Why Oakland Needs the North Oakland Gang Injunction (Opinion)
Morning in North Oakland by Pengrin, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pengrin/3190946505/
Every year, more than 100 young men are killed in Oakland. Informal shrines are created at the site, vigils are organized by family and the faith community, and city leaders lament the loss of young life. The cycle continues with nothing changing but the calendar year.
The Gang Injunction (GI) proposes to change this dynamic by enjoining gang members from participating in the activities that cause these murders in areas they claim as their turf.
Gang members identified by the police and approved by a judge after reviewing burden of proof evidence presented in court are enjoined from doing a number of things in a 100 block “Safety Zone” of North Oakland, including:
• associating with other known gang members
• intimidating witnesses
• possessing weapons or associating with someone who does
• possessing graffiti tools or tagging
• drug possession, use, or sales or being present for any of these
• trespassing
• disobeying a 10 pm to 5 am curfew in the 100 block GI Safety Zone
• violence, property crime, or creating a nuisance
• loitering
Only gang members named in the injunction are subject to these prohibitions, most of them illegal acts, anyway. None are minors, and all can opt out of the injunction by petitioning the court for removal.
Who will the GI benefit?
Gang members will benefit the most because they will be prohibited from engaging in activities that will either get them killed or turn them into killers and felons. Interrupting the cycle of violence in Oakland’s neighborhoods is a vital starting point for reducing the murder rate this city has experienced for decades.
The other important beneficiaries, far more numerous, are the law-abiding residents of the neighborhoods in the Safety Zone who are now unable to let their kids play in their front yards, who fear for their families’ safety day and night, and who fear retaliation if they speak out or take action against the criminal overlords of their neighborhoods.
Today, walking their dogs is a safety calculation for many residents of these neighborhoods, because they do not know when the gangsters will start shooting at each other day or night.
The gang members in the 100 block Safety Zone number fewer than 200; the law-abiding citizens number 30,000 or more.
Whose freedom of action is more important: the gang members who engage in illegal and lethal activities, or the law-abiding residents who want to live peacefully?
Are the rights of criminals and murderers more important than the rights of the rest of the larger law-abiding community? That should be question number one in evaluating the Gang Injunction’s necessity.
The second is: do Oakland’s citizens want to see their streets used as killing fields where 100+ young men die each year, the victims of senseless criminal violence, and where innocent bystanders are sometimes injured or killed as well?
This is not a Civil Rights but a Human Rights issue—the right to remain alive and live in peace.
Signed,
Don Link, Chair, Shattuck NCPC Beat 11X*
Vertis Whitaker, Chair Market Street Corridor NCPC Beat 10Y*
Larry Benson, Chair Golden Gate NCPC Beat 10X*
Frank Castro, Chair Greater Rockridge NCPC Beat 12Y & 13X*
Jim Dexter, Chair North Hills Neighborhood Council Beat 13Y
Marcus Montague, Secretary Beat 2X NCPC
Mary Farrant, Chair Beat 7X NCPC
Allene Warren, Steering Committee Grass Valley NCPC Beat 35Y
* denotes beats covered in full or part by the North Oakland Gang Injunction
See all of Oakland Local's gang injunction coverage here.
Read about today's demonstration and event and then read these opinion pieces:
Don LInk: Why Oakland needs the North Oakland Gang Injunction (Opinion)
Lisa Nowlain: Why we should rally against the Gang Injunction (Opinion)
Nikki Jones: What Gang Injunctions Really Do
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As a resident of North Oakland, I don't fear walking outside of my house. Stop stirring up a hysteria that doesn't exist. Of course we all are concered with violence - this is true of those opposing the injunction or supporting it. To not be concerned is to have your eyes closed. However, this injunction does nothing to fight this violence and may make it worse, according to the research.
Arguing the injunction point by point:
1. Russo says this doesn’t target youth.
• Youth have already felt increased harassment in North Oakland since the injunction was put to motion.
• Nowhere is he legally bound by these assurances in the documents.
• Much of the “evidence” (declarations from police) are about juvenile activity.
• In the eyes of the law, up to 18 counts as youth. However, research and experience shows that the category of “youth” extends up to age 25. Talk to any 19 year old and see if they reason as adults do.
2. Russo says the community has asked for this.
• City Council, with our elected officials, never approved of the injunction, despite it being placed in front of the Public Safety Committee.
• Attorney Fierro, when asked if community declarations could be put into the court papers, told a group of community members that they couldn’t “for their own safety”
• Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils do not represent the entire community.
• Russo was invited to our Townhall for community-based solutions to violence but didn’t show up.
• The opposition has a petition with over 600 signatures and are endorsed by:
Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, All of Us or None , Oakland Community Action Network, Critical Resistance, National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area, PUEBLO, Proyecto Common Touch, The Center for Young Womens Development , Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Copwatch , Center for Third World Organizing, Prison Activist Resource Center
3. This is an “evolved” and “tailored” injunction that won’t hurt the community.
• It goes to court today, so we won’t know what it looks like, but so far despite being “targeted” there are still up to 70 does that will be decided by police.
• There is no real evaluation system to measure its efficacy or effects on the community. Russo has said before that “numbers lie” and we can’t count on them. What do we count on then? Police declarations?
4. It won’t take money away from services that really do prevent violence because it’s already in Russo’s budget.
• Who approved that? And why is Russo so afraid to tell us how much it costs? When asked, he told us we should do a public record request.
• John Russo is not someone to be trusted with respecting a budget: he is the city’s highest paid elected who has refused to take pay cuts in the past. “According to The San Francisco Chronicle (December 19, 2007), the City Attorney gave himself a significant raise without permission: "John Russo boosted his $207,000 salary by $28,000 this year by giving himself management leave and vacation pay typically reserved for non-elected department heads and managers, city records show."” (http://www.flashreport.org/blog0a.php?postID=2008011619120358&authID=2006111814384800)
• On that note, trusting Chief Batts with something this important also seems dangerous. He left Long Beach with charges of corruption, and has said that gang injunctions don’t work: “In Long Beach, Chief Batts was reported to be “unconvinced that [gang injunctions] are accomplishing all they should” although he was not opposed to police being given this “tool” (Long Beach Press Telegram, November 15, 2003).
5. The opposition doesn’t have any real solutions are a bunch of whiners.
• We recently held a townhall for community members to propose solutions. Many of those solutions are listed here: http://stoptheinjunction.wordpress.com/our-oakland-our-solutions/
• Community members are full of solutions if you just ask them.
• Here a few articles with solutions proposed by members of the coalition:
• http://www.oaklandseen.com/2010/05/12/solving-gang-violence-requires-embrace-of-youth-leadership/
• http://www.criticalresistance.org/article.php?id=101
• Anyone with more ideas is welcome to email them to stoptheinjunction@gmail.com
Lisa, really...you and I must not live in the same neighborhood.
I live a few blocks away from a local barber shop where four of the top drug dealers in all of Oakland meet to do business in North Oakland. Their presence and the menacing stares from their associates is enough to make the most hardened criminal shudder. Every 6 months or so a young Black man (usually under 25) is shot on or near this corner. On the other side of my block is a Oakland Housing Authority property where these drug dealers were using female retirees and women with babies to shuttle drugs all over North Oakland.
If the threat of going to prison isn't working, maybe the threat of being prevented from earning your living in your 'home turf' will?? Maybe the youth will see their elders (meaning over 30ish gang members) going to prison for longer times for minor crimes due to "gang enhancements" and these youth will realize "IT ISN'T WORTH IT".
The vast majority of us living in N. Oakland fully support The Chief and this measure's goals - just look at his approval ratings. We want our streets back. We are tired of losing so many Black men to both the gang lifestyle and to death as a result.
Thanks Lisa for breaking this down.
Studies have shown gang injunctions just don't accomplish their stated goals of reducing crime. In order to do that, we need to address the root causes: poverty, unemployment, lack of opportunity.
Those of us involved in the coalition to stop the injunction want peaceful, healthy neighborhoods as much as anyone and are going about it the best way we know how - by advocating for a realignment of priorities in Oakland. These problems are not going to get solved while year after year schools, after school programs, community centers, health care, job training, drug treatment, community based mental health care, and other programs that are vital to healthy Oakland are defunded. Then what we get is some new lofts downtown, maybe a Starbucks or a new Bake Sale Betty, and a bunch more cops stopping people who didn't do anything wrong. That's not safety.
About approval ratings - polls can be manipulated to say whatever supports an agenda. Similarly, polls are somewhat self selecting, kind of like the comments section of online news and opinion sites. I don't believe for a second the majority of North Oakland is behind this measure.
Come on out to the courthouse for the hearing this afternoon, 2pm 1225 Fallon St Department 1 (12:30 for the rally), take your chance to speak up for solutions.
I'm also a resident of North Oakland, within the area covered by the injunction. Now, I'm fully aware of the violent crime in the area; a man was shot on my block last month (at around 2pm, btw, and so this may not have been "prevented" by the injunction), and I know there have been other shootings nearby since then. The thing is, I don't see how this kind of vague criminilization can help things.
People are more likely to turn to crime when they are surrounded by a culture in which that way of life is relatively acceptable (by their peers, at least), and/or when they don't see that they have any other real options to feel safe and provide for themselves and their families. Sure you get your occasional psycopath - people who enjoy the violence for its own sake - but most criminals are people just like the majority of us "law abiding citizens" except that, somewhere along the road, they started making choices we didn't. Until we address the issues that make a criminal/gang lifestyle more appealing than the other options, we'll continue to have violence in our neighborhoods.
In the meantime, it really seems that the injunction just fuels the "us vs. the police" mentality that so many Oaklanders seem to have...a mentality that I never understood until I moved here. I honestly think the main reason the injunction has any kind of support is that it's something we can do now, and will provide "results" quickly - it is an election year, after all. The things we can do to actually create real long-term crime reduction (great list by noinjunctions, above) take a longer time to build and moniter for successes.