gang listing questioned by rights groups

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Los Angeles Times

Gang Listing Questioned by Rights Groups

Law enforcement: Orange County database targets minorities and includes innocent

youth, critics say. But police call it an invaluable tool against crime.

July 14, 1997|LORENZA MUNOZ | TIMES STAFF WRITER

SANTA ANA As state officials plan to expand a database containing the names and

photographs of reputed gang members, a state arm of the U.S. Commission on Civil

Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union are questioning whether minorities in

Orange County are being unfairly targeted by the project.

Minorities are less than 50% of Orange County's population, yet Latinos, Asians and

African Americans make up more than 90% of the 20,221 Orange County men and

women being tracked by law enforcement as suspected gang members--a seeming

disparity that has alarmed the California Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission

on Civil Rights and others.

On the eve of a plan to make the database computer-accessible to law enforcement

statewide, the Gang Reporting Evaluation and Tracking system is at the center of a

debate pitting individual rights against efforts to aggressively combat gang crime.

"I have serious questions about whether this is constitutionally all right," said Phil

Montez, regional director of the state's advisory panel to the federal civil rights group.

The panel launched a probe into the so-called gang list after its May 30 hearing intoallegations of widespread civil rights violations in Orange County.

The ACLU has also entered the fray, asking the Orange County district attorney's office

to establish a civilian oversight board to scrutinize what it sees as crucial problems with

the gang list, including:

* Secrecy. Only police and prosecutors have access, and they are not required to notify

those who are placed on it. Critics say this makes it hard for those who get listed--even

by mistake--to get off.

* Sometimes vague criteria for gang membership. Wearing loose-fitting clothes or

hanging out in certain neighborhoods are factors used to label suspected gang members.

* Lack of evidence. Nearly half of those on Orange County's list of suspected gang

members have never been arrested.

In a letter to the civil rights advisory panel, John Crew, director of the ACLU's Police

Practices Project, asked that Orange County law enforcement tighten criteria for adding

reputed names to the list--and at the very least tell individuals or their parents when their

names are added.


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At a minimum, Crew said, authorities should implement the standards Garden Grove

police agreed to in settling a 1994 civil rights lawsuit over photographing Asian youths

for a "gang book."

Garden Grove police agreed that detainees must give written consent to having their

pictures taken before they can be photographed, and that taking photos based on a

suspicion of gang membership requires evidence of a crime having been committed, thestate civil rights agency said.

Orange County law enforcement officials say their methods are not arbitrary.

Although stereotypical gang clothing is sometimes taken into account, harder evidence

is more often relied upon--including information from informants. More than 80% of

those in the Orange County database are admitted gang members, said Loren Duchesne,

head of the Orange County district attorney's bureau of investigation and coordinator of

the county's database system.

About 14% of the names are entered because of other criteria--gang clothing, gang

tattoos or hanging out in neighborhoods with high gang activity, he said

Officers are obligated to justify each entry in the database, said Duchesne.

Moreover, the list is updated every five years, ensuring that the names of those who have

not had police contact are deleted from the database, Duchesne said.

"I personally do not know of anybody who is put into the gang system [who] does not

deserve to be there," he said. "I think we do a very good job of being careful."

Law enforcement officials across Orange County say the system has been invaluable in

battling a growing gang problem, and has helped in tracking ever-changing gang

membership and crime patterns throughout Southern California.

Orange County gang-related homicides dropped substantially in one year, from 70 in

1995 to 42 in 1996, and Duchesne and others credit, in part, the database.

Westminster Police Chief James Cook is one of its biggest boosters.

"We reach the truth much quicker" when it comes to gang crimes, he said. "It has made

us more efficient, has increased community safety and saved taxpayer money."

In March, Gov. Pete Wilson announced the formation of a statewide computer system

called CAL/GANG, a state Department of Justice system that will include information

on reputed gang members statewide. It is expected to be accessible to law enforcementagencies within a year, Duchesne said.

Of particular concern to civil libertarians and the families of youths is that police decide

who gets on the list. Law enforcement is not required to share information with families

or individuals, Duchesne said. Anyone who is photographed, and whose personal

information is put on an information card by a police officer, can assume that his or her

name will be on the list, Cook said.


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The list is not available to the public to safeguard individual rights, officials said. It is

not a criminal "rap" sheet, but a tool for tracking suspected gang members involved in

serious crimes, they said.

"That person is not being labeled; he is being used as a potential lead for law

enforcement," said Don Mace, the CAL/GANG project administrator at the stateDepartment of Justice.

"They are there to provide law enforcement with information so [authorities] can solve

crimes. This information is not to be used as probable cause to use for arrest."

Of the 20,221 individuals listed, 14,732 are Latino, 2,586 are Asian, 1,521 are white and

898 are black, Duchesne said. Those numbers, authorities say, reflect a sad reality of

gang violence in Orange County, not a targeting of minorities.

"Gangs tend to develop among new immigrant groups and in [low] socioeconomic areaswhere they have been denied opportunities," said Westminster's Cook. "It is a tragic fact;

however, we simply accept crime as crime when it comes in."

But critics contend that the list is disproportionately minority and names many young

men who are not gang members.

"We have masses of people being labeled without recourse," said Orange County public

defender Yvette Verastegui. "I'm not saying there isn't a gang problem, but I also believe

that there are certain rights we need to protect."

The demographics of the list has soured relations with police, some community residents

say. "The gap that we noticed right off the bat is that the community views things in one

way [and] the police view it another way," Montez said.

Jessica Castro, chairwoman of United Neighborhoods community group, said: "To net

so many youth in this community and put them in as gang members is not going to filter

out the real gang members. This is not doing anything about our gang problem. This is

not resolving the issue."

Claudio Ceja, 15, of Anaheim said he believes he is on Orange County's gang list--but

also said he shouldn't be."I don't like them stopping me too often, but I've gotten used to it already," Ceja said. "I

tell them I'm not in a gang. I've never been arrested. It's wrong. They can't judge you by

the way you dress or who you hang out with. They should judge you by the way you are

when they get to know you."

gang listing questioned by rights groups

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