Long-awaited Trial Testing Gang Injunction Set in Yolo County

URGENT PRESS ADVISORY
Sunday, July 11, 2010
For more information contact: Rebecca Sandoval 916 505-8947

Monday Daybook/Assignment Desk

LONG-AWAITED TRIAL TESTING GANG INJUNCTION
SET in YOLO COUNTY; COMMUNITY RALLIES MONDAY,
CALLING INJUNCTION UNNEEDED and RACIALLY BIASED

WOODLAND – Residents here and from surrounding counties will rally here Monday
morning at a 9 a.m. news conference at the entrance to Yolo County Courthouse
against a so-called “gang injunction” that civil libertarians say violates civil
rights and has been criticized by the community it purportedly seeks to protect.

Opening motions will be heard Monday morning, with a trial set for Tuesday in
Dept. 1 on the injunction that was first proposed and allowed to be implemented
several years ago despite protestations by residents of Broderick and Bryte who
claim the injunction is unneeded and racially motivated.

Concerned citizens are calling on Yolo County Superior Court Judge Kathleen
White to end the Broderick Boys Gang Injunction which they maintain is
criminalizing mostly Latino/Latina local youth by incorrectly labeling them as
gang members and is being used by the West Sacramento Police Department (WSPD)
and the Yolo County District Attorney's Office to win government grants for
"gang deterrence.”

The community and civil libertarians charge the injunction violates civil rights
because individuals do not have to commit a crime to be subject to the gang
injunction. And clear and convincing evidence that someone is a gang member is
not required; simply being identified as a “Broderick Boy” and being served with
papers by the police are enough to make someone subject to the curfews and other
restrictions of the injunction.

Residents have insisted and testified that there is not the level of crime in
the communities of Broderick and Bryte that would warrant a gang injunction and
that the injunction has led to harassment and racial profiling in the Latino
community.

Residents maintain the injunction is targeting innocent citizens and that the
community has been torn apart by the injunction. The community was never
consulted, nor advised, of the impacts and the way the WSPD would label citizens
as gang members and the effect of such a judicial declaration that they all live
in an area that is a public nuisance.

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