The Washington, D.C., campaign to impose so-called “gang injunctions” in working-class neighborhoods to make it easier for police to arrest alleged gang members has suffered a significant setback. On June 16, the D.C. City Council decisively voted down a proposed bill.
Gang injunctions have been established in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, Calif., and Dallas and El Paso, Texas, as well as several other U.S. cities. They allow police to label individuals as gang members and then arrest them for perfectly legal activities such as congregating with friends, wearing certain clothes, using cell phones, or even making hand signals allegedly associated with gang membership.
Gang injunctions blatantly violate civil rights and invariably lead to widespread racial profiling. Police, already engaged in routine harassment and brutality targeting communities of color, are essentially given a free hand to expand that harassment.
Council member Harry Thomas, Jr. voted against the bill, and was quoted in the Washington Post, “I have three boys. If my three boys are walking down the street and they get pulled over, are they now the Thomas gang?” The measure, which was introduced by council member Jack Evans with the support of Mayor Adrian Fenty, Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier and Acting U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips, was defeated in a 9-4 vote.
The vote reflects the strong community opposition to racial profiling and widespread police harassment. It was a clear victory for the community. The city “leaders” and police will continue to re-introduce gang injunctions. But community organizing can continue to stop efforts to legalize racial profiling and police harassment.
Mara Verheyden Hilliard, co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice, noted, “Unfortunately, some members of the Council and the Mayor and the Attorney General have stated that they are still going to try and push the gang injunction bill. The fact is that gang injunctions criminalize completely lawful conduct and will have the effect of criminalizing an entire generation of Black and Latino youth in Washington, D.C., who have done nothing wrong.”
