As the city's war on street gangs continues to unfold, Los Angeles defense attorneys are protesting what they see as overzealous prosecutions that seek enhanced jail time for suspects swept up by police for nonviolent crime.
Cases that might have been charged as misdemeanors are being filed as felonies with enhancements that increase penalties and put bail out of reach, defense lawyers say.
In some cases, judges have agreed, rebuking prosecutors by throwing out excessive charges against alleged gang members.
Robert Kalunian, chief deputy public defender for Los Angeles County, said defense attorneys are seeing a lot of aggressive prosecutions for relatively minor crimes such as vandalism and petty theft because the suspect is an alleged gang member.
"There are a lot of problems with enhanced prosecution of gang members," Kalunian said. "We are spending a considerable amount of resources on cases that are not the crime of the century."
Kalunian said that, anecdotally, it seems there are more cases with gang enhancements landing on the desks of public defenders, but that might be a function of hundreds of additional gang members being arrested in the crackdown.
Prosecutors say they are not handling gang cases any differently, but are simply enforcing existing laws that recognize the sinister grip that gang crime can have on a community.
"The Legislature has given district attorneys around California appropriate tools to fight the scourge of gangs," said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. "That includes filing gang enhancements for crimes that are both violent and nonviolent."
Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California say they are watching with interest.
"Overcharging is counterproductive," ACLU attorney Peter Bibring said. "When one community's kids are going to jail for extended periods of time, while another community's kids are getting probation or time served for the same crimes, its hard for the community to see law enforcement as an ally."
Police Chief William J. Bratton announced a crackdown on gangs in January in response to a 15.7% increase in gang crime last year in Los Angeles. Fifty-six percent of the 478 homicides in 2006 were gang-related.
Since then, gang enforcement officers have made more than 800 arrests, including 392 members of 11 gangs identified by the chief as the worst in the city.
