Violence unusual in face of gang injunction

By: TERI FIGUEROA - Staff Writer | Tuesday, August 2, 2005 10:56 PM PDT ∞

VISTA ---- Gang injunctions tend to make communities safer, law enforcement and residents say. That doesn't appear to be the case in Vista, which has seen three, unrelated deadly shootings in five days by county sheriff's deputies.

Among the three suspects killed was Jorge Ramirez, one of the 89 gang members specifically targeted by this inland city's first court-ordered injunction, granted July 1.

The San Diego County Sheriff's Department has said that a deputy shot Ramirez as he reached for something in his clothes while running from deputies after he and another man allegedly robbed a nearby Circle K at gunpoint.

A gang injunction ---- a court action that bars particular gang members from a slew of specified activities, including associating with each other ---- is not usually followed by an outbreak of crime and tensions between police and gang members, authorities said.

"Injunctions usually make it quieter," said Deputy District Attorney Terri Perez, the prosecutor who won the Vista gang injunction in July. "After the injunction is in place, the gang members aren't hanging out together anymore. ... From what you hear on the news, you would think it was the opposite. But you just don't see them hanging out."

Sometimes individual gang members will deliberately defy the gang injunction, Perez said, but most of the people targeted by the injunction tend to lay low.

At a press conference held Tuesday in El Cajon, sheriff's officials said there will probably be more contacts between deputies and suspected gang members because of the injunction, but the contacts won't necessarily be more aggressive.

"I would assume that there would be more activity as a result of the injunction," Sheriff Bill Kolender said.

Said Capt. Glenn Revell, department spokesman, "I think deputies are focusing more on gang members because they have the option of utilizing the injunction as a tool."

Escondido police Lt. Dave Mankin said that once gang members start getting jailed for violating the gang injunction ---- a misdemeanor ---- "word circulates rather rapidly" and most other gang members stop defying the court order.

Mankin said gang injunctions are simply another tool for law enforcement to use.

Deputy District Attorney Jon Oliphant has been prosecuting gang-related cases for about 10 years, and has been handling such cases in North County since 2001. He said that in his experience, gang injunctions do not increase tensions between gangs and police.

"Once you get a couple of these guys going off to jail, it does seem to stem the (gang) activity," Oliphant said. "A smart guy tends to lay low."

Of the 12 gang injunctions the district attorney's office has brought in San Diego County, eight of them are in North County, including one each in San Marcos and Vista, two in Escondido, and four in Oceanside.

Concha Hernandez Greene is a community activist in Oceanside, and she said Tuesday that she found that the gang injunction granted in Oceanside in 1997 ---- the first in the county ---- helped make the neighborhood safer.

"The neighborhood calms down," Greene said. "They are put on notice and (police are) looking for them to make one bad move. It makes the people in the community feel safer."

Law enforcement officials and some residents of neighborhoods affected by gang injunctions have credited the court orders with helping make their communities safer, but opponents of the injunctions contend they violate the civil rights of the people they restrict.

Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 740-3517 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.