Critics Assail Gang Order
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Catherine Saillant, L. A. Times, Aug. 10
More than 200 opponents of Oxnard’s 2-month-old gang injunction have filed court papers alleging it is being used to harass innocent people and trample civil liberties, while stigmatizing dozens of youths as “urban terrorists.”
Attorneys for the Colonia Chiques, the gang targeted in the June 1 injunction, will use the declarations filed by community members to make the case that the court-ordered crackdown is too punitive and should be thrown out.
The injunction prohibits gang members from being on the street after 10 p.m., congregating and wearing Dallas Cowboy attire within a neighborhood of more than six square miles known as La Colonia.
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The Chiques were singled out by authorities as the county’s largest and most violent street gang. In papers filed last week, 220 civil rights activists, community members and residents who say they have faced harassment urged the judge to do away with the order.
(Posted on August 12, 2004)