Value of gang injunctions debated even as lists are purged

San Diego Union-Tribune - 9/4/2019

Sep. 4--SAN DIEGO -- Civil injunctions to keep gang members from hanging out and causing problems

in certain San Diego County neighborhoods were intended to last a lifetime.

No more flashing gang signs, wearing gang colors or taking over a park to deal drugs.

For those who left that life behind and wanted restrictions on their movements lifted, there was a process to petition the court to remove their names from an injunction. But that process didn't work very well.

The seven-page online application asked for a lot of personal, school and employment information. The petition had to be verified and brought before a judge. The process took months, even years, and almost no one did it.

In fact, out of nearly 800 people named in gang injunctions since the first one was issued in 1997, only 20 people have petitioned to be removed from the list and just 10 of those succeeded, according to District Attorney Summer Stephan.

"The community didn't trust the process," said Geneviéve Jones-Wright, an attorney and member of San Diego'sCommission on Gang Prevention and Intervention. "There were too many questions."

Stephan agreed, saying: "The process may appear simple, but maybe it was only simple to lawyers. We found it was harder than we thought for people to petition on their own."

The petition form now has been whittled down to three eligibility questions:

* Have you been convicted of a violent felony in the last 10 years?

* Have you remained out of custody and suffered no criminal convictions for the past five years -- excluding minor traffic violations?

* Have you engaged in any activity demonstrating continued loyalty to, or membership in, a criminal street gang for the past five years?

Petitioners who aren't sure if they qualify can include people as references to vouch for their character. The petition must still be approved by a judge, but officials hope things will move faster now that the issue is on their radar.

The restraining orders issued in civil court ban gang members in parts of certain neighborhoods designated as "safety zones" from associating with each other, wearing gang clothing, flashing gang signs or getting caught committing minor offenses like littering, drinking in public and vandalism.

Michael Ortiz Torres, 44, of Vista, was one of those who took on the process to be free from an injunction and won. He lived in Oceanside as a youth and ran with a gang from about age 13 to 38. He was in and out of prison and using heroin. He was named in a gang injunction in 2004.

After one final overdose, he started questioning his lifestyle.

"I asked myself what did I have to show for my life?" Torres said in a recent interview. "The light shined on me. That was the last day I did heroin."

He checked himself into a recovery home in 2012, became a born-again Christian and stayed clean. He joined Victory Outreach church in Vista and felt called to mentor young gang members to guide them off the self-destructive path. But, Torres said, even though he'd turned his life around, police would still stop him, sit him on a curb and find out he was under court order to stay away from active gang members.

Torres said he thought if he had the injunction lifted, he could do more to help others. He tackled the process, which took a couple of years because his first petition got lost.

"I think me getting off the injunction opened doors for other people. Everybody was asking me, 'How'd you do it?'" Torres said.

Information about the process, and the petition form, can be found at the District Attorney's Office website under the heading of "Preventing Crimes."

In recent months, prosecutors -- working with law enforcement -- have sped up the process on their own initiative by seeking to remove more than 300 people from gang injunctions.

Police, prosecutors and judges agreed that those people no longer posed a threat to the community. More than 260 of them had been crime-free or out of a gang for years. Some had moved out of the county. Eight were dead.

Stephan said that after one young man was lifted from an injunction, his father sent her a letter saying that action "equates to being liberated from incarceration."

"The community told us some people couldn't get a loan and buy a house because of an injunction," Stephan said. "We've had a positive reaction to what we did. I was very glad to be part of the solution."

Police obtained some 20 injunctions over the years against individuals in about a dozen gangs in San Diego, Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos, Escondido and National City. The San Diego City Attorney's Office also issued gang injunctions for neighborhoods within city limits.

Technically, a gang injunction does not bar people identified in the orders as gang members from setting foot in a so-called safety-zone. But it does prohibit them from hanging out or "associating" in public with other gang known members in those areas.

While police found injunctions a useful tool for helping residents take back their streets and parks without fear of harassment or violence, some community members viewed them as more harmful than beneficial.

Jones-Wright said she saw families ripped apart, with sons or daughters on an injunction no longer free to visit their grandmother or even to inherit and live in their parents' home located within a safety zone.

"I grew up in Lincoln Park; I was in high school when the first gang injunction was there in 1997," Jones-Wright recalled in a recent interview. "I was able to see the effect injunctions had on people I knew. They couldn't hang out with friends or be in areas where their families lived."

She said it's unfair for an injunction to stay in effect for a lifetime, and that employers and others can easily find injunction lists in a simple Google search, meaning the stigma can last for years after a person has been crime-free.

During her years with the county Public Defender's Office, Jones-Wright had a client who violated his gang injunction so he could visit his daughter who lived in a Lincoln Park target zone. He also was caught within the zone in a car with a cousin known by law enforcement as a gang member.

A trial judge dismissed the charge involving the cousin, but a jury convicted the man of the misdemeanor violation of the court order for visiting his daughter. Jones-Wright said she lost an appeal of that conviction.

"That has always stayed with me," she said. "No one ever fought for these guys."

So she started fighting for them, and on the gang commission's subcommittee to study gang injunctions, she lobbied to have all injunctions eliminated.

Stephan said she considered that recommendation, but found that a number of people on one of the injunctions had active criminal cases. Four are wanted on murder charges, she said, and two are awaiting murder trials.

"How would it be if we took murderers off the injunctions?" she wondered. "We chose the balanced path between public safety and the individual's right to have a second chance."

The commission's executive director, Pastor Jesus Sandoval Hernandez of New Harvest Christian Fellowship of East San Diego, said he tries to remain neutral on whether gang injunctions have been good or bad for communities.

"I'm for them, I'm against them -- it depends on what day it is," Sandoval said. "These are complex issues and they affect groups differently.

"Are you the mother of someone who has been killed in gang violence? Or of someone who did their 20 years (in prison) and now wants to get on with life?"

Sandoval grew up in City Heights and ran with a gang from age 16 -- when he was shot -- to about age 19. By then, he said, his girlfriend was pregnant with their child and he was seeing his gang friends, also young fathers, killed on the streets or thrown in prison.

"That was it right there," he said. He turned his life around in 1998 and was ordained in 2003. Since then he has counseled and mentored gang members, encouraging them to pick a different path.

Police say they have found injunctions valuable in reducing gang violence and the number of active gang members in their cities.

Sheriff's Sgt. Mike Arens, on the gang enforcement team in San Marcos, said his agency obtained injunctions against 26 people in 1997 and another 93 people 2007 just in San Marcos. After years of sending people to jail for violating the restraining orders, Arens said gang activity has plummeted.

"The don't harass the public like they used to," Arens said. "No roaming bands of youngsters. There are probably fewer than 50 documented gang members in San Marcos now. There were probably 200 in 2007."

Arens said his deputies don't make many injunction-related arrests anymore.

"I think they were effective, very successful for us in eliminating those quality-of-life issues for the rest of the community," he said. "(A gang injunction) is not going to stop a shooting, but it prevents them from hanging out and asking, 'Where are you from?' at the parks."

San Diego police obtained injunctions against 85 members of two large gangs.

"They were created due to an increase in gang violence," police spokesman Lt. Shawn Takeuchi said in an email. "The injunctions did prove useful and were used to keep violent gang members out of the areas where they were committing crime.

"Over the years as the gang members on the injunction became older, moved away, went to prison, etc., the injunctions were utilized less and less."

He said the agency worked through the City Attorney's Office and identified 51 people no longer active in gangs, and judges approved their removal from the restraining orders. But Takeuchi said eliminating injunctions altogether would be a mistake, because the others who remain on the lists have not changed their lifestyles.

Sgt. Wade Walters, National City Police Department's gang unit supervisor since January, agreed that injunctions have served a good purpose.

"Without a doubt, having a gang injunction in National City has been beneficial to the quality of life of our residents," he said. "We do enforce it. If we see gang clothing in the safety zone, or they are with another gang member -- anything that tells me they're active, they'll be arrested for violating the court restraining order."

He said when the district attorney announced in March that 332 names had been removed from injunction lists, some National City gang members asked him about the process. One 37-year-old gang member said if he hadn't been on an injunction, he would have ended up in prison rather than settling down with his family.

"It took the heart out of the gang," Walters said. "In 1999, no one was walking through Kimball Park. Gang members acknowledge that now they see citizens playing soccer at night, kids on the basketball courts."

He said National City's primary gang has 260 to 300 members. About 40 to 50 were taken off injunctions this summer. Asked if all injunctions should be dropped, Walters replied, "Absolutely not."

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