I’ve been reading and listening and thinking about the proposed new gang injunctions and the fate of the existing one. I’ve also been thinking about the fates of the proponents and opponents of said injunctions, City Attorney John Russo, OPD Chief Batts, and local legal beagles and civil rights attorneys, Siegel, particularly the younger Siegel, Michael, someone whose courage and heart I’ve long admired.
John Russo was my council member before becoming the City Attorney. He fought against the loitering ordinance because of its pre-emptive and racial profiling components.
I always thought gang injunctions were some of the weird and slightly scary things that happened in LA, a weird and somehow scary place with all those manic freeways and seedy strip malls (even the term is seedy).
Now they’ve come to Oakland and the injunctions as well as the gangs seem to be tearing our political community apart. Today (Feb. 16th)a judge will decide whose career might be promoted and whose might be downgraded a notch by granting or not granting Oakland’s City Attorney a new and broader gang injunction covering the entire Fruitvale district.
The fledgling lives of young men who grew up in devastated neighborhoods in struggling or non-functioning or non-existent families who turned to gangs for a sense of safety and acceptance finding instead violence and intimidation will be the most affected.
Russo or the younger Siegel could also be affected. It could cast a small shadow over the brand new administration of Mayor Jean Quan or the established career of Dan Siegel and throw the City Council into yet another lose/lose confrontation.
Why have Oakland’s politicos decided to go down this road? Is it a passion for justice, a passion for crime fighting, or a passion for one’s own career? Is this struggle between Oakland’s best and brightest even necessary?
For observers it may be titillating to watch the twists and turns in alliances and political careers or to cast each side in some type of morality play while we run a sort of American Idol panel to decides who wins.
But are gang injunctions that useful or the real answer to crime and intimidation in neighborhoods where families struggle to survive intact much less develop socially and economically successful lives?
Just for arguments sake, let’s look at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The 4th Amendment has something to say about pre-emptive arrest or pre-emptive restrictions on private life. Here is the language of that amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I know, some judges have okayed these injunctions in the past. As a former teacher of Government and Economics (laid off when Oakland closed its adult school), I spent a lot of time explaining the freedoms “guaranteed” by the Bill of Rights and other amendments to my students while describing the need to continue to defend them. My students spent a lot of time telling me how none of these rights were allotted to them on the streets of Oakland.
So here’s the first problem- this law/ordinance comes close to (or indeed does) violate due process procedures. Although Russo has worked hard to restrict the use of these injunctions against a general class of people by reducing them to persons that his office believes do pose dangers to their community, that doesn’t mean the injunctions don’t violate the Constitution.
Rather than think of how many ways we can get around the Constitution, I believe that we should look again. Choosing to cross that line, as a community that cares about progressive values and our heritage of struggle against government intrusion, should be the catalyst for a serious discussion.
What we also know is that Oakland is a city suffering from real violence, bad players, and dysfunction. Gangs have developed and taken hold with some youth and young adults, infecting whole families and neighborhoods.
However, lots of violence in Oakland does not come from gangs. It is an organic outgrowth of decades of underserved, preyed upon communities where little to no opportunities meet with zealous law enforcement which often targets those communities.
We also know that Oakland is an underfunded city with limited resources to spend on ameliorating these conditions. It seems that enforcement of the gang injunctions is a pricey venture that may deliver few results.
If the City can find the money to spend to fight for and enforce these injunctions, even given the limited resources that law enforcement already has, it can spend the same monies to institute community policing as first envisioned by the City’s 1995 ordinance.
Community policing requires less funds for automobiles, lawyers, and even highly paid senior officers. If police officers were out walking and talking to neighbors on a regular beat, were able to attend community events and work closely with county case managers and city planners (enforcing the laws on nuisance businesses such as liquor stores), we might have a police department that could prevent crime, even violent crime, by keeping tabs on problem areas or people or corners.
They might also know who was looking for vengeance and why or which group was feeling disrespected or why before it escalated to violence. They might know who in the community to tap into for intervention. We do some of that now through Measure Y/BB but in limited doses.
I’m not claiming that community policing as originally conceived is inexpensive or would bring us utopia, but it is probably a more useful solution, a solution more able to bring our community together to tackle crime and its causes than all this arguing over gang injunctions ever will.
Is the whole fight over gang injunctions is setting us up to spend money for little relief while dividing us as a community, a community that mostly believes in individual rights and the common good?
Let’s go back to a solution we never fully implemented and try coming together for a safer community that as Mayor Quan said, “wraps its arms around our youth.” Let’s really implement community policing. We have a model that we have never fully implemented. It’s time for law enforcement and social justice organizations to work together for a safety solution that is sustainable.
John Russo was my council member before becoming the City Attorney. He fought against the loitering ordinance because of its pre-emptive and racial profiling components.
I always thought gang injunctions were some of the weird and slightly scary things that happened in LA, a weird and somehow scary place with all those manic freeways and seedy strip malls (even the term is seedy).
Now they’ve come to Oakland and the injunctions as well as the gangs seem to be tearing our political community apart. Today (Feb. 16th)a judge will decide whose career might be promoted and whose might be downgraded a notch by granting or not granting Oakland’s City Attorney a new and broader gang injunction covering the entire Fruitvale district.
The fledgling lives of young men who grew up in devastated neighborhoods in struggling or non-functioning or non-existent families who turned to gangs for a sense of safety and acceptance finding instead violence and intimidation will be the most affected.
Russo or the younger Siegel could also be affected. It could cast a small shadow over the brand new administration of Mayor Jean Quan or the established career of Dan Siegel and throw the City Council into yet another lose/lose confrontation.
Why have Oakland’s politicos decided to go down this road? Is it a passion for justice, a passion for crime fighting, or a passion for one’s own career? Is this struggle between Oakland’s best and brightest even necessary?
For observers it may be titillating to watch the twists and turns in alliances and political careers or to cast each side in some type of morality play while we run a sort of American Idol panel to decides who wins.
But are gang injunctions that useful or the real answer to crime and intimidation in neighborhoods where families struggle to survive intact much less develop socially and economically successful lives?
Just for arguments sake, let’s look at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The 4th Amendment has something to say about pre-emptive arrest or pre-emptive restrictions on private life. Here is the language of that amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I know, some judges have okayed these injunctions in the past. As a former teacher of Government and Economics (laid off when Oakland closed its adult school), I spent a lot of time explaining the freedoms “guaranteed” by the Bill of Rights and other amendments to my students while describing the need to continue to defend them. My students spent a lot of time telling me how none of these rights were allotted to them on the streets of Oakland.
So here’s the first problem- this law/ordinance comes close to (or indeed does) violate due process procedures. Although Russo has worked hard to restrict the use of these injunctions against a general class of people by reducing them to persons that his office believes do pose dangers to their community, that doesn’t mean the injunctions don’t violate the Constitution.
Rather than think of how many ways we can get around the Constitution, I believe that we should look again. Choosing to cross that line, as a community that cares about progressive values and our heritage of struggle against government intrusion, should be the catalyst for a serious discussion.
What we also know is that Oakland is a city suffering from real violence, bad players, and dysfunction. Gangs have developed and taken hold with some youth and young adults, infecting whole families and neighborhoods.
However, lots of violence in Oakland does not come from gangs. It is an organic outgrowth of decades of underserved, preyed upon communities where little to no opportunities meet with zealous law enforcement which often targets those communities.
We also know that Oakland is an underfunded city with limited resources to spend on ameliorating these conditions. It seems that enforcement of the gang injunctions is a pricey venture that may deliver few results.
If the City can find the money to spend to fight for and enforce these injunctions, even given the limited resources that law enforcement already has, it can spend the same monies to institute community policing as first envisioned by the City’s 1995 ordinance.
Community policing requires less funds for automobiles, lawyers, and even highly paid senior officers. If police officers were out walking and talking to neighbors on a regular beat, were able to attend community events and work closely with county case managers and city planners (enforcing the laws on nuisance businesses such as liquor stores), we might have a police department that could prevent crime, even violent crime, by keeping tabs on problem areas or people or corners.
They might also know who was looking for vengeance and why or which group was feeling disrespected or why before it escalated to violence. They might know who in the community to tap into for intervention. We do some of that now through Measure Y/BB but in limited doses.
I’m not claiming that community policing as originally conceived is inexpensive or would bring us utopia, but it is probably a more useful solution, a solution more able to bring our community together to tackle crime and its causes than all this arguing over gang injunctions ever will.
Is the whole fight over gang injunctions is setting us up to spend money for little relief while dividing us as a community, a community that mostly believes in individual rights and the common good?
Let’s go back to a solution we never fully implemented and try coming together for a safer community that as Mayor Quan said, “wraps its arms around our youth.” Let’s really implement community policing. We have a model that we have never fully implemented. It’s time for law enforcement and social justice organizations to work together for a safety solution that is sustainable.
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