Injunction isn't Enough
Los Angeles Times, May 30, 1999
In more ways than one, Los Angeles City Attorney James Hahn chose the right
metaphor when he described the Langdon Street
gang as a cancer on the community. Everyone wants to cure the North Hills
neighborhood of its cancerous
gangs. It's just that no one can agree
on the best treatment.
Hahn chose the strong medicine of an
injunction, awarded last week by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. The
injunction, Hahn's second against a San Fernando Valley gang, makes identified members of
the Langdon Street gang subject to a 9 p.m.
curfew and prohibits them from hanging out together in public or communicating
via walkie-talkies. Less extraordinary measures, Hahn argues, have failed to
stem criminal activity on the gang's turf, two rectangular areas on each side
of the San Diego Freeway where police say one-third of all narcotics arrests in the Valley were made last year. Many
law-abiding residents have become virtual prisoners in their own homes because
of the gang-run open-air drug market.
Just about everybody agrees that the neighborhood would be better off without
the gang, but
some worry that Hahn's cure is worse than the disease. The American Civil
Liberties Union claims that in addition to criminalizing basic civil liberties
such as the right of association,
injunctions merely shift gang activity to other neighborhoods. Some North Hills activists
worry that the
injunction will give police
license to harass anyone who even looks like a gang member.
The two sides are equally divided over how well past
injunctions against other gangs have worked. But here is something both sides can agree
on: Whether or not an
injunction is the best way to
rid neighborhoods of gangs, it shouldn't be the only method used. As anyone
who's battled cancer knows, there's more to the effort than medicine.
Since Hahn's 1993
injunction against the notorious Blythe Street gang, the Panorama City neighborhood has
been slowly turning around. But the
injunction was only part of the
cure. The city provided money to step up building and safety inspections and to
start foot patrols. Nonprofit organizations offered youth programs and classes
in English and parenting. Residents took it upon themselves to clean sidewalks,
pick up trash and paint over graffiti. By
ridding itself of the derelict buildings where gangs thrive and by providing
residents with means and skills to resist gangs, the neighborhood is
inoculating itself against a resurgence of the disease.
The North Hills neighborhood is ripe for this kind of revitalization. Church
and nonprofit youth programs already are in place. A
businessman has been buying and renovating apartment buildings in some of the
most gang-infested areas, removing graffiti and adding security patrols. An
annual Mothers March for Peace brings activists and residents together to
reclaim the streets.
If the purpose of the
injunction is to stop the violence and give law-abiding
residents the breathing space to rebuild their community, let's bring in the
building and safety inspectors, the regular police patrols, the job training
and social services needed to speed the effort. Let's give the neighborhood a
full course of treatment.