No doubt these guys in gangs have connections running down to the border! But the solution is talking with these gangs for solutions. Injunctions are a temporary fix, a band-aid. As an outsider, I have no idea why there is gang violence....I wonder if the gang members themselves have stopped and wondered why they are fighting. We as a community must insist that the public use of guns is unacceptable. Our interest is the public safety of our lives. Until we sit down and talk, we don't know what the gangs interests are...I can only guest; over territorial control, a family dispute, drugs(they all come from the same place). The further our public officials let this continue the more it becomes an acceptable part of life in Oakland or anywhere else. Lets start the bi-weekly talks, with all relevant parties: police, parole officers, community activist, psychologist, etc. Together we can re learn this behavoir!

gang injunctions are indeed a band-aid. the larger issue is, what happens after you lock someone up? they spend some time in prison, then return to their neighborhood, unable to find steady work because of their criminal history. and so the cycle repeats. injunctions are theoretically supposed to create safe zones but in reality, they allow police to profile people based on race and appearance. what's missing here is a reason for gang members to leave that life, as well as a way to transition into a less-violent, economically-sustainable existance.

I am trying to HOLD both my affection and respect for John Russo, as a thinking person, and my disappointment in what I see as another person implementing policies that speak more to their political aspirations than what’s best for Oakland. The decision to expand the gang injunction frustrates me tremendously.

Chief Batts is doing the same thing here that he did in Long Beach in regards to the gang injunction issue: he is acquiescing, not seeing any great need for it, particularly if his officers have to get involved in some – in their eyes - bureaucratic process to put somebody on the list. I was told in the Chief's office that OPD intends to do nothing different with the gang injunctions in place than they are doing now.

From a law enforcement perspective, naming only the gang’s name was what makes an injunction such an important tool. The power to name the person rests with the street officers. That is the way it was "sold" to the Oakland Police Department, before Batts was chief. Now Batts is just going along.

Russo has simply routed hundreds of thousands of dollars of his budget toward paying some police officers overtime, thus inflating their salaries. The officers in a defined area are paid to speculate about what is going on with crime there. They are paid to write those speculations out as testimony for a civil court, and then to testify at the hearings.  Unlike criminal courts, civil court requires simply the preponderance of the accepted evidence. If the police officers had any real evidence, there would then be the beyond-reasonable-daunt standard of a criminal court accusing this collection of persons of being a criminal enterprise. The opportunity to present an alternate assessment of the source and solution for community disruption and violence is inadmissible. Any contrary view as to what is really happening as far as crime in those areas is essentially shut out.

Many of us in Oakland, like many other communities, have succumbed to a fear based world view. We believe many falsehoods about crime; and watch as our elected officials use our money to further that way of thinking.  We end up supporting things that are not in our best interest and CERTAINLY NOT in the interest of the greater good.

It is generally known within the law enforcement community that the best program dealing with gang violence reduction and crime reduction is the Ceasefire program that has been so successful in Chicago. The Executive Summary of a evaluation of that program states that the program's success stems from the holistic, comprehensive approach to the problem. Gang Injunctions are - any way you construct them - a one dimensional approach based on the failed assumption that the threat of incarceration and forced behavior restrictions will change behavior and will solve the crime and violence problem in our communities. A complex problem needs a complex approach.

I sent both Russo and Batts’ office a copy of an article in the Yale Law School Journal that traces the roots of this gang injunction approach to Jim Crow. As Michelle Alexander points out more extensively in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Era of Colorblindness, mass incarceration, gang injunctions, and such suppression tactics predominantly are just the evolutionary next step of slavery and Jim Crow. They do not solve the problem.

Chief Batts and Russo will claim that Oakland has a Ceasefire program. But what they are doing is not linked to the prevention and outreach elements that are even more important than the suppression aspects. Prevention programs are grossly under-resourced and would benefit from greater coordination among them.

And, get this; Oakland is part of the California National League of Cities task-force on gangs. That task-force also emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach. California’s success story is Salinas - the State headquarters of the Nortenos (the Fruitvale gang that the new gang injunction has targeted) - there has been huge success there in turning around hard-core, top leaders of the Nortenos.

A piece that I submitted to the Tribune at the time of the public hearings that were needed to legally qualify the North Oakland gang injunction explains why North Oakland was chosen. North Oakland tends to be more culturally disposed to believe that police officers are consistently working to protect your rights. The lens on the issue, through which poor and people-of-color look, reveals that police have a nasty underbelly just like most institutions rooted in a history and practice of criminalizing young people, homeless people, poor people and people of color.

Finally, I would join those who say that Bush and his militaristic if-all-you’ve-got-is-a-hammer,- you-treat-everything-like-a-nail bunch, high-jacked the term terrorist. By their definition the ANC in South Africa would be terrorists and the US would be sending drones to bomb them. As MLK said, it is poverty, militarism, and racism that we must fight. Do not let these people high-jack the term gang! Gangs are a well studied social psychological phenomenon where oppressed people gather together for mutual support and benefit. Given the right information, options, and opportunities gangs are very important, powerful, positive forces in our human communities. The militaristic suppression of gangs started with the immigrant populations in New York in the early part of the last century and this tactic has never worked!

Wilson
 

You should roam in places that are your own, that arise in accordance with your own true nature. And what is the place that is your own? It's the pasture of ardent clearness and mindfulness, where discontent and greed are put aside for the sake of the world. That is your own place, your natural range.

- Samyutta Nikaya

Wilson's entry is thorough, well-rearched, analytical and well-written. There is no doubt that this gang injunction policy is nothing but political, just like the nonsensical Jerry Brown 'spectator sideshow citation' legislation was. Neither is seriously intended to impact crime and violence and both are intended to support the political ambitions of those who want to appear to be 'tough on crime.'

I hope Wilson will post this on as many media as possible and I wish the  Chronicle and Tribune had the guts to print it. The perpetrators of this nonsense need to be openly challenged and the public at large needs to be educated.

Rashidah