DHS said April 18:
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a MS-13 gang member, illegal alien from El Salvador, and suspected human trafficker. The facts reveal he was pulled over with eight individuals in a car on an admitted three-day journey from Texas to Maryland with no luggage,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “The facts speak for themselves, and they reek of human trafficking. The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal gang member has completely fallen apart. We hear far too much about the gang members and criminals’ false sob stories and not enough about their victims.
Gang databases are tools used by law enforcement to track suspected gang members, aiming to reduce crime through better intelligence. However, their usefulness is debated. Research suggests they may help in specific cases, like solving crimes, but the evidence leans toward them not being very effective overall at reducing gang-related crime. This is mainly due to problems like inaccurate data, where people might be wrongly listed, and a lack of clear proof they make communities safer.
There’s also controversy around these databases. Many worry they unfairly target minority communities, with studies showing most listed individuals are Black or Latino, even in cities where these groups aren’t the majority. For example, in Chicago, 95% of those listed were from these groups, raising fairness concerns. Plus, being in a database can lead to harsher treatment, like tougher sentences or job issues, even if someone isn’t actually in a gang. In short, while they might have some benefits, their overall usefulness is questionable due to accuracy issues, lack of strong evidence, and potential harm to individuals and communities. It seems likely that better oversight and more research are needed to make them truly useful without causing harm.
Heather MacDonald wrote in 2023:
The Floyd convulsion further constricted policing. In July 2020, LAPD Chief Michel Moore banned his officers from accessing a statewide gang database. The stated reason: allegations that up to a dozen LAPD officers had entered non-gang-affiliated individuals into the system. Not to be outdone, California’s then–attorney general Xavier Becerra prohibited police across the state from accessing any record that an LAPD officer had entered into the database. Racial-justice crusaders had sought to dismantle the database for years, on the usual disparate-impact grounds. The timing of the bans, a little over a month after the worst of the riots, was not entirely coincidental.
Then the factual basis for the database proscriptions fell apart. In February 2022, a Los Angeles judge dismissed the city’s case against three of the six officers charged with improper data entry, citing insufficient evidence; the L.A. district attorney dropped two of the remaining three cases. Even had the charges against the officers been proved, they affected a minuscule number of data entries: the officers who were exonerated by the judge were accused of a single incorrect entry each, in a database at the time consisting of nearly 80,000 entries. The bans on the use of the database remain in effect, however, impeding the ability of detectives to locate gang associates of shooting and homicide suspects.
Persisting in his crusade against disparate impact, LAPD Chief Moore forbade his officers in March 2022 from initiating many low-level traffic stops, unless they suspected that a serious crime was afoot and documented that suspicion on their body cameras before making the stop. In January 2023, in another concession to antipolice activists, Moore banned the thin-blue-line flag, long understood as a memorial to fallen officers, from precinct houses, police cars, and police uniforms. According to Moore, the symbol had been hijacked by “undemocratic, racist, and bigoted . . . extremist groups.”
Given the sweeping response to alleged bias in California law enforcement, the empirical case for that bias should be strong. In fact, it is at best circumstantial, consisting of the disproportionate number of blacks among arrestees, probationers, and prisoners. In 2019, the latest year for which official state data are available, blacks made up over 28 percent of the state prison population, though they were 5 percent of the state’s residents, according to the 2020 Census. Whites were less than 21 percent of the state prison population, though they were 35 percent of California residents. The imprisonment rate for black men in 2017 was 4,236 prisoners per 100,000 black residents, ten times the imprisonment rate for white men.
Racism is not the explanation for these correctional disparities; differences in criminal offending are, however taboo it may be to say. In 2021, blacks constituted 51 percent of all robbery suspects in Los Angeles whose race was known. Blacks are 8 percent of L.A.’s population. Whites, 29 percent of L.A.’s population, made up 5 percent of 2021 robbery suspects whose race was known. Blacks in L.A. are 37 times as likely to commit a robbery as whites. Blacks were 34 percent, and whites 4 percent, of homicide suspects whose race was known in 2021, making blacks 31 times as likely to commit homicide in L.A. as whites. Those suspect identifications come from the victims of, and witnesses to, violent crime, who are disproportionately minorities themselves.
Statewide, twice as many black male offenders as white male offenders between the ages of 10 and 19 were arrested for felonies in 2021, despite the roughly one-to-seven difference in state population between blacks and whites. Nearly twice as many blacks as whites were arrested for homicide across California in 2021; the number of blacks between the ages of 20 and 29 arrested for homicide was nearly three times higher than the number of white homicide arrestees in that age bracket.
Racial-justice crusaders argue that these disparities reflect bias on the part of the police, not actual differences in crime commission. But the bodies don’t lie. Homicide statistics, both for victims and offenders, are the gold standard of criminal-justice data, and they confirm the reality of crime differences. Blacks made up 36 percent of total homicide victims in Los Angeles in 2021, making them nearly 19 times as likely to be feloniously killed as whites. If the criminal-justice system were racist, it would ignore black homicide victims in favor of white victims. Instead, police departments assiduously try to solve the killing of blacks, despite a no-snitch ethic that stigmatizes witness cooperation. Tracking down blacks’ assailants almost inevitably means tracking down black assailants. The police have no choice in whom the evidence leads to.
Responding to robberies and other violent crime is also nondiscretionary. The police must answer 911 calls; they are not ignoring white-perpetrated robberies to focus on black-perpetrated robberies.
If advocates of the criminal-justice-is-racist theory really believed their narrative, they would seek to cap arrests of blacks in Los Angeles at 8 percent of all arrests, to match the population benchmark that they invariably use to assess alleged police bias. Arrests of blacks statewide would be capped at 5 percent. The effect of such population-based arrest caps on crime would usefully test the bias theory.
Heather MacDonald wrote about the immigrant gang plague in 2004:
Before immigration optimists issue another rosy prognosis for America’s multicultural future, they might visit Belmont High School in Los Angeles’s overwhelmingly Hispanic, gang-ridden Rampart district. “Upward and onward” is not a phrase that comes to mind when speaking to the first- and second-generation immigrant teens milling around the school this January.
“Most of the people I used to hang out with when I first came to the school have dropped out,” observes Jackie, a vivacious illegal alien from Guatemala. “Others got kicked out or got into drugs. Five graduated, and four home girls got pregnant.”
Certainly, none of the older teens I met outside Belmont was on track to graduate. Jackie herself flunked ninth grade (“I used to ditch a lot,” she explains) and never caught up. She is now pursuing a General Equivalency Diploma – a watered-down certificate for dropouts or expelled students – in the school’s “adult” division. Vanessa, who sports a tiny horseshoe protruding from her nostrils, is applying to the adult division, too, having been kicked out of Belmont at age 18. “I didn’t come to school very often,” says this American-born child of illegal aliens from El Salvador. Her boyfriend, Albert, a dashing 19-year-old with long, slicked-back hair, got expelled for truancy but has talked his way back into the regular high school. “I have good manipulative skills,” he smiles. After a robbery conviction, Albert was put on probation but broke every rule in the book: “Curfews, grades, attendance, missed court days,” he boasts. “But they still let me off the hook.”
These Belmont teens are no aberration. Hispanic youths, whether recent arrivals or birthright American citizens, are developing an underclass culture. (By “Hispanic” here, I mean the population originating in Latin America – above all, in Mexico – as distinct from America’s much smaller Puerto Rican and Dominican communities of Caribbean descent, which have themselves long shown elevated crime and welfare rates.) Hispanic school dropout rates and teen birthrates are now the highest in the nation. Gang crime is exploding nationally – rising 50 percent from 1999 to 2002 – driven by the march of Hispanic immigration east and north across the country. Most worrisome, underclass indicators like crime and single parenthood do not improve over successive generations of Hispanics – they worsen.
Louis Keene wrote Jan. 17, 2021:
La Cienega Heights was not spared the introduction of rock cocaine into Black communities or the emergence of street gangs during the 1980s. Wrought-iron window bars and barbed wire went up around the neighborhood as a homegrown gang, the Playboy Gangster Crips, sold crack on Corning Street and controlled the surrounding blocks. The 1987 injunction developed to stop that gang, the first of its kind in the country, was the first of a series of crackdowns on crime in the neighborhood; what followed over the next 30 years was a gradual outflow of the neighborhood’s Black residents and an influx of Latino immigrants who took their place.
Today, but a fraction of the once majority-Black population remains in La Cienega Heights and Jews, pushed beyond the boundaries of Pico-Robertson by steep rents and a housing shortage, have begun to resettle there. The American Community Survey found that between 2014 and 2018, La Cienega Heights — the area bound by Robertson and La Cienega boulevards, between Sawyer Street and Cadillac Avenue, and to be clear, a place with no heights to speak of — is now roughly 20% Black and 50% Latino.
“I think what we’ve seen historically is arresting people and pushing people out does not create safety,” said Josh Green, an attorney who is director of criminal justice programs at the Urban Peace Institute. “At least not for the community that was there.”
The departure of Black residents from La Cienega Heights reflects a broader trend of Black migration out of L.A.’s core. But the suppressive policing strategy that originated here, as exemplified by injunctions, gang databases and sentencing enhancement, has also left a particular, indelible mark on this place. Barbed wire still wraps some fencing. Some alleys are still padlocked. Cops still patrol the one behind my apartment.
The 1987 injunction started with a few dozen people, but its legacy includes the California gang database, which contains the names of nearly 80,000 state residents, most of them people of color, and many with no knowledge of their inclusion. On July 14, amid a growing scandal around false gang identifications by cops from the Los Angeles Police Department, state attorney general Xavier Becerra revoked access to CalGang records created by LAPD, essentially invalidating them. The decision, which affects about a quarter of the database, granted a victory that criminal-justice reform advocates had sought for decades. Meanwhile, La Cienega Heights has sprouted a kollel (an institution that supports full-time Torah scholars), more sukkahs crop up every fall, and I see as many yarmulkes as pet dogs on the walk to shul. The Black community does not seem likely to return to its previous numbers…
The Cadillac-Corning injunction, the first served to an entire gang, opened a Pandora’s box of surveillance, policing, and criminalization. Injunctions were spirited through courts, and became bigger, broader, and more punitive. The Cadillac-Corning injunction spanned 26 square blocks. A 2011 injunction east of Downtown Los Angeles spanned 16 square miles — more than 60 times the size of the original. Whereas residents worked with law enforcement to identify the gang members on Ferber’s injunction, later injunctions listed John Does, enabling cops to decide afterward who warranted the restrictions. From 2000 to 2018, the city of L.A. added 8,900 people from 79 gangs to injunctions, according to the city attorney’s office.
Gang injunctions have been used almost exclusively in neighborhoods whose populations are overwhelmingly nonwhite. And while these injunctions never discuss race explicitly, “the actual application of the document is clearly racialized,” said Green…
In her 2015 book “Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries,” which contains a historical ethnography of La Cienega Heights, Ana Muñiz, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California-Irvine, writes that one resident estimated the neighborhood was 80% Jewish in the 1950s. As they found professional success, those Jews sent their children to Hamilton, one of the top public high schools in the city. They got zoning laws changed so they could put up apartments in their backyards.
Then came busing.
Ana Munoz wrote in her 2015 book “Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries”:
In the 1980s, Los Angeles street gangs were exploding into popular consciousness. Rock cocaine was about to become big business. During a 1987 court case involving Cadillac- Corning residents, an LAPD officer pleaded with the judge, “Can you imagine meeting 15 year old kids who have $5,000 cash in their back pocket? Or meeting a high school junior
who has the keys to a brand new Mercedes?” (City of Los Angeles v. Playboy Gangster Crips 1987b). A probation officer in the Cadillac- Corning area reflected the frustration of the police and the city prosecutors with the juvenile system: “Try to rehabilitate some of them if you can. I tried at first to help some of the kids, but I soon learned that it was a wasted effort” (City of Los Angeles v. Playboy Gangster Crips 1987c). Law enforcement officials had been locking up black youth in Cadillac- Corning, but they argued it had not worked. Probation had not worked either. They wanted a more powerful tool.Law enforcement would have their prayers answered in the form of a gang injunction. Injunctions are civil lawsuits against neighborhoods based on the claim that gang behavior is a nuisance to nongang- involved residents. Injunctions then restrict the movements of those labeled gang members. Police officers have the discretion to decide who is served with
an injunction (Caldwell 2010). In addition to naming 10– 30 specific people on the injunction, prosecutors also list hundreds of John Doe’s, to be identified at a later point (Myers 2009). If alleged gang members are listed on an injunction, they are not allowed to engage in behavior that is otherwise legal, including— but not limited to— congregating in groups of two or more, standing in public for more than five minutes, wearing certain clothes, and making certain gestures. They can be arrested if they engage in any of these activities. Alleged gang members can be subject to enhanced sentences of 10 years upon conviction. Gang injunctions are civil orders. Consequently, unless the enjoined are on probation or parole, they are not entitled to public defenders if they choose to appeal the order.Gang injunctions are most popular in Southern California. As of January 2013, there were 46 gang injunctions targeting over 80 neighborhoods in the City of Los Angeles alone (Office of the City Attorney of Los Angeles 2013). Injunctions can cover the geographic area of one neighborhood block or several square miles. One injunction in Los Angeles County covers 16 square miles (Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office 2011). Alleged gang members may also have their personal information, social contacts, and tattoos entered into the CalGang Database. By 2003, 47% of African American men in Los Angeles County between the ages of 21 and 24 were on the Los Angeles County CalGang
Database (Siegel 2003).The gang injunction model has begun to spread; to date, civil gang injunctions have been obtained in at least seven states beside California (Maxson 2004). Britain has implemented gang injunctions targeting minors (GOV.UK 2013). In addition to spreading to other cities, the injunction has been expanded to target other groups as well. Los Angeles police and city prosecutors have also recently used injunctions to target drug dealing in skid row, attack graffiti crews, and halt Occupy protests. One of Southern California’s most recent injunctions was implemented near Disneyland shortly after vehement community protest in response to the murder of unarmed Manuel Diaz by Anaheim police. Thus the gang injunction model is being used to police political behavior as well as “criminal deviance.”
