There is no end in sight for the Oakland gang injunctions case.

After a long court session Wednesday, which began at 10 a.m. and concluded at 4:30 p.m., the preliminary injunctions hearing on the proposed Fruitvale “safety zone,” which has been going on since January, appears to be no closer to conclusion.

At the end of Wednesday’s session, Judge Robert Freedman scheduled yet another return appearance next week in Superior Court in the People v. Norteños case, which pits the Oakland City Attorney’s office and outside counsel Meyers Nave against a team of pro bono defense attorneys including Mike Siegel, Dennis Cunningham, Jeff Wozniak and Yolanda Huang.

Anyone hoping for a quick resolution to the ongoing courtroom drama would have been severely disappointed. Still, Wednesday’s session, which revolved around the testimony of an alleged gang member’s sister and an OPD gang investigator, had several riveting moments.

Freedman himself came away with the best line of the day, when he said, “Is there a job description within the OPD of gang guru?” in response to an earlier remark by Cunningham.

Accused Norteño's sibling takes stand

The day began with Esmerelda Quintero, sister of accused Norteño Javier Quintero, taking the stand as a defense witness.

Quintero, a medical assistant, testified that she’d never seen her brother involved in any gang activity. She was also unaware, she said, of the Border Brothers or the Untouchables (a Norteño clique operating in the Fruitvale, according to police), and didn’t know “what a gang territory is.” Quintero provided photos of her immediate neighborhood, which she said showed no gang graffiti within a three-block radius of her home.

The bulk of her testimony, however, centered around her eyewitness accounts of OPD contacts with her brother. She was called by a neighbor to the scene, she said, when Javier was arrested in 2008 in the vicinity of a shed on Harrington St. which, OPD discovered, contained drugs and a weapons cache. The shed had first been referenced two weeks earlier, when Javier Quintero took the stand. Though his proximity resulted in an arrest and parole violation, he was not convicted of a crime in the incident.

On Wednesday, Esmerelda Quintero recounted how she saw OPD officer Douglass Keely standing over her brother, his feet on his back. Her sibling, she said, was face down, handcuffed. Keely, she said, told her at the time he “would do whatever it takes to make sure Javier goes to jail.”

Deputy City Attorney Rocio Fierro defended the actions of OPD as lawful, yet in Quintero’s mind, “they overdid it.”

Since that incident, Quintero testified, she has had numerous contacts with Keely, who has searched her car (which her brother sometimes uses), as well as the home she and her brother share with other members of the Quintero family. During searches of the home, she said, “there were things broken and thrown all over the place.” She followed police from room to room, she added, because she “was afraid they’d plant something there.”

During cross-examination, Fierro attempted to characterize Javier Quintero - who was present in the courtroom - as a “known Norteno Untouchable.” She equated his “friends” with “gang members” and downplayed Esmerelda Quintero’s allegations of overzealous police behavior, noting that Javier’s parole includes a search clause, a no-association condition and prohibitions against weapons or drugs.

Prosecution misstates the evidence

Initially, Fierro misstated the number of felony convictions Javier has on his record (one – for marijuana possession). She corrected herself and then mentioned another transgression, which apparently occurred when Javier was a juvenile. This brought a swift rebuke from Huang, who asked to approach the bench. After the attorneys and the judge conferred, Fierro stated Javier had an additional adult conviction, for a concealed weapon.

“How would you know if he’s hanging around with gang members?,” Fierro queried of Esmerelda Quintero. “If Mr. Quintero were to engage in gang activity, he would not do it in front of you, correct?” she asked.

Next, Fierro suggested that being subject to random searches, GPS monitoring and alleged disrespect by OPD as a condition of his parole had had a beneficial effect on the defendant. Javier, she said, was “doing better” under a “higher degree of supervision,” she insisted.

Esmerelda Quintero’s most poignant testimony came when she questioned the need for the injunctions. “There is already a parole and probation department,” she reminded the court. And if the injunction is upheld, she worried, her brother could become a prisoner in his own residence. “If he leaves the house,” she said, “he’s in jeopardy of going back to jail.”

Another concern was the prohibition against markers – used, OPD says, to write graffiti denoting gang territory. But Esemerelda Quintero testified that “my oldest daughter is very creative when it comes to the arts.” The presence of art supplies in the Quintero home, she feared, would be a violation if the injunction is upheld, which could mean a return to jail for her brother.

After a recess, the prosecution called another witness, a tax enforcement officer for the city of Oakland, who testified that Deez Cuts, defendant Abel Manzo’s barber shop, didn’t come up in a search of city records. It was unclear what that testimony proved, as far as evidence that Manzo was or wasn’t a gang member.

OPD's 'gang guru' explains the police perspective

Things got more interesting when Keely took the stand after another recess. The officer identified himself as a “Hispanic gang expert” and investigator for OPD. His expert declaration provided the basis for the gang injunction, describing the Fruitvale Norteños as an organized, violent outfit who frequently battled with rival gangs over drug turf, placing civilians in harm’s way and causing havoc for Fruitvale residents.

Yet neither Keely’s expert declaration nor his testimony provided conclusive evidence that the defendants named in the injunction even knew each other, that the majority of their offenses were, in fact, for violent crimes or even that their membership in the Norteños gang was active and current, if they were in fact gang members.

Keely’s appearance raised the tension level of the accused Norteños, who had been quietly sitting in the jury box all day. One defendant attempted to videotape Keely with his phone – prompting a swift confiscation of the recording device by the bailiff.

On the stand, Keely was steely. He came across as a knowledgeable, authoritative, if somewhat cocky and occasionally evasive, cop who truly believed in the moral authority and legal entitlement of the police to fight crime by whatever methods necessary.

The Norteños, Keely said, “claim the ‘Dirty 30s.’ They claim all the blocks of the 30s. They claim the Fruitvale area, they claim the entire area.” In his view, he said, “the entire safety zone is a nuisance.”

Primer on street gangs

Keely’s testimony served as an informal primer on street gangs, from the various territories held by Norteños and their rivals the Sureños and Border Brothers and their relative positions within the California prison system, to the methods used by police to determine gang membership.

There are nine criteria for determining gang membership, according to U.S. Department of Justice guidelines. But when pressed by Cunningham, Keely listed only three: admission, identification and crimes against rival gangs.

Ultimately, Keely said, he determines who is a gang member based on intelligence, field reports and personal observation. He denied that merely wearing red and being in the Fruitvale were enough to confirm Norteño gang membership by OPD standards, as Cunningham had alleged.

On several occasions relating to the shed incident, Keely invoked "1040" and "1042" privileges, which in layman’s terms are the right of a police officer to not answer questions whose disclosure could reveal the identity of a confidential informant.

This clearly frustrated Cunningham, who made several off-the-cuff comments - objected to and sustained - in an attempt to get under Keely’s skin.

The judge, meanwhile, was less talkative than he had been during Manzo's testimony last week. He did, however, indicate that he was interested in pursuing a line of questioning regarding the size of the proposed safety zone, which currently covers 450 blocks.

As the cross-examination continued, Keely characterized Esmerelda Quintero’s testimony as “misinformation,” saying he’d never stood on her brother’s back. He denied Cunningham's allegation he'd once dropped several of the alleged Norteños off in Border Brothers territory - a remark the judge quickly struck from the record.

But he also appeared to overstate the amount of rifles uncovered in the raid on the shed. On the stand, Keely claimed the raid turned up “five or six” rifles. Yet previous testimony, introduced by Fierro, indicated only one such weapon was found. Keely also reiterated his statement to Esmerelda Quintero that her brother belongs in jail.

A few minutes later, he said that if the Norteños want to play by OPD rules, apply for the opt-out program and visit schools to denounce gang life, he’d be more than willing to assist them in those endeavors.

“Anybody that we can get out the game … I’m all for that,” Keely declared.

Cunningham's cross-examination of Keely is expected to continue at the next hearing, Wednesday, March 9, at 9:30 a.m.

Out of court, the prosecution, defense, and observers speak

Outside of the courtroom, Meyers Nave attorney Tricia Hynes - who mounted a vicious cross-examination of Javier Quintero two weeks ago - spoke succinctly on the record.

“I think it’s proceeding according to the way the evidence is laid out,” she said. “We’re now getting our opportunity, finally, to put on our witnesses, starting with officer Keely. With Officer Keely and then with the parole officers [who are expected to testify], you’re going to get our side of it. You’re going to get the evidence. That’s all we can do at this point, is put the evidence out there.”

Keely, she added, “is very passionate about what he does. I think that comes across. He’s been doing this for a while, cares about the community and I believe in his evidence.”

Cunningham explained his cross-examinations strategy thusly: "I'm trying to bring [Keely's] position that he's an absolute guru who just knows that these guys are bad guys and they deserve to be in jail ... . Our position is, that's all they gotta do, not be involved in a nuisance. they don't have to jump through a bunch of cop hoops or live up to  the notion of what acceptable behavior is. They gotta not be active gang members. Period."

Fruitvale community activist Cesar Cruz said he found Keely's testimony unsatisfactory.

"It was real disheartening,” Cruz said “to see this so-called OPD gang expert dictate and decide on no real policy, what constitutes a gang member or not a gang member. It seemed completely vague. It seems completely subjective.” Keely, he added, “seems above it all. He used his executive privilege as a police officer to not answer questions when it was strategic for him to do so. For me, to have those kind of privileges in a courtroom undermines a perceived system of justice.”

The fight is far from over, Cruz said noting Friday's anti-injunction rally at City Hall, “and I think it will not just be won in a courtroom. The struggle has to come from the community.”