Jeff Adachi
2007-09-21 10:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

SAN FRANCISCO -

I was not surprised to see Ken Garcia jumping on City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s bandwagon in support of gang injunctions (“Adachi fiddles with race card as The City’s streets burn,” The Examiner, Sept. 20). But I was pleasantly surprised to see that Garcia actually believes that people who are not gang members should not be included in the injunctions. This is a big step for Garcia, who usually expresses little concern for civil liberties.

Garcia finds it hard to believe that gang injunctions might result in racial profiling, even though a 2003 study of the San Francisco Police Department showed that racial profiling of Latinos and blacks is a major problem in our city. Garcia, like Herrera, refuses to acknowledge the fact that since the lawsuits were announced, there have been documented incidents of police officers using the gang injunction to harass young Latino men.

In July, a van filled with Latino men who work for the city-sponsored Community Response Network was stopped and its occupants were told that they should not be in the area because of the gang injunction. In August, a Latino man reported being stopped by the police in the “safety zone” and was asked if he was named in the injunction, if he was a gang member, what religion he was and whether he had a gun.

Garcia also lauds the Bayview injunction and “the reduction in crime,” saying “this is a case where what works in the Bayview … should be spread to other areas.” Garcia should have checked SFPD crime statistics, which show an increase in crimes reported in the Bayview injunction zone. According to the SFPD, there were 228 crimes reported in the injunction zone in the year prior to the injunction, and 216 in the 11 months after the injunction was put in place. If this year’s crime rate holds consistent for the next 30 days, there will be a net increase of 19 more crimes in the injunction zone than occurred in the year before the injunction was put into place.

Had Garcia bothered to call me for my side of the story, I would have informed him of these statistics, as well as three other studies, performed by nationally known researchers that demonstrate that gang injunctions do not work and actually make crime worse. But somehow, I think this would have popped his balloon.

The fact that innocent people have been included in the injunction, despite spending thousands of taxpayers’ dollars, including the salaries of four lawyers, doesn’t seem to bother Garcia. The 22-year old man I represent has never been convicted or arrested of any crime. According to Herrera, he was seen with an alleged gang member, his cousin, on three occasions, and twice rapped about gangs. Garcia generously stated, “If Adachi can prove that some of the people identified as gang members are in fact not, then by all means those people should be spared the injunction’s restrictions.” If I do succeed, I hope that Garcia will buy me lunch.

Herrera is upset that, in light of these reports, people have raised concerns about racial profiling. He should place his concerns into ensuring that police stop using gang injunctions as a tool to systematically profile young Latino men. Herrera also needs to take a hard look at who is being included in the injunction and take measures to ensure that innocent people are not harassed.

Garcia and Herrera deny the existence of racial profiling. It’s the old, hear no evil, see no evil, even when the evidence is right in front of them. As public defender, I have a duty to protect the constitutional rights of San Franciscans — a job I take seriously.

Jeff Adachi is the public defender of San Francisco. For more information about the gang injunction, or to read the racial profiling complaints referenced above, please visit www.sfpublicdefender.org.