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An Invading Army: A Civil Gang Injunction in A Southern California Chicana/O Community

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Abstract

Over the past two decades, civil gang injunctions have been increasingly instituted in California, Texas, and other parts of the Southwest. Most of the existing research on injunctions focuses on the efficacy and constitutionality of this novel law enforcement tool and pay little attention to their contextual specifics. The following case study is meant to expand the discussion by examining why and how a small but eclectic cross-section of residents organized to oppose the institution of a gang injunction in Oxnard, California. It also shows how this opposition gained momentum by focusing on this gang injunction as a tool not for suppressing gang violence but for protecting the economic interests of elites in the revitalization of the city's downtown district. Finally, this analysis shows how local law enforcement cracked down on Chicana/o protesters of La Colonia barrio who exercised their constitutional rights of dissent, to peaceably assemble, and petition the government for a redress of grievances. This crackdown further marginalized this segment of the Oxnard community and ostensibly ended the career of this community's police chief.

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Notes

  1. Lopez served as an LAPD Officer for 28 years. Upon Lopez's appointment as chief in 1999, his assistant chiefs successfully discouraged the idea of implementing an injunction.

  2. This label is used to identify persons of Mexican origins raised in the United States politicized by their life experiences and who are collectively committed to social justice and addressing historically based inequities facing disenfranchised communities. This definition is also used to recognize barrio youth, particularly those at risk or gang-involved. For a thorough discussion on the origins and politics of this label, see Oboler (1995, 58–79).

  3. Persons of Mexican origins is an umbrella reference that includes recent and long-time resident nationals of Mexico as well as citizens of the United States.

  4. The essay would later be converted into a CCRC pamphlet.

  5. In a meeting with opponents of the injunction at the Café on A in the summer of 2004, Police Chief Lopez, to his credit, admitted that utilizing “street terrorists” and “pack of wolves” rhetoric, in his words, were “not the way to go” (Café on A meeting with Police Chief Art Lopez, August 12, 2004).

  6. In the municipal election of 2004, councilperson John Zaragoza's reelection literature highlighted a 60% decline in the city's overall crime rate. Furthermore, violent crime declined by 50% over the last 10 years. This made the city the fifth safest in the nation with a population between 150,000 and 200,000. Indeed, the Zaragoza campaign declared that, “Oxnard's crime rate is lower that many cities in California, including Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, and Ventura. Zaragoza, 2004.

  7. The official motto of Oxnard is, “The City That Cares.”

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  1. California State University Channel Islands, Camarillo, CA

    Frank P Barajas

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Barajas, F. An Invading Army: A Civil Gang Injunction in A Southern California Chicana/O Community. Lat Stud 5, 393–417 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.lst.8600280

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