For these past few days, our lecture has been concentrated with public law enforcement and its efficacy. One of the highlighted topics was focused on gang injunction, which is defined as a restraining order against a group. According to Professor Musheno, injunction’s main purpose is to improve life and make environment a safer place to live. This statement is also supported in the website of The Los Angeles Police Department that “Injunctions can address the neighborhood’s gang problem before it reaches the level of felony crime activity.” Indeed, gang injunction has developed from the broken window theory that allows law enforcement agency to stop an unlawful act from happening and being caught. There were evidences that this injunction has reduced crime and improved the quality of life.
It has been evident that gang injunction has failed to achieve its expected results. Instead of maintaining a peace and legitimate order within the community, I believe that gang injunction has encouraged targeted groups to continue conducting criminal activity. In the article “Gang Member Suspected in Girl Scout Cookie-Cash Heist Arrested,” Susan Shroder reported the identified suspect has already received warrant of arrest for unrelated cases and was booked into jail for violating a court gang injunction. If this person was under injunction order, he should be strictly monitored by the assigned police officer. The article did not mention whether the Girl Scout cookie sale was conducted outside the safety zone. If it in fact happened outside the safety zone, this just proves that gang injunction does not really suppress crimes, but it just relocate the possible settings of the possible gang related criminal activity.
Further, the tactics used to implement this injunction has been poorly exercised which has led to community resistance against discriminatory acts of injunction. This is why Professor Musheno made great emphasis on the reasons why gang injunction should matter. He questioned the credibility of those police officers who submit and declare names of alleged gang members. Professor Musheno made us think whether these law enforcement officers really caught the right individuals. In the article “Gang Injunction Granted in Echo Park,” Hailey Branson-Potts mentions how Los Angeles police gang experts are authorize to submit a proof, that the person is an active gang member, to the city attorney’s office “…before penalizing the person under injunction.” Despite the proof or substantial evidence that police gang experts may provide, I believe that there’s still a room for maneuvering or exaggerating the evidence. Their proofs can be accurate, but what if the evidences were already outdated? That is why some residents are very skeptic about gang injunction due to the fact that once a former gang member is written on the list, it would never be removed, no matter how they change for the better or consistently prevent themselves from being involved in gang troubles. Indeed, gang injunction is in itself a discriminatory way of policing because it only targeted gang or gang members. How about those independent individuals who never been part of the gang, but very passionate of conducting crimes? Furthermore, gang injunction is not exempted from the possibility of monitoring innocent individuals. Gang injunctions are like death penalty where innocents could be executed or life imprisonment where guilt-free people were pronounced guilty and sent to prison. The presence of injustice would truly encourage community resistance, just like the image below which I got from The Eastsider LA website.
Instead of making all corners of neighborhood become accessible, gang injunction has caused communities to become divided. Injunction has categorized neighborhoods into two distinctions: special event safety zone or gang injunction zone. These two categories are expected to impact the price ranges of houses that fall into those two zones. According to Nick Welsh in his article titled “Realtors Oppose Gang Injunction,” Welsh asserted that “…real estate agents would feel compelled to disclose if properties fall within the safety zones…and that could have a deleterious effect on sales.” If the price of house will arise due to gang injunctions, low-income families will no longer afford those houses. They are more likely placed on gang injunction zones where most houses are under the range of their income. Consequently, the change in house market’s price encourages neighborhood to be divided by income and affordability of houses which could result to gentrification. Instead of protecting all the members of the community, only those who can afford to buy house in safety zones are all protected from gang criminal activity. There is the notion of exclusivity and public exclusion as Professor Musheno mentioned during class lectures. Further, separation of neighborhoods may not be an expected result, but I strongly believe that these two proposed zones will definitely caused neighborhoods to be dichotomized and will eventually create tensions and distress.
In conclusion, gang injunction is just an ineffective form of professional and community policing. Indeed, it only produces more dilemmas in most neighborhoods. Despite the good intent and authoritative objectives, I believe that injunctions’ flaws are greater than its positive implications. Who does not want to live in a safer place and crime-free neighborhood? I don’t know if gang injunction is the right path for having a perfect neighborhood.
Bibliography
The Eastsider LA. “Echo Park Gang Injunction Meets With a Sign of Resistance.”Photographed. The Eastsider. http://www.theeastsiderla.com/2014/02/echo-park-gang-injunction-meets-with-a-sign-of-resistance/ (accessed on Mar 2, 2014).
Branson-Potts, Hailey. “Gang Injunction Granted in Echo Park.” Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-gang-injunction-granted-in-echo-park-20130926,0,7807855.story#axzz2uyj1hY6F (accessed on Mar 2, 2014).
Los Angeles Police Department. “About Gang Injunction.” Los Angeles Police Foundation. http://www.lapdonline.org/gang_injunctions/content_basic_view/23424 (accessed on Mar 2, 2014).
Musheno, Michael. “Why Law Enforcement Agencies and Personnel Do What They Do.” Lecture notes, Feb 25-27, 2014.
Shroder, Susan. “Gang Member Suspected in Girl Scout Cookie-Cash Heist Arrested.” U-T San Diego. http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/Feb/28/escondido-girl-scouts-jar-stolen-gang-arrested/ (accessed on Mar 2, 2014).
Welsh, Nick. “Realtors Oppose Gang Injunction.” Santa Barbara Independent. http://www.independent.com/news/2014/feb/27/realtors-oppose-gang-injunction/ (accessed on Mar 2m 2014).
I agree with your perspective that gang injunctions are an ineffective means of addressing gang activity in communities. It is apparent that injunctions serve to embed further divisions in neighborhoods. It is important for communities and law enforcement agencies to consider alternatives to gang injunctions, perhaps through social service mechanisms such as youth centres, which endorse a cooperative rather than discriminatory framework. Such programs could aim to target the core of gang activity, such as the unique circumstance of disadvantaged youth who are compelled towards gang activity- of course easier said than done!
ReplyDeleteMadeleine McGlade
After reading this article and listening to Professor Musheno emphasize the question why are the police selling gang injunctions so adamantly, I cannot help but think the public law enforcement are the ones who primarily see gang activity as a public nuisance. It is difficult to imagine that a community can complain enough about gang activity to initiate a gang injunction, but then when it is ordered by the court the community no longer desires the injunction. This leads me to wonder who begins the process of ordering a gang injunction?
ReplyDeleteAlso, as a Real Estate agent myself, if I were to own a property in a gang injunction area, I would be lobbying to remove the injunction as well. Injunctions appear to be inefficient and overstep the bounds of individual's liberty. How people are lumped into a gang injunction also seems to be too subjective and the process should be more transparent.
-Alex Rose
I find it interesting how the courts never take anyone off of a gang's list once they've been put on it. That in itself seems to be very flawed reasoning and evidence for convicting someone of being affiliated with a gang, Also, I agree with your point about gang injunctions being not as effective as they could be. Police seem to be targeting gangs with injunctions without concrete evidence that they are the main driving force behind a crime and currently active in a crime. Gang injunctions, as you say, don't take into account the independents who have a passion for conducting crime. I believe there are better alternatives to gang injunctions that could result in less negative externalities for the housing market and social balance.
ReplyDelete-Dylan Tong
I think the discussion you have raised is an interesting one, but I feel that you are being too critical of the Gang injunctions. They might not be disastrous every where, in reality some communities may find them to be extremely useful if that community has the resources to put man power in the zone during the restricted hours. I believe that the tactic of gang injunctions deserve a case-by-case evaluation of its effectiveness....not every policing tactic will work the same in every neighborhood because the people in every neighborhood are different. Additionally, gang injunctions are restricted to a small, explicitly defined area. The courts may not take people's names off of gang lists because getting out of a gang is difficult. Even if someone is able to get themselves out they will still have friends and family in the gang and thus will have some sort of tie to it. It is to the larger public's benefit that everyone is aware what sort of associations this individual has before you begin working with them. Because the area of the gang injunction is so small, it would likely not be difficult for a former member whose name is still on the list to restart their life a few blocks away to avoid the sanctions of the injunction.
ReplyDeleteColleen Johnson, Discussion 102
The lectures and the articles make me think that gang injunction is more a communication strategy rather than an effective policing strategy.
ReplyDeleteIt is very easy to decide and enforce and it provides short-term results in terms of obvious gang activity. Actually, it can be said that gang injunction is a way for the State to tell the citizens "Look at me, I am acting for your safety."
This strategy of communication is understandable. One of the first functions of the State is to secure public order. When this mission is not achieved, the whole legitimacy of public authorities may be questioned. So the stakes are high.
Yet, since gang injunction strategy appears to be a failure, the public authorities should change their strategy rapidly before being accused not only of failing to secure public order but also of lying to the citizens and making the situation worse.
Romain MILLARD
I don't really understand the argument being made in relation to the girl scout cookies: are you saying that gang injunctions as a whole are a failure because a criminal was able to commit a crime while under an injunction? That doesn't make sense, you are saying that the criminal should have been strictly monitored by a police officer, but to have stopped that crime a police officer would have had to follow him around. That is not the point of gang injunctions. This is like saying that because one student failed a test in one of their classes, the education system as a whole is an absolute failure.
ReplyDeleteYour article also makes some other lapses in logic. You discuss realtors and them not wanting to discuss gang injunctions in the areas where they are selling houses, and say that this is because of the chance that it would raise home prices? That's not what "deleterious" means, and as prices would actually fall due to gang injunctions, home prices would get lower, which would not negatively affect the ability of the community to remain in their homes.
All in all, the arguments in your article against gang injunctions were weak, and the only one that I didn't immediately find a gaping hole in, which is that gang injunctions are falsifiable by overzealous police officers, is true of almost any sort of criminal injunction or prosecution, and is not specific to gang injunctions.
Atli Thorkelsson
I would agree with your general argument that gang injunctions appear to be highly flawed and to an extent ineffective, particularly based on what we have read/heard in lecture. However, I don't know if I find this particular article to be especially compelling--perhaps if it were certain whether or not the crime had been committed outside of the area of injunction, or clearly exemplified displacement? Additionally, I believe that there is far more to be considered regarding gang injunctions, such as whether or not the injunction was sought by the community, as this would obviously have more community support, or by the police, which would yield more stringent policing since it would be more personal. Such factors would help determine the efficacy of the injunction, but can only be considered case-by-case. Overall, your post addresses the issues in a way that seems a far greater failure by the community (reliance on Broken Windows policing, etc) than professional policing, and it is necessary to distinguish between what specifically is working or failing in order to accurately understand how the system might be fixed.
ReplyDeleteAyesha Ali
It is obvious that the Gang Injunctions do not work. As seen in lecture, and other blog post, it is just a tool used in gentrification. It is meant to turn neighborhoods over.
ReplyDeleteI find it crazy the antecede we heard in class; realtors move in when an gang injunction occur because prices go down. However, now, they are fighting back because it is pushing values down too far.
Tina Truong
The fact that gang injunction actually displaces criminal activities makes me doubt its effectiveness as a solution to gang violence. To add to that, most civil rights lawyers like the ACLU has criticized the practice as a violation of gang members freedom of speech and assembly protected under the First Amendment.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement that rather than making neighborhoods safer, gang injunctions actually causes division among communities. I also feel that such tactics establish a negative rapport between public law enforcement and community members, which inevitable fosters a culture of police distrusts. This is significant because police work is often hampered by lack of community citizen cooperation and support, which is essential in deterring crimes and fixing troubled neighborhoods.
- Jessica N. SIah
This is a wonderful blog that brings insightful piece showing the negative impact on gang injunction. I agree that gang injunction is ineffective; not only it is ineffective but and combined with “banishment”, it violates civil rights and liberty. A lot of times, gang injunction heavily depends on racial discrimination. As “Banishment” showed that gang injunction creating a new status and people will get arrested just because they are having this new status. They are arrested without any explanation or hearing, not because their illegal activities but they are just in a wrong place in the wrong time. This will just make more people view law enforcement as illegitimate; there are not given chance to explain, their rights are violated and they are treated disrespectfully. I really agree that gang injunction, banishment in general is ineffective and illegitimate and will only make things worse and build distrustful relationship among people and law enforcement.
ReplyDeleteSansui Iwamoto
This post incorporates many of the class materials that we have been discussing, and I like the connections that you have already explained. I would go a step further and describe gang injunctions as not only a mix of community policing styles (stylistic hybridity) but also a combination of civil and criminal law making it a form of legal hybridity as well. My understanding of these concepts leads me to suggest that most stylistic hybrids of hard and soft community policing will almost inevitably have a civil and criminal mix of legal hybrids, due to the fact that most problem solving actions of soft policing involve civil orders, while the aggressive acts of hard policing are criminal pro se.
ReplyDeleteJonathan Berry-Smith