Injunction curbs Anaheim street gang members

A violent Anaheim street gang was targeted Friday with an injunction prohibiting about 90 members of the group from assembling or taking part in a variety of activities in a neighborhood they have terrorized.

The preliminary injunction signed by Orange County Superior Court Judge Daniel J. Didier marked the second time in five months that this legal tool had been used in the county. Similar injunctions have been imposed in Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Clara counties.

In July, the judge signed a similar order aimed at a Santa Ana gang. Crime in that area has dropped 46% in the last five months, authorities said.

Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas, who held a news conference after the hearing, said the injunction had effectively hung a “going-out-of-business” sign for the Santa Ana gang.

“If you’re a gang member in this county, it’s only a matter of time before we put you out of business,” he said.

The judge’s order establishes a 1.6-square-mile zone in Anaheim and portions of Orange and Garden Grove, near Ponderosa Park in the Wakefield neighborhood, in which gang members must obey a 10 p.m. curfew, not drink in public, not wear gang attire and not associate in public with members of the group.

The injunction was warmly received by residents of the area.

“As a father, I think it’s good that they’re doing something about these gang members,” said Tirso Pascual.

“We’ve got small kids, and there have been shootings, and these younger children need to be protected.”

Yesenia Boyzo, 26, stopped at Ponderosa Park to let her two boys, ages 2 1/2 and 4 months, play at the playground.

“I used to live around here, but I moved because it got too dangerous,” she said.

“There was a shooting at the park and another by the liquor store down the street.”

The injunction named 75 male and two female members of the Boys From the Hood gang, 25 of them juveniles whose parents were also served.

The district attorney’s office said that the other members covered by the injunction had yet to be served.

Authorities said the gang had about 125 members.

Police Chief John Welter said the Wakefield neighborhood had suffered through a crime wave -- including eight gang shootings, one homicide, one attempted murder and 25 assaults -- since January 2005.

Originally a tagging crew that socialized at parties in the early 1990s, the group began dealing cocaine and evolved into a street gang that claimed many west Anaheim apartment complexes as its turf, said investigator Bryan Janocha of the Police Department’s gang enforcement detail. They robbed children of bicycles, burglarized apartments and warned victims and witnesses not to talk to authorities, and threatened to kill a police officer, police said.

In one incident, an African American who testified against gang members in an assault case was threatened when gang members spray-painted his driveway with a racially derogatory term followed by “187,” the penal code for murder. The man moved, Welter said.

In June, gang members jumped a rival in the bathroom of a county probation office. In an second incident at another probation office, a gun was found on a gang member in the parking lot.

For Jose Angel, 34, who is married with three children, the injunction comes late. Like Boyzo, he moved from the neighborhood.

“I would bring my kids to play at this park, and gang members would be here,” he said. “They would paint their slogans on the handball courts and on the concrete floor. They were everywhere. You couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t walk in front of them because they would have jumped you.”

Critics have attacked gang injunctions. Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union have argued that injunctions cast such a wide net that it is difficult to determine who is a gang member and who isn’t.

david.reyes@latimes.com