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By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
Armando Vazquez.
Around 2004 in the ill-conceived and secretive development and eventual rollout of The Oxnard Civil Gang Injunctions, we know now, that there was massive, abusive, and illegal overreach by the Ventura County Districts Attorney’s Office and the Oxnard Police Department. Today, like cornered rats awaiting the inevitable death blow, the Ventura County Districts Attorney’s Office and the Oxnard Police Department are scrambling to keep their new “modified” 2018 Oxnard Civil Gang Injunctions model from being struck down as unconstitutional in its entirety by the local courts.
On Tuesday, April 16, 2019 in the Ventura County Superior Court hearing that CORE members attended we learned that the Ventura County Districts Attorney’s Office and the Oxnard Police Department have now served only 16 adults (8 from Colonia and 8 from Southside) with intent to enjoin them in their new “modified” Oxnard Civil Gang Injunctions. The 16 adults served with this new intent to enjoin them with new documentation is an incredibly small departure from the 300 adults and youths who were served in the original enjoined services rollout (in the period from 2004-2006) throughout Oxnard. The approximately 300 originally enjoined adults and youth were a result of a massively deceptive full court fear mongering public relations campaign that was conducted by the Ventura County Districts Attorney’s Office, the Oxnard Police Department, the Oxnard City Council and all the tough on crime minions that march in lock step with the OPD.
Today the OPD and the Ventura County DA, with their collective hair on fire, are scrambling pathetically to stay within the legal guard rails that have been created by recent judicial decisions that have struck down many civil gang injunctions up and down California (including Oxnard’s) as being unconstitutional in their malignant scope and breath.
So now in 2019, what does the Ventura County Districts Attorney’s Office and the Oxnard Police Department do with the “Safety Zone” that will quarantine only 16 “active and violent gang members”? The original “Safety Zone” was two huge geographically carved out areas in and around Colonia and Southside Squires that ostensibly targeted and controlled “gang” activities that sprawled in two predominately low-income, immigrant Latino Oxnard communities and were originally developed to enjoin 300 or more “active and violent gang members”. Today the OPDs and the DA seeks to enjoin only 16 “active and violent gang members” in all of Oxnard. Will the Safety Zones (areas) in Oxnard be drastically reduced or eliminated and how will this be coordinated?
We believe that from the beginning the Oxnard Gang “Safety Zone” area map, developed in secrecy, without public scrutiny, was nothing more than a racist and fear mongering tactic developed and deployed by the OPD and the Ventura County DA to instil fear in the hearts and minds of many of the gullible residents of Oxnard, who believed the OPD propaganda that the city of Oxnard was being overrun by thousands of violent Latino gang members. We know today, as we knew in 2004, that this fear mongering public relation campaign deployed by the OPD was based on racism, misinformation, manipulation of crime statistics, and outright lies.
For approximately 15 years two large area of Oxnard have been quarantined and for all intent and purposes have been left out of Oxnard civic life and the common everyday city affairs because they have been stigmatized by institutional lies as being “dangerous gang territories” This then is the 15 year legacy of the unconstitutional Oxnard Civil Gang Injunctions. An ill-conceived policing tool that has unconstitutional infringed on the lives of thousands of Latinos. Specifically tainted were the reputation of two predominately low-income Latino neighborhoods and more broadly this process self-inflicted a permanent public relations black eye on the entire city of Oxnard.
It is time for the Oxnard city council to join the enlightened ranks of city officials throughout California that have concluded that Civil Gang injunctions are a horrific mistake, a tremendous drain on the limited and precious financial resources of a city and most importantly they target and create in Oxnard an enjoined populations of low-income, Latino men of our community who are subject to selective police actions, draconian and unconstitutional restrictions. These types of selective prosecution and supervision law enforcement policies does not serve the community well. These highly punitive and obsolete tough on crime policing tactics create a highly adversarial us versus them mentality, where perpetually warring factions are at each other throat.
All previous action lead us to believe that the OPD and the Ventura County DA’s office will not abandon their destructive, divisive and unconstitutional policies, because they have so much at stake, i.e., their reputation, their funding, their standing with the electorate that is always with them when they are tough on crime, their omnipotence and ultimately their hubris. So it is going to be up to the people of Oxnard to take control of their police department and begin to become active agents in the creation and deployment of policies that become the new transparent, just and fully democratic community safety paradigm.
Here is an idea that is gaining considerable traction in the progressive community. Take all the funding from the OPD department that deploys and executes the Civil Gang Injunction enforcement actions and divert these funds to social and restorative justice training, provide funding for community based organization that provide educational remediation and instruction, promote and fund the arts, create a New Green Deal program that is creative and address important, local environmental issues in Oxnard (Ormond Beach restoration, energy efficiency programs for the private and public sectors, Green training and job development, and much more), full triage non-profit cooperative work with homeless and recovery communities, that include creating low income housing, health, education and sobriety programs that are interrelated and cooperative, and other programs to be identified and created to create a compassionate, transparent, democratic and restorative justice and safety Oxnard paradigm that will benefit all residents, and not unconstitutionally and illegally punish a selective few.
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., founding member of CORE and the Acuna Art Gallery and Community Collective.
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