Oxnard's injunctions lead to gang sprawl

A pair of legal injunctions imposing restrictions on gang activities in segments of the greater Oxnard downtown area was intended by governing forces to abate a territorial culture.

With stringent laws barring everything from violent crimes to commingling in the street between gang members, authorities in Oxnard have experienced a reduction in violent gang crimes within segments of the city’s downtown. But the unintended consequence of the injunctions has turned a territorial culture into a nomadic one.

“I know the injunction has possibly encouraged them to go to other areas,” said Captain Monica McGrath of the Camarillo Police Department. “It certainly makes sense for them to go elsewhere so they’re not recognizable.”

Recognition was one of the key characteristics behind establishment of injunctions against two Oxnard street gangs, the Colonia Chiques and the Southside Chiques, when the laws were put into place in 2005 and 2006. Some of the most noteworthy features of both injunctions are the prohibition of certain hand gestures between gang members — sign language that spells out the name of a respective gang — and of attire, including certain types of athletic clothing and anything emblazoned with lettering that spells out or abbreviates “Colonia” or “Southside” in different variations.

In tandem with a curfew imposed on gang members, as well as the barring of fighting or ofcarrying weapons and drugs, police in Oxnard look for these identifying cues when making gang arrests in special “safety zones” designated in the injunctions.

Within the six square miles of the safety zones, 200 known gang members (in a city of 200,000 residents) were served injunction papers and, according to David Keith, a public information officer with the Oxnard Police Department, gang activity has been at a low point.

“We measured what the impact has been within those square miles,” he said. “We found gang-related crime in the safety zone dropped 70 percent.”

Oxnard Police Assistant Chief Jason Benites said offenses like aggravated assaults by gang members have decreased immensely, with some slight fluctuation, explaining a great need for injunctions of this type.

“We’ve seen the numbers drop to less than 50 percent of what they were five or six years ago,” noted Benites. Elaborating, he said there were 72 of those assaults in 2002; in 2003, 48; in 2004, 28; in 2005, 36; and in 2006, 31.

For 2008, as of June 30, 82 arrests have been carried out for violations to the Colonia injunction, Benites said, 11 for Southside.

Authorities maintain enforcement measures have succeeded in Oxnard, but gang activity there has sprouted up elsewhere in the county, even across the state and the country, according to other area police officials.

Pete Seery said graffiti tagging by Oxnard gangsters has increased in Camarillo, where Seery is a senior deputy for the city’s police department.

“The tagging crews are becoming more violent,” said Captain McGrath. She refers to a recent Moorpark stabbing connected to gang taggers still under investigation. “If they’re not in their city, they’re harder to control.”

It’s not just Ventura County where the presence of Oxnard gangs is evident; according to Benites, there have been reports of said gang members relocating to Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, and as far-ranging as Bakersfield and even Washington state. The reports do not indicate any illegal activity in those areas.

So does that mean gang activity can never be abated completely? Not when it can thrive somewhere else, according to one police official.

“Gangs are going to try and spring up wherever they can, wherever they feel they can be successful,” said Port Hueneme Police Chief Fernando Estrella.

However, crime may not always be the driving factor when explaining the transiency of gang culture.

“Some of the gang element has relocated. Part of it could be because of the injunction,” Seery said. “Part of the reason they could be moving out is their family wants to get them away from gangsters.”

This is true, Seery agreed, when gang members as young as 13 or 14 have caring family members looking to intervene with a positive influence.

Essentially, it boils down to a balance between policing and prevention: imposing an injunction to drive out gang crime, enforcing it no matter where it arises. According to Estrella, local police agencies, as well as the county sheriff’s Gang Violence

Suppression unit, work in collaboration, an agreement allowing injunctions to be imposed in Oxnard without another municipality bearing the brunt of its gang crime.

“With gangs, we’re constantly talking to each other, exchanging information,” Estrella said.

If suppression of gang violence is one problem, changing public perception is another. According to Vince Behrens, chairman of the Downtown Oxnard Business Management District Board of Directors, the stigma of Oxnard as a gang-infested neighborhood still lingers, often deterring visitors to a downtown that in the past decade has become safer and revitalized.

“We don’t have the problems people perceive we have,” Behrens said. “The biggest, toughest part at changing the downtown and keeping it clean is, until the perception is changed, it doesn’t make any difference if there’s a gang injunction.”

Behrens looks to cities like Long Beach as an ongoing influence for Oxnard — places once crime-ridden that turned around for the better and attracted a new influx of visitors to the area, through policing and better public awareness of gang activity.

“As long as you can keep it together,” he said, “that’s the challenge.”