The Informant

Ali Winston

Gang injunction opponents and Fruitvale merchants make their views known at an Oakland City Council meeting on May 3, 2011.

More than a year since Oakland filed its first gang injunction in Alameda County Superior Court, the City Council is poised to take action on outgoing City Attorney John Russo’s controversial anti-crime strategy that has polarized parts of the city and exacerbated police-community tensions.

Representatives from the Oakland Police Department and City Attorney’s office were conspicuously absent from last night’s meeting. In a joint letter to the council, Russo and Police Chief Anthony Batts said their staff was tied up with preparations for closing arguments Friday for the city’s second gang injunction against 40 alleged Norteños in the Fruitvale neighborhood.

Vice Mayor Desley Brooks, whose District 6 may be the target of a third gang injunction, was livid at the absence of OPD and City Attorney personnel and the lack of information provided to the council on the subject.

“It is incumbent on staff to be here, that’s what the charter says. It’s inappropriate,” Brooks said. “The City Attorney never received authorization to enter into this litigation.”

District 1 Councilmember Nancy Nadel, who characterized gang injunctions as “divisive crap” at a February hearing of the Public Safety Committee, questioned why OPD and City Attorney representatives were able to attend yesterday afternoon’s closed council session but not the public meeting.

Later on, Nadel’s frustration boiled over after receiving an update on Russo’s whereabouts on her iPhone. “I just went on Facebook, and saw John Russo was on Facebook tonight, when he is supposed to be here. Getting a quarter of a million dollars a year,” she yelled, shaking her smartphone in anger. Russo had accepted a friend request from an Oakland Tribune reporter.

Brooks’ stance on the gang injunctions means three council of the seven council members have reservations about the strategy (Nadel and At-Large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan are the other two). Ignacio De La Fuente, Patricia Kernighan and Larry Reid have previously expressed support for injunctions, though all three refrained from commenting last night. Last week, Kernighan was surprised to learn Russo had paid $20,000 to law firm Meyers Nave for legal work on an injunction in East Oakland that has not been filed in court.

Libby Schaaf, who represents District 4, has yet to unveil her views on the matter.

Russo’s last day in office will be June 10, according to a letter of resignation he sent to Council President Larry Reid this morning. Speaking to the Tribune today, Russo said Police Chief Anthony Batts will now have to shoulder the burden of pressing forward with the gang injunctions.

“People don’t remember, this came up through the Police Department,” Russo told Tribune reporter Sean Maher. “For political reasons, opponents chose to make me the face of it, because I think it’s easier to politicize it as a white man rather than an African-American police chief.”

Since Russo announced Oakland’s first gang injunction in February 2010, the  anti-gang strategy has consumed much of the oxygen in Oakland’s political sphere. Although there was some community opposition to the North Oakland injunction, which was approved by Alameda County Superior Judge Robert Freedman in May 2010, the City Attorney’s pursuit of the Fruitvale injunction set the stage for a full-out political battle between Russo, his supporters and a citywide coalition opposed to the strategy.

Oakland’s grim fiscal predicament and the spiraling legal costs of the gang injunctions prompted Mayor Jean Quan’s remarks last Friday that she would have preferred the $781,128 spent on Oakland’s injunctions as of February 22 to go to youth programs. Last week, Contra Costa County approved budget reductions that effectively put an end to District Attorney Mark Peterson’s plans to pursue gang injunctions in Richmond and Antioch.

People on both sides of the issue attended last night’s meeting. A crowd of merchants from Fruitvale demanded greater security during the public comment period at the beginning of the hearing. The murder of local restaurant owner Chuy Campos during an attempted robbery last month was repeatedly invoked to illustrate the need for a heightened police presence.  Among their demands were increased foot and bike patrols by OPD, quicker responses to emergency calls and greater cooperation between OPD and local merchants. As business owners took turns at the microphone, supporters held up green signs asking for better protection. Notably, the Fruitvale business community did not mention the gang injunction once.

Eva Pena’s family has operated a bakery in the neighborhood for 15 years. She said safety in the area is a genuine concern, and spoke of having been robbed at gunpoint twice. “We are losing a lot of customers because they feel afraid to come to our district,” Pena said.

Randall Whitney, the local president of Safe Storage Management Company, said business owners represented “Oakland’s silent majority” who needed a “sanctuary” from crime in order to ensure steady business and taxable revenues.

Injunction opponents also turned out in force and once again delivered their message that suppression tactics sour community relations and do not have the same impact on gang activity as jobs, education and mentoring programs.

The defense team for the accused Nortenos in the Fruitvale injunction estimate legal proceedings have cost upwards of $1.7 million to date, a figure attorney Yolanda Huang said is merely a “deposit” on future court proceedings and police expenditures.

“We are going to go to the mat for each and every client,” Huang said. Javier Quintero and Abel Manzo and five unrepresented defendants are the only people who would be affected by Judge Robert Freedman’s ruling in the first phase of the injunction trial. Judge Freedman has stated he will hold individual hearings for each of the 33 remaining defendants who wish to challenge their inclusion on the injunction.

Yolanda Huang said, “This injunction effort is not going to stop the tragedies in Oakland – it would not have stopped the tragic death of Chuy Campos.”

Other speakers complained of police harassment of young Latinos in Fruitvale even though the injunction has yet to be approved. Jeremy Miller, a member of the San Francisco non-profit Education Not Incarceration, said injunctions amount to “little more than updated slave codes” because of their focus on poor Latino and African-American communities.

The gang injunctions are expected to come before the city council again next week, when councilmembers will vote on whether to ratify or reject the injunction strategy. Closing arguments in the Fruitvale case are at 2 PM on Friday, May 6 in Department 20 of the Alameda County Superior Court at 1221 Oak Street.