A New Understanding of Gang Injunctions

INTRODUCTION There were over 1.4 million active gang members in the United States as of 2011 (1)--an increase of forty percent in gang membership from 2009. (2) It is estimated that "[g]angs are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions and up to 90 percent in several others." (3) Many of the more than 33,000 gangs are increasing in sophistication and organization. (4) Additionally, these "[g]angs are increasingly engaging in nontraditional gang-related crime, such as alien smuggling, human trafficking, and prostitution." (5) The rise in gang membership and gang violence "has overwhelmed conventional law enforcement techniques." (6) State legislatures, city attorneys, and law enforcement officers have been forced to search for new and innova tive techniques that may prove to be more effective. (7) Enjoining a gang (or its members) as a public nuisance is one such innovation that is increasing in use. A. Acuna--The Beginning Public nuisance actions against criminal street gangs were first upheld by the Supreme Court of California in the seminal case of People ex rel. Gallo v. Acuna. (8) In that case, the City of San Jose (City) sought injunctive relief against a street gang known as the Varrio Sureno Treces (VST). An injunction was granted and appeals followed, which brought the case before the California Supreme Court. (9) The City successfully argued that the gang's behavior was so egregious that it both substantially and unreasonably interfered with a public right--"the comfortable enjoyment of life or property." (10) The court began its opinion by detailing the effect of the gang on the neighborhood in question. It described Rocksprings as "an urban war zone." (11) The four-block area was an "occupied territory." (12) Gang members would congregate in the area at all hours and "display a casual contempt for notions of law, order, and decency--openly drinking, smoking dope, sniffing toluene, and even snorting cocaine laid out in neat lines on the hoods of residents' cars." (13) Additionally, "[m]urder, attempted murder, drive-by shootings, assault and battery, vandalism, arson, and theft [were] commonplace" in the community. (14) Residents' property was regularly damaged as the gang members "t[ook] over sidewalks, driveways, carports, apartment parking areas, and impede [d] traffic on the public thoroughfares to conduct their drive-up drug bazaar." (15) Residents' "garages [were] used as urinals; their homes commandeered as escape routes; [and] their walls, fences, garage doors, sidewalks, and even their vehicles turned into a sullen canvas of gang graffiti." (16) Rocksprings residents themselves were frequently "subjected to loud talk, loud music, vulgarity, profanity, brutality, fistfights and the sound of gunfire echoing in the streets." (17) They were "prisoners in their own homes." (18) In the community, "[violence and the threat of violence [were] constant" and "[v]erbal harassment, physical intimidation, threats of retaliation, and retaliation [were] the likely fate of anyone who complain [ed] of the gang's illegal activities" or cooperated with the police. (19) It was under these extraordinary circumstances that the district court granted the City's request for injunctive relief, deeming the gang to be a public nuisance. The injunction prohibited, among other things, VST members from (1) congregating in public view with other members in Rocksprings, and/or (2) "confronting, intimidating, annoying, harassing, threatening, challenging, provoking, assaulting and/or battering any residents ... or visitors to 'Rocksprings.'" (20) The California Supreme Court ruled that the injunction did not violate the Constitution and that it was validly issued. (21) B. Common Characteristics and Challenges Since Acuna, many other gang injunctions have been issued in California as well as in several other jurisdictions. …