Impact of Gang and Minority Injunctions on the Neighborhood

It wasn’t long ago that I was introduced to the legal term of injunctions. I grew up in a working poor predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in a town West of Sacramento called Broderick. It was one of those small towns (or barrios) where almost every family knew each other. I loved the barrio where I grew up. I have fond memories of playing sports and enjoying activities on the Sacramento River with my friends. We all went to the same schools growing up, and the families in our barrio had generations of history. Around the year 2000, an abandoned golf course on the outskirts of the neighborhood was purchased and the owners proposed a new development of private homes that ranged from $500,000 to $1,000,0000. Prior to this new development proposal, the average house in the area was valued at around $150,000 to $200,000. The infusion of investment income in this community was unexpected because no one who lived in the barrio saw it as prime waterfront real estate.

As the development project began to take shape, and the first houses went up, I clearly recall saying to my younger self, “There is no way that the people buying these homes are going to want to look out of their million dollar windows and see brown people going about our day”. It wasn’t long before the city attorney filed a civil gang injunction against our neighborhood. A 3 square mile radius became known as the “Safety Zone”, yet none of us felt any safer, not that we ever felt unsafe in the first place. You see when the entire town is a “gang”, there isn’t much to be worried about. It wasn’t like other neighborhoods where each block had a different gang that was constantly at war. It was just us and yes, we had a little group and that group could be called a gang, but we just felt like we were bonded to the barrio and its history, so we were proud to say, “I’m from Broderick”.

It was a tough neighborhood to grow up in, but that was the nature of the barrio. What the gang injunction did was criminalize our community and it gave the police extralegal authority to harass, detain, and arrest at will. When I moved to Camarillo, I learned that the neighboring community in Oxnard also had a gang injunction. I couldn’t help but feel drawn to this legal phenomena so I decided to volunteer my time in the community. My goal for writing this paper was to learn more about the impact of gang injunctions from differing points of view. Through the lens of community, legal/law enforcement, and political/business disciplines, my research will examine the phenomena of civil gang injunctions as a tool for dealing with gangs with the purpose of making communities safer.

The focus of my research is to better understand the effects of civil gang injunctions (CGIs) on minority communities. CGIs are civil lawsuits used by police and city prosecutors on entire neighborhoods based on the claim that there is gang behavior that is a nuisance to nongang residents. The injunctions are served on alleged gang members and the police have complete discretion to decide who gets served. Often prosecutors start out by naming 30 or so individuals and then add the legal term “John Doe’s,” to be identified at a later point to give the police that discretion to add whomever they choose (Myers 291). If an alleged gang member is listed on an injunction they will not be allowed to engage in common legal behavior that they can be arrested for.

Things like congregating in groups of two or more, standing in public for more than five minutes, wearing certain clothes, and making certain gestures (Muniz 228). Once an alleged gang member is served, his information is put in the CalGang database and if they are ever arrested again in the future, they are subject to severe gang enhancements on top of the charges they were arrested for. To make matters worse, gang injunctions are civil orders so alleged gang members have no right to a public defender if they choose to appeal the order. Gang injunctions were first introduced in the City of Los Angeles in 1987.

This injunction was important because it opened the door for other municipalities to do the same in their cities. The interesting thing about extraordinary legal measures is that it often takes minority communities many years to realize the effects of these injunctions. Yet at first glance, minority communities are presented with very superficial statistics to tout the effectiveness it has against gangs. This learning curve for communities has produced disturbing research that exposes hidden racial agendas, financial incentives, and outright suppression of minority communities. The first CGI in Los Angeles was instituted against the Playboy Gangster Crips (PBGs) in what is known as the Cadillac-Corning neighborhood (Muniz 216). Besides being the first CGI in Los Angeles what makes this CGI so unique is that Cadillac-Corning was not the neighborhood with the most murders nor assaults. Which leaves us many years later to question why this neighborhood needed a CGI when compared to other more violent neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Before I explore the root intent of these injunctions, specifically the Cadillac-Corning injunction, it is important to understand the history of the neighborhood where it all started. During the 1960s research shows that the area was entirely white, Jewish, and middle class. Over the years that followed, there was a demographic shift due to the Los Angeles School Board issuing permits to allow minority students to transfer from the predominantly black schools in South Central Los Angeles. Parents went west because the Cadillac-Corning area gave minority families housing options that were considered affordable compared to other areas of Los Angeles. By the 1980s “… minorities made up 78 percent of the student population…” at Hamilton High the areas only high school (Muniz 223). “In the 20-year period prior to the injunction, Cadillac-Corning underwent a significant demographic change from a middle-class white Jewish area to a solidly black and working-class neighborhood” (Muniz 227). The demographics from white middle class to black working class supports the trend that CGIs are primarily used to target populations of minorities.

The Cadillac-Corning CGI was created to defend the surrounding white neighborhoods, furthermore, we can conclude that prosecutors and police targeted Cadillac-Corning because the neighborhood’s demographics threatened the boundaries of racial class separation. Based on the historical evidence this injunction was used specifically to target black youth and black men. Designed to overtly control the movement of black youth by criminalizing everyday activities and behavior that are legal and constitutional rights. Police targeted black youth on bicycles, “… because authorities concluded that they were either acting as lookouts or moving drugs” (Muniz 228). The Cadillac-Corning injunction proved that police could outright criminalize racial groups by replacing the word black men with gang member when drawing up the legal text for their orders. The next CGI I want to discuss is one that is close to our own community.

The Oxnard gang injunction has all of the familiar traits of the Cadillac-Corning CGI, except this injunction targeted Latinos in the predominantly low-income Colonia neighborhood. The research on this particular CGI claims that the CGI on the Chiques gang in Colonia was unsuccessful. Over the years, “Evidence shows that, when the community is not made part of the process, there is an exclusionary effect of the system” (Miranda 109). This is what happened in Oxnard. Initially, there was support from the community for the injunction. The community felt that something had to be done to contain the Chiques gang from growing and spreading out from their Colonia neighborhood. With the aid of Federal money, the City of Oxnard created the permanent injunction on the Colonia Chiques gang. Over time the main gang members moved out of the injunctions so-called safety zone and into surrounding neighborhoods. What remained were the poor Latino families in Colonia. These families became the targets of the injunctions and many if not all of the youth were labeled as gang members. Initially, the community supported the injunction because the gang in this community played a significant role in numerous crimes.

What the community and many law enforcement officers came to learn is that there should have been mutual and concurrent support for other viable programs that did not criminalize the youth such as weekend and afterschool youth programs. One officer interviewed stated, “I believe the injunction was a cheap way of trying to solve a deteriorating social, economical, and dysfunctional family problem” (Miranda 86). The Oxnard CGI was flawed on many levels primarily because the city never tried to understand why a young man or woman subscribes to gang life. Rather the city took the advice of white police officers, politicians seeking reelection, and non-Oxnard residents to find an easy solution through the CGI. Community support is the key to addressing the root of the gang problem. It has been documented clearly that CGIs require community involvement and simultaneous community programs that support the social aspects of gangs in minority communities. Oxnard city officials missed an opportunity to partner with its community to create long term initiatives to target at-risk youth and instead chose to incarcerate and criminalize them. This scenario plays out in many other minority communities throughout the country.

Research points out that CGIs are almost always tied to areas of economic revitalization. The CGI gives city officials a tool to state that they have a handle on the “situation” in order for private investment money to take an interest. In this particular example, the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles is a community comprised of Mexican immigrants and Chicano families in a key economic area adjacent to downtown markets. CGIs have been used in this area to socially cleanse the area of young men of color. City officials have rolled out a plan to move out the minorities in the community with a mix of CGIs and new business development. “The city has been building a new police station and lock-up in the area, with multi-million dollar cost overruns, to contain and control the poor residents” (Chaubey 4).

The new police station, the new rail line, and the pro-business politicians are using the all too familiar tactic of targeting minorities through injunctions. Through my research, I learned about city council member Jose Huizar, formerly the president of the LA Unified School Board, and his pro-business east-side political machine promoting gentrification and supporting gang injunctions (Chaubey 4; Stock 7-8). This is a similar tactic being used by city council members all over Los Angeles and there is a connection between City Attorneys that work with developer-dominated 'neighborhood councils' like the one in Boyle Heights to promote gentrification (Chaubey 4). This was an eye-opening moment for me as I thought back to my own neighborhood’s injunction. I recalled the gut feeling that the nearby development was the reason everybody with brown skin was now being criminalized as a potential gang member.

The research on CGIs is documenting a disturbing pattern between pro-business and developer heavy city councils in low-income minority communities and the likelihood of CGIs. These city councils then make plans to develop and utilize CGIs to gentrify these communities. In his research, Frank Barajas also notes that gang injunction neighborhoods tend to border areas that are undergoing revitalization projects and have increasing property values (404). Injunctions allow law enforcement to remove low-income youth of color from white, middle-class residential areas and commercial centers” (Muniz 218). Still, the question remains are CGIs useful and productive tools for law enforcement against gangs.

Researchers at USC determined that CGIs can be improved in order to be more effective. They concluded that the success of a CGI depends on how they “…play a positive role in curtailing the activities of street gang members or whether they fuel it instead may depend on policymakers and criminal justice officials ensuring that (a) gang members are approached as individuals, (b) the safety zone is appropriately sized, and (c) police suppression activities are accompanied by gang‐focused social services and a clear, transparent escape clause” (Hennigan et al.). The all-important escape clause touted by officials is that unintended victims of a CGI have a way to exit the orders of an injunction.

Research shows that “the removal process takes six to nine months and requires that petitioners do not have law enforcement contact for two years prior, a feat that is nearly impossible considering that injunctions allow law enforcement to maintain contact with those who are enjoined” (Muniz 228). The escape clause is next to impossible. Baring a complete judicial dismissal of the injunction most people subject to the injunction are forever enjoined and therefore criminalized. Nevertheless, CGIs can be improved from a law enforcement perspective and will always be at best a band-aid of short-term relief to an issue that is fundamentally social in nature (Meyers 291). The long term effects of CGIs have been studied and researchers in San Diego found that “…the men and women in our study experience several hidden harms of gang enforcement measures that damage their ability to connect with others in the community, including their own family members and friends; and reduce their ability to pursue opportunities related to education, housing, and employment” (Swan et al.).

With a better understanding of the research on CGIs, as well as my lived experience witnessing the criminalization of my own community, I draw conclusions that CGIs are tools that give law enforcement the authority to restrict the constitutional rights of minorities in order to advance ulterior goals that often benefit city officials and businesses economic interests. In addition, CGIs are used to outright displace and push out minorities from highly desirable development areas. My research has given me deeper insight to frame my lived experience with CGIs. Drawing on this insight to inform my conclusion, substantial research now exists to show the ineffectiveness of CGIs as a tool for law enforcement to make communities safer. In fact, the research shows that CGIs criminalize entire communities, with no investment in programs that provide youth with positive alternatives to gangs.

Most of the studies I read in my research show some initial short term success of CGIs when working in conjunction with the community and when the financial interests that undermine its intent have to be neutralized. Yet we constantly see this underlying financial trend that only solidifies my initial conclusions I made back when I was a young man and I witnessed the first high end homes go up in our neighborhood, “There is no way that the people buying these homes are going to want to look out of their million dollar windows and see brown people going about their day”.