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Schauntee Snodgrass:
“I’m going to jail.”
Photo by Robert Yager |
Alleged gang members, with legal support from the Nation
of Islam, have mounted the most vigorous courtroom defense to date of their
civil liberties by opposing a Los Angeles city injunction that would prohibit,
among other things, associating in public, going out after 10 p.m., and
signaling a moving car. And though the city won this round, obtaining a
preliminary injunction against alleged members of the Venice Shoreline
Crips, the case is expected to go to trial, the first local challenge of
the popular but hotly debated law-enforcement strategy.
Friday’s ruling, by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David
D. Perez, establishes a "safety zone" comprising most of Venice’s Oakwood
neighborhood, within which 36 teens and adults will be barred from contacting
each other in public and from a variety of otherwise legal activities.
Defendants face a possible six-month jail term for each violation. Barring
a successful legal challenge, the preliminary injunction will remain in
effect until a formal trial, after which the injunction will be either
dissolved or made permanent.
Although the result of Friday’s hearing, in a packed Santa
Monica courtroom, was no different from those of similar hearings across
Los Angeles, the proceedings themselves were unlike any other. "Typically,
gang members choose not to oppose" the injunctions, said Deputy City Attorney
Brooke White last month after another preliminary injunction was slapped
against the Culver City Boys, the Mar Vista–based rivals of the Shoreline
Crips. At that hearing, which lasted less than an hour, not a single defendant
was represented by a lawyer. White faced a very different situation Friday,
when four attorneys representing 27 defendants argued for more than five
hours that the court order was unfair and unnecessary.
Defense attorneys spent much of the hearing attacking
the evidence supporting the city’s case, which consisted of the sworn declarations
of 75 police officers and four civilians. The latter’s statements were
sealed and unavailable to either the defendants or their lawyers. Much
of the testimony involved alleged incidents that had never been prosecuted.
In one notable example, which provoked laughter from the audience, attorney
Naren Hunter decried the relevance of testimony regarding a photo of his
client reaching into his pants. He noted that the city, through "an incredible
leap of logic," wanted the court to interpret this gesture as cocaine "keistering,"
a term referring to the practice of hiding drugs in the rectum, even though
no drugs were recovered and no charges filed. They further denounced the
city’s near-total reliance on the testimony of police officers who do not
live in the neighborhood they patrol. "The police are not the community,"
said attorney Trane Hunter.
On a constitutional level, lawyers for the defense argued
that "the terms of this injunction are so broad and vague that almost any
activity can put them in jail." Their concerns were shared by the five
defendants who testified in court. "As soon as you grant this," Schauntee
Snodgrass told the judge, "I’m going to jail. I already know that." Attorneys
argued that the clause prohibiting defendants from approaching a moving
vehicle, designed to prevent drug sales, could result in a teenager being
arrested for waving to his grandmother.
Countered city attorney White: "If you want to wave to
your grandmother, fine. Just don’t do it when she’s in a moving vehicle."
Defense lawyers termed his rejoinder "ludicrous." "That
throws the Constitution on its head," said Naren Hunter.
The Shoreline Crips first made local headlines in 1993,
when a war began with rival Latino gangs that left over 20 dead. After
tensions heated up again two years ago, City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter
asked the city and district attorneys to bring gang injunctions to Venice.
So far, the injunctions have held up in court — an attempt by ACLU lawyers
to strike down a San Jose injunction failed before the California Supreme
Court in 1997. Since then, Los Angeles has increasingly been using the
court orders to deal with gang-troubled neighborhoods.
Arguing for the injunction, White asserted that the people
of Venice "have lost their neighborhood to the Venice Shoreline Crips,"
and that "everyone knows that Oakwood is the rock-cocaine capital of the
world." His assertions were met with widespread guffaws and hisses from
an audience composed mostly of supporters of the defendants. To rebut those
claims, defense attorneys called on eight residents who testified that
community members do not live in fear of gang violence, but suffer near-daily
harassment at the hands of the LAPD. "There is fear in Oakwood," summarized
attorney James Simmons. "There is fear in Oakwood of the police."
One community activist testified that the injunction was
not about crime prevention but about an attempted gentrification of Oakwood,
which is surrounded by whiter and more-affluent neighborhoods. "We believe
this injunction is not dealing with the gang. We believe it’s dealing with
property values," said Stan Muhammad, one of the founders of a recently
created group called Venice 2000 — which, with help from the Nation of
Islam, has been funding the defendants’ legal defense. Venice 2000 also
has been setting up job-training programs for Shorelines who renounce their
gang ties.
The defense noted that crime in Oakwood has dropped precipitously
since the last round of gang warfare, without the help of an injunction.
White responded, "It’s too late when the bodies fall.
Now is the time . . . not when the blood is being scrubbed off the streets."
Only one person testified in court for the injunction.
Mike Bonin, community-affairs director for Councilwoman Galanter, told
the court that the majority of Oakwood residents "live in fear" and favor
the order, but were "terrified to come forward." In an interview after
the hearing, defense attorney La’Chelle Woodert countered that Galanter
has long failed to represent the people of Oakwood: "Ruth Galanter’s rich
cronies may want this injunction, but this community does not."
But the city won the day. With little comment, Judge Perez
approved the preliminary injunction, though not before striking the names
of two defendants whose statements in court convinced him that they were
not gang members.
Defense attorney James Simmons was left in the awkward
position of asking permission for his clients to gather at his office,
which is within the affected area. The judge granted that request, but
his response was barely audible over the exclamations of audience members
as they stormed out of the courtroom.
"He had his mind made up when he came in here," one woman
said.
An angry defense attorney exclaimed that the ruling "stabbed
the black residents of Oakwood in the back."
The battle, though, is far from over. The city will almost
certainly have to go to trial to win a permanent injunction. A court date
won’t be set until at least January, and until then, attorney Woodert vowed,
"We’re going to use every procedural means at our disposal" to fight the
order. "We’re going to take extraordinary measures."
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