Oakland police serve gang injunction notices, prompting Fruitvale protest

By Sean Maher
Oakland Tribune
Posted: 11/11/2010 05:08:21 PM PST
Updated: 11/12/2010 08:30:57 AM PST

OAKLAND -- About 30 people protested near the Fruitvale BART station Thursday after police the previous night began to serve notices to people accused of being gang members after an injunction was filed by the city attorney.
At least 10 of the 41 adults named in the proposed injunction were served Wednesday night with notices to appear in court, city attorney spokesman Alex Katz said. The injunction has not been presented in civil court and the notices serve to let the defendants know they can appear to defend themselves when that happens.
City Attorney John Russo announced the planned injunction in mid-October, saying his office had worked with police to identify dozens of key members of a gang active in the Fruitvale area. Police officials say that gang is responsible for about half of the violence in the area and the injunction would, among setting other rules, forbid those proved to be gang members from associating with one another, curbing their ability to terrorize their neighborhoods.
Former gang member Salvador Sanchez, 27, said at the protest that he joined an Oakland gang when he was 11 and left when he was about 19, after years of living with violence and both abusing and selling drugs, and that street policing played no positive role in his rehabilitation.
"Batons to my face never made me want to be a better person. They made me hate the government, hate my life and hate myself," Sanchez said. "I grew up on the streets,
Advertisement

but it was not police that saved my life, not jails that saved my life -- it was programs I was forced to go to, and people getting active in the community and trying to help."
Not only does the injunction send the wrong message about the city's priorities, Sanchez said, but those named who are gang members will gain respect and power within the gang because of it.
"It makes (the gang) look stronger, more organized and with more members than it really is," he said. "I guarantee you, (the gang) is stronger because of the press and the city attorney. More (members) will come to Oakland to be part of this."
Many of the protesters said the injunction will give police free reign to employ racial profiling. Katz, however, said the injunction's format makes that impossible.
"The police don't have the power to add anybody to the injunction that they think is an associate. We did it this way on purpose, because profiling is a real concern," Katz said.
Several unidentified "Does" are named in the paperwork, but rather than allowing police to spontaneously apply the injunction to people on the street, it allows the attorney to return to court with new names if the office can provide "clear and convincing evidence" -- a standard of proof higher than in most civil cases, but slightly below the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard found in criminal law.
The result, Katz said, is that no one can be named in the injunction without a judge finding evidence that proves that person is a gang member; hence, a person's simply being part of a racial minority isn't enough for the injunction to target them.
The suit originally named 42 people, but one of them attended Russo's October announcement and told officials they had it wrong, Katz said.
"He said, 'Look, I'm out of that life,' and showed us his report card," Katz said. "He got an A in one class and told us he had an employer, who confirmed and said yes, he works here. So we decided to let him out."
Attorney Dan Siegel, who is representing some of the people named in the suit, said the injunction is a mistake.
"The system has more than enough tools to prosecute and imprison criminals," Siegel said. "It takes a certain level of police work to arrest someone for a crime. What does a gang injunction add to the police arsenal that we want them to have? It's a vehicle for harassment."
Russo had announced that he would be filing evidence by the end of October, but the cases have proved complex and his attorneys are taking extra time to cover every angle, Katz said. He said the office hopes to have the injunction in place by the end of the year.