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 into allegations 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.

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, the state 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 enforcement agencies 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.

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 state Department 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 areas where 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."