Walking the Line

To be labeled as a gang member by law enforcement is like having a scarlet G tattooed on your record. The gang designation is a tremendously powerful law enforcement tool. Gang members convicted of crimes face extended prison sentences; like sex offenders they must register with the police when released from jail or prison. Now, even people who've never been convicted — like Dennard — can be banned by the civil courts from associating with other purported gangsters or from setting foot in certain areas.

The court injunctions have generated heat from the Northern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. In a legal brief attacking the gang injunction process, the ACLU said it "raises questions of both constitutional principle and basic fairness."

Community activist and defense lawyer Damone Hale, who represents one designated Oakdale Mobster, agrees. In his opinion, the city, unable to secure convictions in the criminal courts, is using the civil courts — where the burden of proof is far lower — to slander and marginalize young black men. "They're prostituting our system, our constitution," says Hale.

Dennard's lawyer, Floyd Andrews, goes so far as to argue that the Oakdale Mob isn't even itself a real gang. In Andrews' professional opinion, "there aren't any gangs in the black community," and Dennard simply isn't a gangster. He points to notorious Latino outfits like the Nuestra Familia and Mexican Mafia as genuine criminal syndicates. Andrews should know. He specialized in prosecuting gang cases for the San Francisco district attorney's office, where he spent 22 years before going into private practice.

"I don't see anybody acting in concert," Andrews says of alleged gangs like the Oakdale Mob. "When I see a gang I see an organization with a hierarchy, a top, middle, and bottom. There are people who give orders and people who follow them." He adds, "These kids only act in concert against a perceived threat" — people from other housing projects.

"You don't have to be a Blood or a Crip to be in a criminal street gang," Hoctor counters, adding that she and her fellow lawyers have created a "narrow" injunction that comports with the U.S. constitution. "We define a gang the way the penal code defines a gang — that's a group of three or more individuals working in concert for the benefit of the gang. We presented more than 1,000 pages of evidence to the court that these gang members" were involved in a string of carjackings, rapes, and robberies.

Hoctor, a former prosecutor, considers Dennard a key Mob figure. The lawyer has even begun toting around a handgun because of threats made by thugs unhappy with the injunction.

But Dennard's aunt, Mignon Judkins, says her nephew is no criminal: "He just liked hanging out with people he grew up with and they" — meaning the city and SFPD — "turned it into a gang thing. Don't get me wrong: He may not be innocent of many things, but please, he's no gang member."

Before Dennard was San Francisco's most wanted, he was just a kid who went on camping trips to Clearlake with the Police Activities League. He grew up bouncing between Oakland and San Francisco, raised by his mother and his grandmother, who toils six days a week at a check cashing place in the Western Addition.

As a child, Dennard "was a little gentleman," recalls Judkins. "He was sweet. If company came over, he'd offer them a drink."

Ask Dennard about his youth and he's more likely to reflect on the violence he's been exposed to. "It was kind of rough. I seen a lot of people die," he says quietly. "Watching people die who was older. You'd think people was cool, then they'd get killed. You don't really know what's going on 'cause you young."

During his grade-school years Dennard lived in a Hunters Point house across the street from the Oakdale projects, and he becomes animated when describing the chaos gripping the area at the time, like, for example, the 1994 murder of Antoinette James. A resident of the projects, James was standing on her third-floor balcony when a 9 mm bullet struck her in the forehead, spiraling into her brain, and eventually killing her; the bullet had been shot by local toughs trying to kill a fleeing foe.

At 17 Dennard was hanging out regularly in Oakdale, although he went to school on the other side of town, at Mission High, and lived across the bay in Oakland. "Oakdale is just a street where there happens to be a bunch of young males who grew up together," says Dennard, adding that he "just played hoops and shot dice" while kicking it there.

Clearly, though, there was plenty of drug peddling going on in the area, and by 20 Dennard was regularly getting busted for weed possession. If he wasn't selling drugs, he wasn't doing much to discourage that idea, since he'd paid a tattooist to render an Oakdale apartment building and a dollar sign on his forearm in black ink.

Meanwhile, SFPD's Gang Task Force began building a dossier on Dennard. According to an eight-page summary of the file obtained by SF Weekly, between 2003 and 2005, Dennard was arrested and detained repeatedly — a total of nearly 30 times — often with designated Oakdale Mob members.