Top county law enforcement officials have said that the gang injunction is fair, balanced and effective. However, lifelong residents of West Sacramento, with whom the Vanguard spoke, who have had first-hand experience at the receiving end of the injunctions, described a different reality.
We were told that people who’d never had anything to do with gangs were targeted this way because of friends or relatives who may have been marked by police as gang members, and that refusal to sign the papers meant that their supervisor was told that they were a gang member, sometimes resulting in loss of employment thereafter. We were told that police would stop children on their way home from school and ask them to demonstrate a gang sign only to then register them as a gang member.
According to officials, if you are registered as gang member, it takes 5 years of non-activity to be removed from the injunction list. But what if you aren’t a gang member and should not have been registered in the first place? You have to worry and restrict your associations and movements according to the injunction for 5 years. Who do you go to for review?
The residents told us that, though the area is not an affluent neighborhood and it does have a drug problem, it does not have a gang problem and is not an infested war zone as has been portrayed. At the civil trial which resulted in the current injunction, the DA presented 108 incidents from 2001 to 2010 as the basis of their case. They placed pins on a map of the safety zone, one for each incident. By the end, the area looked infested with crime.
However, the image of an infested war zone quickly fizzled out once the incidents were examined and categorized. Out of 108 incidents there are no murders and no drive-by shootings. Only 36 are violent crimes, i.e. four per year on average. Among the incidents, the Memorial Park fight, presented by the DA as one of the most serious gang crimes, an unprovoked brutal group attack on innocent people in the park, was rather a prearranged fight that escalated in to an ugly group beating.
Those responsible should rightly be prosecuted. However, criminal street gang charges were also included among the charges, partly because of the “known” gang history of people involved and partly because of the particular signs, symbols and words used.
The problem with the idea of using signs and symbols to identify gangs is that they are known to certain segments of the population as part of popular culture, i.e. people independently know about the signs and symbols and words without having contact with each other. Then how do you separate bravado from genuine gang activity?
The trial also demonstrated the absurd practice of prosecutors using jail classification documents as a basis for accusing someone of being a gang member. Defendant Jesse Garcia explained that inmates have to be classified as belonging to a gang when they arrive at the jail or prison whether they are a gang member or not. Inmates function as gangs based on race and region and for safety, and incoming inmates have to be classified as such. This classification document was then used by the prosecutor to try to prove that Mr. Garcia had admitted on the jail document to being a gang member.
The freedom to move freely and associate freely is sacred. It should not be given up as a knee-jerk reaction to contrived fear. The solution, if there is a problem of crime, is to use more sophisticated methods of gathering evidence and prosecuting criminals that make sure others are not harmed in the process, rather than using a blunter instrument and worrying only about one side of the equation.
Reduction in crime figures have been touted by officials as justifying the gang injunction, but they are never the ones living at the receiving end of such injunctions. How does one also measure the harm done by crime prevention measures? Isn’t it nonsensical to talk about the effectiveness of a crime prevention measure without also giving equal attention to the harm done by the measure to others? Wouldn’t crime in West Sacramento be reduced by 100% if everyone living there were blindly arrested and jailed? The injunction gives police the ability to intimidate and target people without review. It seems that the injunction targets not only criminals but also harms others but putting them at the mercy of the psychology of the West Sacramento police department and the Yolo County district attorney.
I noticed you left out of your article the single incident which was probably the most likely to have been the cause of the gang injunction – the beating of the train engineer…
Also, the residents claiming massive roundups by West Sac Police – how about some actual data as to numbers…
Having attended the trial, the beating of the train engineer was not the centerpiece of that trial, the memorial park incident was. The problem with both cases is that in most ways they are isolated incidents. Moreover, unlike other areas with gang injunctions, both were assault cases rather than murder cases.
To dmg: I will bet you my bottom dollar the train incident is the one the judge was thinking of when she decided to impose the injunction. Can’t prove it, cannot get inside the mind of the judge, but that is my gut instinct. I also find it very telling that you failed to mention that case – bc it is a damning one. When train engineers are not safe to travel through a town, that is very telling…
To the author of this article: where do you get your information regarding what happens in jury deliberations because its inaccurate?
The Judicial Watch Editorial Board wrote this, I don’t see any reference to jury deliberations.
Elaine: I’m skeptical about that because it really barely came up.