The Proverbial Black Hole | Civil Gang Injunctions, squandering of millions of tax dollars and lack of Police Accountability              

By Armando Vazquez                                                                                                    

Every American politician has known clearly, for over 40 years that sound bite sloganeering tough on crime campaigns get them elected. Oxnard is a classic example of the critical mass electorate, the business community and the politicians supporting blindly and unequivocally the Civil Gang Injunctions and any and all tough on crime initiatives and policies to create a “safer” community. This cynical strategy assures victory at the ballot box but provides absolutely no assurances to a safer community.  Constitutionally questionable heavy handed policing “tools” and enforcement initiatives like Civil Gang Injunctions sound great to a gullible and naive public and get disingenuous politicians elected by playing the get tough on crime card. But do they really work? After a two decade long war on gangs (youth of color) using tough on crime initiatives, like the Civil Gang Injunction, and billions of squandered tax payer dollars, the jury is still out regarding the efficacy of the gang injunctions. Why? Simply put, cops are horrible accountants and statisticians. And hypocritical politicians don’t have the guts to hold the cops accountable to provide best practices data.

Little to no Verifiable Data to support the Success of Civil Gang Injunctions:

Wendy Thomas Russell, a reporter for the Long Beach Press Telegram, reports back in a 2001 article, “It is difficult to assess the effectiveness and the cost efficiency of the injunction, because of lack of research, limited accountability, no agreed upon measure of success and no standardized enforcement among police. Also uncertain is the true cost of the Long Beach gang injunction’’. Incredibly, the city of Long Beach has instituted four gang injunctions since 1998, and since that time the Long Beach Police Department does not have a data base to quantify or qualify the impact of the injunctions efficacy with the alleged gang related crime they are attempting to police and control. This is a glaring revelation; the Long Beach Police cannot back up their claim that the injunctions is successful as they do not have data to support this claim. According to Alexandro Alonso, PhD in the Department of Geography at the University of Southern California, a renowned expert on Civil Gang Injunctions states, ” There has never really been a thorough study on gang injunctions, ever, except for a couple of small studies, which really don’t give accurate results” In 2017 The Long Beach Police Department suspended the enforcement of the injunction within their city limits.

This then is the current state of affairs with the two current Oxnard Civil Gang Injunctions. The local OPD cannot, has not and will not produce scientific, independently certifiable, statistical information regard the central efficacy question. Why? Because they don’t have it! Have the two Oxnard Gang Injunctions been effective as the OPD, the city council, proponents of the injunctions proclaim? If they have been successful, how? CORE urges that the OPD provide the community the statistical data to back up the assertion that Civil Gang Injunctions have worked in stopping gang criminality.

The Oxnard Police Department, since the inception in 2005, of the two gang injunctions, has become the master of double talk and spin on local injunction effectiveness. The current injunction area covers approximately 25 to 30 percent of the city of Oxnard. The injunction’s areas, the police argue, is where most of the crime is committed by the targeted gang. The Committee on Raza Rights and CORE, have correctly questioned what kind of crime are they the suppressing and reporting out to a gullible public.  Are these crimes minor traffic violations, jaywalking, truancy, or mere police stops? Or are these serious crimes such, as assault, homicide, robbery and burglary that can be directly attributable to the alleged gangs? How did the Ventura County District Attorney and the Oxnard Police Department come up with this geographical injunction area? The Oxnard two “Safety Zone”, areas represents one of the largest areas ever covered by a Civil Gang Injunction, anywhere in the nation. 13 years later we still don’t know the real answer to this critical question.

The Safety Zone in Oxnard:

Professor Alexandro Alonso, states,” The Gang Injunctions is supposed to offer long-term effects, community-wide effects, which I have not seen a gang injunction do.” One of the areas that the Oxnard “Safety Zone” has covered is the entire downtown business area. For the past 13 years we have seen little visual evidence of “safety” change. The downtown area is still horrifically underutilized and becomes a ghost town at dusk. What have the cops done in this area to claim it is safer than 13 years ago? I postulated back in 2004 that the downtown area inclusion in the Civil Gang injunction was the way the Oxnard City Council and the Oxnard Police Department would insure and protect the multi-million dollar investments and projects being undertaken in the area at the time. The downtown area is not a high crime area, it never has been; however, it is a strategic area of economic revitalization and development. Is this civil injunction going after perpetrators of crime or protecting multi-million dollar investments, or both? After 13 years has the Safety Zone designation helped or hurt the downtown businesses? Has it recruited or frightened away investors, business and shoppers? CORE urges the OPD to provide the statistical data to support and substantiate its claim of success. 

The Oxnard Police Department will have us believe that the lawlessness, especially the more egregious and violent crime, is out of control in the “Safety Zone”. A question to the OPD is where were they when this cyclical pattern and history of violence was taking place? This climate of purported gang lawlessness was not created in a vacuum. Who created this climate of fear in the downtown area? Various OPD Chiefs have made the claim that Oxnard is one of the safest cities, for its size, in the United States. They claim that the OPD department, with its innovative policing programs, has been highly effective in reducing gang related crime. The OPD plays the highly questionable statistical mind game in the community, using erroneous crime numbers one day to scare the community and using another set of misleading crime reduction statements to assure the local, residents, political and financial leadership that the OPD has gang violence and crime under control in the next instance. The OPD cannot have it both ways.

What is next for the city of Oxnard Gang Injunctions?

The OPD, with its well-orchestrated spin, has called the civil gang injunction one of many tools in the “enforcement tool box”. Experts on the effectiveness of Civil Gang Injunctions call this draconian police practice ill-advised, and at best, a “Band-Aid approach to eradicating gang crime and violence in our communities.” So why do police departments throughout the Greater California area, including Oxnard, continue to seek court-ordered Civil Injunctions? Expediency.

The answer to long term gang pathology according to Alejandro Alfonso and most other experts in gangs and civil injunctions is non-police interventions, engaging the gang member directly in substantive and positive dialogue, jobs, higher education, smart common sense long term non-police interventions, time , love and  community service programs. Alfonzo, states however, this community engagement won’t happen because, “you don’t get a lot of law enforcement supporters to get behind these community-based activities, such as cease fires, job training, community services, and higher education matriculation because it is not expedient and that’s not their approach toward gang crime suppression” Father Gregory Boyle, of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, is even more succinct when he warns that, “Simple solutions to complex problems will produce failed and wrong solutions” Oxnard Civil Gang Injunction is a lazy quick fix solution for the cops at the expense of the constitutional rights of many youth of color in the community. As a community we can do much better than sloganeering and quick fix solutions to eradicate local youth pathology.

Complex Human Problems Require Complex Long Term Interventions: We offer the KEYS Leadership Academy

The Keys Leadership Academy has a 25 year local history of providing ethnically and culturally congruent best practices and highly successful remedial and empowering educational programs (we endeavor to matriculate every age appropriate KEYS youth in college); along with community civic services that help at risk youth become vested as leaders, activists and stewards of their respective community.  These educational and community service programs help to foster proactive, individual and group expression, activism, and application of human creative skills, emotional and spiritual empowerment, community resiliency, imagination and perseverance in at-risk youth and their families. Our programs and services are all designed to nurture, strengthen and empower the youth of our community and instill a spirit of stewardship and community leadership in services for their communities. Over the past three decades The KEYS programs have helped thousands of at-risk youth and their families become discerning, knowledgeable and empowered transformative agents of service and activism in their local communities throughout greater Oxnard.

The mission of the Keys Leadership Academy is to engage and help empower the multi-ethnic at-risk youth community of greater Oxnard. KEYS proactively delivers efficacious and ethnically congruent educational enhancement programs, healthy living activities, community service, with long term support, mentoring and counseling for our at-risk youth populations in our community and their families.  We utilize our unique (designed and tailored for our at-risk Oxnard youth) best practices educational and supporting programming and classes that utilize ethnic and culturally congruent programming that connects uniquely with at-risk youth and their families.

The principle and defining philosophy of the Keys Leadership Academy is the robust and active promotion of youth stewardship and a service activist philosophy that will help promote community stewardship, wellness, safety, health, ethnically and culturally congruent education, and community wide service programs. This a brief synopsis of The KEYS Leadership Academy:

A:  The KEYS Leadership Academy academic remediation and community empowerment classes and training (emphasis on youth and their entire family) help remediate academic and educational deficiency that are prevalent in our at-risk youth. Classroom community service and healthy lives training provided in multiple locations.  Our goal is to get every kid into college, a good job and help create a community steward.

1. On site job training, OJT, or mentoring in the area of entry level construction, entry level green environmental technician work, educational mentorship and tutoring, exercise instructors, child care providers and other work experiences throughout Oxnard. Father Boyle states, “nothing stop a bullet faster than a job” We add [nothing gives a troubled kid more good options than a good education and a good job!] Job development requires the buy-in of the entire community with the city of Oxnard leading the way.
2. Community Enhancement projects: Working partnership with the city of Oxnard and community partners, KEYS youth participate in service projects to the community that will enhance the safety, health and quality of life for the residents of Oxnard. KEYS projects can include: the cleanup up of city owned properties that are vacant abandoned, the Ormond Beach wetlands, local parks, beaches and strategic community and public venues and locations that will promote community stewardship pride to the ignored pockets of our community.

Please Oxnard, you do not have to reinvent the preverbal youth intervention model, it is already here. It is the KEYS Leadership Academy that has be helping transform the lives of thousands of the most active and at-risk youth in greater Oxnard for over two decades. For pennies on the dollar The KEYS unique and long term programing has demonstrated consistently that with the right intervention programing we can help turn the most troubled kids into knowledgeable, active, secure and compassionate stewards of the community. Let us stop violating our youth’s constitutional rights, stigmatizing an entire generation in Oxnard, Let’s get on with the long term business of loving and supporting all of our youth. It is long past due.

Armando Vazquez, M.Ed.  is Executive Director of  Acuna Art Gallery/Café on A, Executive Director for The KEYS Leadership Academy and Chairman of the Oxnard Multicultural Mental Health/coalition

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