lawsuit.