The War On Gangs

Dennis Herrera stresses that detail as he sits in his City Hall office, an airy space with large, oblong windows that let in the gray morning light. Dressed in tan slacks and a white shirt, his collar unfettered by a tie, the city attorney wants to clarify what he calls "misrepresented" aspects of his campaign against gangs.

Opponents of his plan fear that police would exploit the injunctions to perform neighborhood sweeps. Herrera counters that safety-zone restrictions would pertain strictly to the individuals named in court records. Nor would officers hold the authority to add names to the list. City attorneys would handle that task after reviewing evidence and case files, he says, and likewise would offer purported gang members the chance to prove why they should be removed from an injunction.

As for whether they should be named in the lawsuit at all, he replies, "They can make their argument in court. That opportunity is there."

Herrera defines gangs as a public nuisance, likening them to polluters and slum lords in their damage to the greater good. Yet in attempting to create safety zones, he says, "An injunction isn't a panacea. It's only one tool." Indeed, on the broader subject of eradicating street violence, he avows the need for after-school and job programs to aid low-income residents. At the same time, Herrera asserts, if gangs insist on settling their territorial disputes with gunfire, law enforcement can't limit its role to simply zipping up body bags.

"This isn't an either-or proposition," he says. "We as a city have to develop strategies to help young people. But you can't ignore the other side of the coin. We have to be there to protect the streets."

The city attorney's office submitted thousands of pages of documents to support its claims against reputed gang members, going so far as to amass photos of their tattoos. The cases rely heavily on declarations from officers with the SFPD's gang task force, recounting a seemingly endless litany of incidents dating back to the mid-1990s. The reports, chronicling misdeeds ranging from tagging property with graffiti to shootings and assaults, illuminate the city's entrenched and brutal street culture. A sampling:

—Four suspected Eddy Rock members wearing ski masks shot up a corner market on Divisadero in May while attempting to kill an alleged Chopper City rival. The man sustained a bullet wound to his abdomen — one month after another suspected Eddy Rock member shot him in the arm as he walked to the same store.

—Police arrested a purported Norteño member in March after he allegedly stabbed a Sureño in the neck. (The victim lived.) The incident happened near 24th and York streets, an area considered Norteño turf, a few blocks from where the alleged perpetrator himself had been stabbed seven months earlier.

—In 2004, a suspected Norteño accosted a pregnant woman walking on 22nd Street, asking whether she belonged to a gang. The man, carrying a baseball bat, forced her to unzip her sweatshirt, revealing her blue T-shirt — the Sureños' color. As the man slammed the bat into her head, arms, and legs, she curled up on the ground, managing to protect her fetus. The man was later convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.

The number of gang-related murders in San Francisco this year stands at a dozen. Despite the relatively modest figure, police officials report a surge in violent crime in the Western Addition and the Mission, owing primarily to battles over drug turf. In theory, the safety zones would enable officers to choke off the sidewalk commerce, with alleged members unwilling to risk arrest for an infraction as minor as loitering or breaking curfew.

"We're not going to eliminate the gang," says Yvonne Mere, a deputy city attorney assigned to the Norteño case. "But hopefully, we'll start to erode their turf."

Or as Marty Vranicar says, "Moving a drug operation isn't just a matter of relocating down the street."

Vranicar heads the Los Angeles City Attorney's gang unit. Like Herrera, he points out that the Justice Policy Institute, the think tank that criticizes the use of injunctions, upholds a mission of promoting alternatives to incarceration. Both he and Herrera mention another study, conducted in 2000 by a UCLA professor, that shows violent crime drops by 5 percent to 10 percent inside a safety zone during its first year.

"An injunction isn't the end-all, be-all solution," Vranicar says. "But when people are dying, something has to be done. If San Francisco wants to head off its gang problem, you can't just wait for it to go away."

Los Angeles prosecuted some 350 safety-zone violations in 2006. So far, the Oakdale Mob injunction has yielded only three arrests. While Adachi and others continue to describe the Hunters Point neighborhood as a "war zone," citing a July shooting that left a man injured, police estimate the crime rate has fallen by 80 percent. "It's not an incarceration issue," says Capt. Kevin Cashman of the department's investigations bureau. "It's about dissuading people from this kind of illegal activity."

In that respect, Lt. John Murphy, who heads the police homicide unit, compares the city's use of injunctions to federal authorities applying federal racketeering laws against gangs. Three years ago, after the Down Below Gang committed a string of killings to protect its Sunnydale drug enterprise, the FBI arrested a dozen top members on federal conspiracy charges. No murders occurred in the neighborhood over the next seven months.