Hoping to strike at the heart of one of the nation's largest and most violent street gangs, Los Angeles authorities are seeking a court injunction to hobble the 18th Street Gang in the stronghold of its birthplace.
The injunction covering the Pico-Union area west of downtown would target the most gang members over the widest area of any order officials have so far obtained.
At least 50 gang members who are named, and 250 still to be named, would be barred from engaging in a number of otherwise legal activities including standing, sitting, walking, driving, gathering or appearing anywhere in public in groups of three or more.
A multi-agency law enforcement task force, including LAPD officers and state parole officers, fanned out over the Pico-Union area over the weekend to serve gang members with official notices about the injunction.
The proposed action is the most far-reaching in a series of injunctions aimed at gang members filed by both city and county prosecutors in recent years. It marks the first collaboration of the Los County district attorney's office and the Los Angeles city attorney's office, and is the most complicated of the measures by virtue of the sheer number of gang members authorities hope to harness.
An injunction approved by the courts last month was aimed at curbing the activities of 18 members of one of the gang's cliques in a 17-block area of Jefferson Park, a Southwest Los Angeles neighborhood that had been terrorized by the gang.
Like that injunction, the one now sought by officials would virtually ban all gang gatherings and bar the members from other activities including possessing pagers or cellular phones in any public place or acting as lookouts who whistle, yell or otherwise signal anyone that police are on their way. The court order also would impose an 8 p.m. to sunrise curfew for any gang members under the age of 18 unless they were coming to or from work, a public event or errand, or were accompanied by a parent, guardian or a spouse who is at least 18 years old.
The one-square-mile Pico-Union area has almost 28,000 residents, most of them Latino, and is not only one of the most densely developed pockets in the county but among its poorest and most crime-ridden.
Not coincidently, authorities allege, it also is the birthplace of the 18th Street group, a notorious gang that has sprawled and grown over the past 30 years.
