'Gang safety zones' growing in Texas

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This topic correspond to the post that can be found at http://www.streetgangs.com/news/081510_ ... as-2:CINDY HORSWELL (HOUSTON CHRONICLE) | Aug. 15, 2010

Jo Ann Rios' home looked like a pincushion, with 18 bullet holes after a series of drive-by shootings.

The house is located in Bryan near the Texas A&M campus, not ordinarily the kind of place outsiders expect gangland crime.

Rios also has seen two boys shot as they walked past her driveway. Her 20-year-old son, Virgil Ponce, came within a hair-width of dying from a bullet lodged in his brain after a run-in with a rival gang member.

Now, Rios has another worry: Bryan authorities have taken the unusual step of suing Virgil, along with her other son, who's 14, and her stepson in civil court. The trio are among 38 the lawsuit has identified as members of the Latin Kings or Surenos gangs and being a "public nuisance."

"This is crazy," Rios said, after her release from the hospital last week following a stress-related heart attack. "Because of this lawsuit, my boys can't be around each other anymore. They can't go out at night or have a cell phone."
9 p.m. curfew
Bryan is the first Houston-area community to use a civil injunction to force identified gang members to abide by strict rules within a 3-square-mile "gang safety zone." To create the zone, law enforcement authorities had to prove to a judge that the specified area had rampant gang-related crime and the named individuals were participants.

The injunction, which can last up to 10 years, was implemented after a gang-related killing on Mother's Day.

Those enjoined are not only barred from committing crimes but also from associating with each other, going out in public after 9 p.m. or possessing a cell phone in a car. Then there are prohibitions against predictable gang activity: wearing gang clothing, making gang signs or possessing aerosol paint cans.

Violators can be charged with a Class A misdemeanor that is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.

The restrictions, which critics have said infringe on constitutional rights, are carefully crafted to cramp the style of "brazen bands of thugs" who like to intimidate through sheer numbers, authorities said.

"The threat of curfew, losing your cell phone and no longer being able to drive through town wearing your colors and flashing your gang signs takes away the coolness factor," said Kinley Hegglund, a city attorney in Wichita Falls who helped draft an anti-gang injunction there in 2007.
Pick 'a war zone'
San Antonio was the first Texas city to implement an injunction, in 1999, after the state passed a law permitting it. Fort Worth and El Paso also have created gang safety zones.

Now for the first time, Houston is collecting data on gang members to possibly seek its own injunctive relief, a Houston police spokesman said.

Full article at: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 54843.html

Image source: Houston Chronicle