Residents Question Need for Gang Injunction as Judge White Rules on Motions and Guidelines for Trial

Prior to the start of proceedings, neighbors and activists from the affected neighbors spoke to reporters.  Rebecca Sandoval who has been on a forefront of the opposition to the injunction in West Sacramento said, “The injunction is targeting innocent citizens and the community has been torn apart by this injunction.  The community was never consulted nor advised of the impacts and the way the West Sacramento Police Department would label citizens as gang members and that they all live in an area as a public nuisance.”

Phil Barros a retired law enforcement officer and gang expert spoke as well.  He said that he has been opposing this gang injunction for five years and noted that during this time crime has not significantly risen or dropped.  He cited that major crimes in West Sacramento are almost non-existent.  “Citizens of West Sacramento should ask themselves, are the streets of West Sacramento safe for me to travel?  Is my family being threatened by notorious gang members?”

“These questions people have become important because official put these questions into the thoughts of others who are not of Latino descent and attempt to provide a division among the citizens,” he continued.  “We know that West Sacramento is a safe neighborhood and a community that people are proud to be part of including the people of Latino Descent.”

Julian Perez cited a March Davis Vanguard article that looked into the DA’s use of grants in a cash for conviction program.  He told reporters, “Another thing that has surfaced that is even more disturbing is an article from the March 2010 Davis Vanguard.”

“In March, District Attorney Reisig spoke to members of the Woodland Chamber of Commerce,” he said.  “In that, he related that 30 to 35 percent of the DA’s budget is funded by grants used to investigate and prosecute different areas of crime.  The week earlier there had been protests and the DA’s office had been charged with a cash-for-convictions enterprise.”

“Basically what this amounts to is that the DA’s office prosecutes or should I say, over-prosecutes cases,” Mr. Perez charged.  “In the article, it talks about gang suppression grants and what is disturbing is that current grant requirements as is laid out, require that the agency must be able to increase the number of individuals who are identified as gang members and the number of violent crimes.”

“This is very disturbing,” he continued.  “What is also disturbing is that the West Sacramento Police Department also gets federal grant money through the COPS recovery program which stands for “community oriented policing services.”  They get grant money to fight gangs, so it stands to reason that in order for the DA’s office and the West Sac PD to continue to operate, it is in their fiscal benefit to show that there’s a gang problem in West Sacramento.”

“Yolo County law enforcement claims there are over 400 gang members in Broderick, and yet they were only able to serve less than 30 individuals in five years with an injunction.  Why when there are so many?  Obviously this number is a fabrication,” said Phil Barros.

Rebecca Sandoval would point out, “The injunction violates fundamental civil rights and harmfully stigmatizes youth.  The criteria uses to validate someone as a gang member does not require the commission of a crime.  The criteria mostly allows for guilt by association or application of the label gang member.”

In the meantime, the court proceedings continued with Judge Kathleen White both hearing and ruling on various motions.  Last week the Vanguard reported the defense moved for the recusal of all Yolo County Judges on the grounds that many of them had already presided over trials for many of the defendants and therefore would be prejudiced by the findings of those trials.

While Judge White last week asked that the motion be put in writing, she also suggested that she could fairly preside over the proceedings.  On Monday she ruled that she had stricken the motion for failure to be filed in a timely matter.  She did not accept their explanation that they only last week realized the list of witnesses.  Moreover, she ruled that they had failed to prove their case and there were no legal grounds to recuse.

Judge White also ruled in favor of the prosecution’s motion to exclude non-expert witnesses prior to their testimony.  She said stated that in the over 200 trials she had presided over she had always excluded from the courtroom those people who would be witnesses prior to their testimony to prevent contamination of testimony.

Attorney David Dratman for the defense argued that this action was discretionary on the part of the court rather than require and it would potentially exclude everyone in West Sacramento, as every one of them was potentially a witness and therefore a party.  He argued that in this case there was no real reason to exclude anyone.

Gordon Kaupp added that courts have tailored exclusion remedies in order to prevent contamination.  However, in this case, we have witnesses who will testify to very different things based on their own experiences rather than multiple witnesses attempting to reconstruct a single crime scene or string of events in a common case.

Mark Merin, another attorney added that it would be difficult enforcing for witnesses that were not ID’d, that potential rebuttal witnesses might not be known, and overall it would have a minimal potential impact.

Judge White avoided some of these problems and future issues by limited the number of witnesses to fifty per side, which would reduce the number of excluded individuals.  However, the defense believes that the public should have the right to attend this public trial.

Judge White said that large trials are never neat and tidy.  She argued that this would be a public and that in every trial named witnesses were excluded.  She would however allow experts to attend from the start even prior to their testimony.  After further discussion about who constitutes an expert witness, she asked both sides to put together a list of experts they intend to call and they can deal with that list accordingly.

The defense made a motion to exclude events from outside of the safety zone.  After all, the purpose of the gang injunction is to determine if the gang is in fact a criminal street gang that serves a nuisance in a particular geographic location.

Deputy DA Ryan Couzens however argued that the court through the process should determine the boundaries of the safety.  He suggested depending on evidence, the court may expand or contract the safety zone.  He argued that due to the limitations on the number of witnesses, it would force his office to focus time on pertinent cases.  He was concerned in particular about an alleged Broderick Boys mob attack on a number of individuals that took place in Memorial Park just south of the safety zone and just south of I-80.

Judge White determined that there should be nothing admitted that would be South of I-80 except for the one case that DDA Couzens cited in Memorial Park.

The defense also had time frame concerns and they suggested that the object is to prove that there is currently a nuisance not that there was a nuisance in 2003.  They are also concerned with the great volume of discovery that the DA’s dropped on them fairly late in the process. 

The DA’s office countered that part of their objective needs to be to show that there is a current nuisance but also that past gang injunction efforts reduced crime and also to show the history of the area to support the fact that there is and has been a nuisance.  They argued that given witness limitation, once again, they would be forced to decide what are the most important events.

Gordon Kaupp however countered that one witness could discuss a number of different events and limitations on the number of witnesses is not quite as limiting as the prosecution is making it seem.  He has a real concern about the volume of documents, and while the defense in general conceded that the 2008 cut off might be too tight, particularly considering many of the crimes the defendants allegedly committed predate 2008, they want some sort of reasonable parameter.

Judge White made the decision which she would repeat over and over again, that the prosecution will have the burden to show that information is relevant.  Later she would make the point that with herself as the trier of facts, rather than a jury, irrelevant facts will not be as helpful.

This fact heavily weighed into the discussion about whether experts could cite the fact that a witness or defendant was a “validated” gang member as evidence of gang membership.  The defense obviously argued that the prosecution needed to prove that they were a gang member through evidence not simply assertion.  Judge White agreed as did the prosecution that they would have the burden to prove that point not merely state that a member was validated.  Judge White still needs to rule as to whether to allow the witness to even mention that they are validated.

On Thursday, Judge White rejected the Vanguard’s request to be able to audio record the proceedings.  She cited logistics and security reasons.  The Vanguard has not decided whether to challenge that ruling.

Today, Judge White still has a few rulings to make, but it will also mark the beginning of the trial which could last several months in a one-week on, one-week off format.  The Vanguard will have wall-to-wall coverage of the trial.  Stay tuned for the latest news and updates.

—David M. Greenwald reporting