A gang injunction that would cover a 10-square-mile, unincorporated area of South Los Angeles and could prohibit even nongang members from taking part in everyday activities is overly broad and unconstitutional, the ACLU of Southern California argued today in an amicus brief filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney's injunction targets members of the Florencia 13 gang, but certain provisions are written so vaguely that they enable the recommendations of individual enforcing deputies to wrongly include siblings on the gang injunction, prohibiting them from activities as innocuous as riding together in the family car.
'This injunction allows police officers to impose parole-like restrictions on people with little or no investigation. That gives enormous discretion to police officers and carries huge potential for abuse, whether malicious or not,' said Peter Bibring, staff attorney for the ACLU/SC. 'We already see police in other injunction areas placing people under an injunction for little more than being related to someone in a gang.'
Individuals under the proposed injunction would be subject to strict curfews, prohibited from associating with certain people, banned from the area's largest park and prevented from wearing 'gang apparel,' although the injunction never specifies what that is. The rules are so restrictive and cover such a large area -- encompassing schools, churches and the homes of family members -- that it would be nearly impossible for someone to comply without moving out of the area.
The ACLU/SC is asking the District Attorney's Office to amend these and other provisions of the injunction that criminalize legal everyday behavior of gang and nongang members alike, and create burdens of proof that are virtually impossible to meet.
Certain provisions of the injunction are so broad that a youth buying milk for his or her gang member sibling could be construed as a gang associate 'acting '_for the benefit' of a gang member, Bibring pointed out.
In creating this and similar, far-reaching injunctions, law enforcement agencies have developed a double system of justice in which a single deputy can unjustifiably and tragically ensnare a nongang member in the criminal justice system. With little or no investigation, individual deputies need only suspect someone is a gang member before serving him or her with the injunction and placing them under its restrictive provisions. The result is a person who is bound by the rules of the injunction and subject to arrest before he or she is even given a hearing in court.
Equally troubling is an opt-out provision in the proposed injunction that is written so broadly that someone who is unemployed, not in school or who has committed a minor nongang offense in the last five years wouldn't qualify to be removed from the injunction's provisions.
Touted as a tough and necessary crime-fighting tool, aggressive injunctions have been widely used in Los Angeles County and across the state in poor and minority neighborhoods to crack down on gang activities. But in doing so, law enforcement's drive to impose injunctions has eroded community trust, separated childhood friends and endangered the basic rights of nongang members to move freely and associate with whom they like.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Yaffe is expected to hear the case Jan. 16.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - The Los Angeles Police Department has provided a disappointing and inadequate response to a report that found racially biased policing in its ranks, a coalition of community groups told the Los Angeles Police Commission today.

The report, authored by Yale economist and law professor Ian Ayres, was released last fall by the ACLU of Southern California. The LAPD's long-awaited response - presented to the police commission today -- rejected a number of key recommendations made by Ayres, a renowned statistician who has authored several studies relating to issues of racially disparate treatment in a variety of areas.

'The response from the LAPD is profoundly disappointing,' said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU/SC. 'Professor Ayres has offered to work with the department to develop and refine efforts to identify racial profiling, and even to further analyze data on officer stops if the department makes that information public. But the department has simply refused to cooperate, and to date has shown no inclination to address the deficiencies identified in Professor Ayres' ground-breaking report.'

The report showed that black and Hispanic residents are stopped, frisked, searched and arrested by LAPD officers far more frequently than white residents. These racial disparities aren't explained by differing crime rates in predominantly black or Latino neighborhoods, or the likelihood that a search of a person of color will yield evidence of a crime, the report concluded.

Today's response by the LAPD focused, among other things, on denying that there is any measurable racial bias among its officers, and was inaccurate and misleading about some of the report's conclusions, Ripston and other coalition leaders charged.

Ayres said that 'the LAPD's response simply ignores the bulk of our analysis, including the most troubling evidence of racial disparity -- the disparities that occur, after the stop has been made, in officers' decisions to frisk, search and arrest.' Although he has posted the data and his analyses on his Web site to enable other academics to review and challenge his findings, he noted that the LAPD's response did not undertake any criticisms of his work at a level consistent with research standards in the field. 'The department emphasizes several recent changes to its training and procedures,' Ayres said. 'But the LAPD remains unwilling to release (or even to internally analyze) more recent data to test whether these changes have mitigated the racial disparities uncovered in the past.'

Rev. Eric Lee, president/CEO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles, commented: 'The report released last fall showed irrefutably what many people in this

city have long known to be true - that there is a racial element to the policing of the LAPD. That must end. But we won't see progress toward that goal until the LAPD shows a willingness to work with community leaders and with experts like Professor Ayres who can provide insight into how to end unjustifiable police treatment of people of color throughout this city.'

Added Jorge-Mario Cabrera, director of education for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles: 'When 1,200 claims of racial profiling are made by the Los Angeles community and not one is sustained by the LAPD, it raises grave concerns that our experience is not being taken into consideration by those charged with serving and protecting us. Our community deserves equal protection all the time, and we require assurances from the LAPD that it will work towards correcting behaviors that can further erode our trust in the men and women in blue.'

Ayres' report, titled A Study of Racially Disparate Outcomes in the Los Angeles Police Department, was released in October, and was based on a fresh analysis of the LAPD's own data. The LAPD had previously said that there was no consistent pattern of racial disparity in the policing across alI its divisions - a conclusion based on a study of the post-stop actions of its officers on 810,000 field data reports completed by LAPD officers nearly every time they stopped a vehicle or pedestrian between July 1, 2003 and June 30, 2004.

The LAPD provided the data to the ACLU/SC, pursuant to a request under the California Public Records Act. At the request of the ACLU/SC, Ayres re-examined the data. The police commission subsequently requested the LAPD to respond to the conclusions and recommendations in Ayres' report.

Among the recommendations that the department rejected were to require officers to take a test of latent racial bias, developed by psychologists, and for the LAPD to analyze officers' stop data on a regular basis to identify problem officers or groups. The latter is the report's single most important recommendation, yet the LAPD has made no meaningful effort to develop a methodology for such an analysis, and has not responded to Ayres' offer to assemble a team of experts to design an approach, said Peter Bibring, staff attorney for the ACLU/SC.

'We will continue to press the LAPD to take these and other reasonable and effective steps to root out racially biased policing,' Bibring said. 'Whether conscious or not, racial bias in policing exists. It's important for the department to acknowledge that and develop procedures that will help to identify and eliminate it.'

On November 5, 2008, the day after Proposition 8 was approved by voters, the California ACLU affiliates joined with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., and the law offices of David C. Codell, Munger, Tolles & Olson, and Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe to file suit in the California Supreme Court to invalidate Proposition 8.

We argue that Proposition 8 is a revision to the California Constitution, rather than an amendment, and therefore cannot be adopted by a simple majority vote on an initiative. Revisions, unlike amendments, must be approved by a two-thirds vote of the legislature before being submitted to the voters or a constitutional convention. Our position is that Proposition 8 is a revision because it subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection, allowing a simple majority of voters to deprive a particularly vulnerable minority, such as LGBT people, of fundamental rights, and prevents courts from exercising their unique responsibility to uphold the equal protection rights of minorities.

Our case, Strauss et al. v. Horton et al., was consolidated with cases filed by other plaintiffs, including various individuals and a coalition of cities and counties. The California Supreme Court agreed to decide the case in the first instance, without waiting for lower courts to address the issue. The court placed similar cases, filed by other plaintiffs including various civil rights and religious organizations, on hold pending the outcome in Strauss and its companion cases.

The court allowed proponents of Proposition 8 to intervene in the case to attempt to defend its validity.

In its November 19 order, the court directed the parties to brief the following issues:

(1) Is Proposition 8 invalid because it is a revision rather than an amendment to the California Constitution?

(2) Does Proposition 8 violate the separation of powers doctrine under the California Constitution?

(3) If Proposition 8 is not unconstitutional , what is its effect, if any, on the marriages of same-sex couples performed before its adoption?

On Friday, December 19, 2008, the intervenors filed their brief and the state filed its brief.

Unsurprisingly, the proponents of Proposition 8 claim it is a valid amendment. They also argue that it retroactively invalidates marriages of same-sex couples performed before its adoption.

The state Attorney General argues Proposition 8 is invalid because the initiative process may not deprive persons of certain fundamental rights without a compelling justification, which is not present in this case. The state also argues that even if it is valid, Proposition 8 is not retroactive.