When gangs game the system

THIS WEEK, LAPD Officers Chuck Garcia and Ryan Moreno filed suit against the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Police Department in Superior Court, alleging that they were reassigned out of the Jordan Downs housing development in Watts and out of gang duty because gang members had filed unsubstantiated complaints against them.

In the course of one year -- March 2005 to March 2006 -- Garcia and Moreno had achieved notable success in Jordan Downs. They were responsible for more than 300 arrests, detentions and/or stops of alleged gang members. They had visibly reduced the number of gang members congregating in the area. They were the gang members’ worst nightmare -- dedicated cops who were committed to making a difference. That’s why it is so discouraging that they have been separated as partners and reassigned within the department.

These officers had been specifically recruited by their lieutenant to work a foot beat in the projects because of their experience and work ethic. They got to know the community inside and out. They were driven by a conversation they had with a father late one night on a radio call. “I’m tired of sleeping on the floor every night because of the gunshots going off all over the place,” the man said. “My family is being held hostage in our own home. Can’t you officers help?”

Working under the direction of department leadership, it was decided that the tool of choice to restore safety to the community would be the gang injunction, which is a court order prohibiting gang members from congregating, intimidating people, carrying weapons, vandalizing, selling drugs and so on. A copy of the injunction is served on a gang member, and if he violates it, he can be arrested for a misdemeanor. The two officers served injunctions on more than 200 gang members.

Gang members were initially unimpressed. But over the next several months, Garcia and Moreno started making arrests for violations of the gang injunctions. They averaged eight to 10 arrests every day. After being booked, sometimes repeatedly, the bail and the hassles started to take their toll on the gangbangers. When Garcia and Moreno appeared in the projects, the gangbangers dispersed.

Slowly, the neighborhood began to change. Crime, including the number of shootings, took a dive. Kids were playing outdoors again. Neighbors would linger on sidewalks to talk. Unfortunately, these hardworking, law-abiding people were the “silent” majority.

Garcia and Moreno made more injunction arrests between them in one year than the rest of the department combined. They documented everything, crossed every “t” and dotted every “i.” They knew that if they were successful, there would be a lot of heat.

Garcia and Moreno’s enforcement cost the gangs money. Dope sales went down. Dope seizures went up. This was intolerable to the gangs. The gangbangers knew that with the 2000 federal consent decree -- part of the post-Rampart Division scandal reforms -- there was a way to game the system and get the officers out of their business. All they had to do was complain; under the decree, any citizen complaint, no matter the source, must be investigated. And pending resolution, a cloud of suspicion would hang over the officers. So, although the gang injunction is a tool designed to force gang members to get out of an area, the gang members could turn around and use the consent decree as their tool to force the officers out of an area.

Increasingly, personnel complaints began to be phoned in on the two officers. The partners pressed on with enforcing the injunctions, ignoring the increasing howls of the gang members and their supporters. But then, abruptly, Garcia and Moreno were transferred in March out of the projects “for their own good” and for “career development,” they were told. They knew other cops who had been through this mill. Even if all of the complaints are unfounded, the sheer number stops your career in its tracks. They knew officers who had been trying for years to get out from under the cloud of suspicion.

After Garcia and Moreno were transferred, gang injunction arrests plummeted. The captain of the division visited the foot beat and gang units and asked why. “Look what happened to the partners,” the officers basically said. “We don’t want to go through that.” Along with the plunge in the number of injunction arrests came a corresponding increase in crime and shootings in the projects.

Garcia and Moreno had thought that doing the right thing would pay off, but instead their careers are in jeopardy. Our politicians and community leaders have to stop being naive about who is using the complaint system. The Police Protective League believes in checks and balances, but the system we have now under the consent decree is only helping criminals. Pulling successful cops off the streets to appease gang members is not the way to make Los Angeles safe.