Mayor Vows to Pursue a Citywide Gang Injunction

Mayor James K. Hahn said Monday that he would pursue a far-reaching injunction to prevent street gang members from gathering and causing trouble throughout the city of Los Angeles -- though he offered few details of a proposal that would likely face both logistical and legal hurdles.

Hahn’s announcement came in the midst of his mayoral campaign against City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, who lost to Hahn in the last mayoral runoff in 2001. In that campaign, Hahn argued that he was the tougher anti-crime candidate and contrasted his vigorous support for gang injunctions with Villaraigosa’s more cautious endorsement.

The city currently has 22 injunctions that restrict gang members from such activities as congregating in public, carrying cellphones and entering private property without permission. They typically cover a few defined blocks. If gang members violate the rules, they may face sentences of a few months in jail.

Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have long maintained that the injunctions violate the constitutional right to associate, although the state Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court have upheld them.

Hahn unveiled the citywide plan in front of a group of young children at the Challengers Boys and Girls Club in South Los Angeles. He portrayed it as an extension of his work as city attorney, when he was among the first to sue gangs in civil court on grounds that they are a nuisance.

“When I was city attorney, I pioneered the use of gang injunctions, a controversial subject at that time ... but it has worked,” Hahn said. “A citywide gang injunction will stop every gang member in every neighborhood from working with other gang members to take away the quality of life of the law-abiding residents of the city of Los Angeles.”

Critics and observers immediately questioned the plan. On Monday, Ricardo Garcia, criminal justice director for the ACLU of Southern California, called the plan a “non-solution to a very serious and real problem” and said it would violate the rights of innocent residents.

“A gang injunction of this broad of a nature permits the targeting of those youths who are not engaged in criminal conduct,” he said.

Jeffrey Grogger, a University of Chicago public policy professor who has studied Los Angeles County gang ordinances, said he wondered how the city could file an injunction that would have to name thousands of known gang members. “It would require a herculean effort,” he said.

Los Angeles is home to 39,565 known gang members, according to Los Angeles Police Department statistics.

Hahn said that would not deter him. “We are actually going to name specific individuals. And if it takes us, you know, thousands of pages to list all the gang members, we’ll do that,” he said.

“I realize this is going to be difficult for some people to comprehend. It’s going to take some time, it’s going to take some work, but we’re committed here.”

Hahn, however, said he had not discussed the idea with City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo. A spokesman for Delgadillo’s office, noting that Monday, Cesar Chavez Day, was a state holiday, said no one was available to comment.

Hahn campaign spokesman Yusef Robb said the mayor’s staff had spoken to Police Chief William J. Bratton about the idea. Mary Grady, a spokesman for Bratton, said he “wants to take some more time to look at the plan in its entirety.”

A spokesman for Villaraigosa also declined to comment.

The city councilman is a former ACLU board president -- a fact Hahn brought up in the 2001 campaign, along with the ACLU’s efforts to block previous injunctions. Villaraigosa, Hahn said at the time, “is more likely to ... be sympathetic to the criminal rather than to be sympathetic to the victim.”

Villaraigosa said in 2001 that he supported injunctions “in a very limited sense,” but in conjunction with crime prevention programs.