Tuesday, May 22, 2007

A law enforcement nightmare

Sunnyside enacts ban on gang membership:
The Sunnyside City Council unanimously passed a law Monday making it illegal to be in a gang, as state legislators and council members from Toppenish and Yakima looked on.

Opinions on the law from the standing-room-only crowd varied widely, with many saying criminalizing gangs does not address the root causes of crime. Several council members said they recognized the legitimacy of those concerns, but they all maintained support for the new law...

Others, however, took the view espoused last week by the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union: That the law opens up the possibility of racial profiling. The law, which makes gang membership a gross misdemeanor with sentences up to one year and a $5,000 fine on first offense, was patterned largely on a California state law.

"All it's going to do is empower police to see me driving in my car and say, 'He looks like a gang member,' " said Mike Cortez of Sunnyside.

Nancy Palomino of Sunnyside concurred.

"If you're not driving the right car, if you're not dressed in the right way, you will be profiled," she said.

That argument, Councilman Bill Gant said after public comment had ended, is based on emotion.

"As council people, I think we need to take a lot longer look at the factual part than the emotional part of this," he said.

Sunnyside police will be able to use the ordinance, which includes style of dress and physical markings as signs of gang affiliation, to arrest gang members without catching the innocent in that net, Gant said.

"I think you'd be ridiculous to think they don't know the difference," he said. "They do."

Lord knows Sunnyside needs to do something; all of those Yakima valley towns are getting dangerous. (For those of you who aren't lucky enough to live in the Northwest, here's some basics.) Small towns and a huge, spread-out county make it impossible for law enforcement to keep up with the influx of (mostly illegal) immigration and seasonal growth. Then, too, the Yakima area has been a major drug clearinghouse for years. (There's a reason SR 97 is called the Heroin Highway.)

There's a language/cultural barrier as well. Without bilingual cops, it's impossible to penetrate the Hispanic communities, which is near about three-quarters of the population. The second- and third-generation folks don't have that problem, but the immigrants think of anybody in a uniform as untrustworthy, and they clam right up. Given the reputation of police in Mexico, it's hard to blame them. (Besides, how do they know they won't be ratted out to La Migra?)

So Sunnyside is between a rock and a hard place. But I think the ACLU (as much as it hurts to say so) is going to be right on this one. The criteria are just too darn vague. It can easily boil down to being a surly-looking young Mexican, which is still not a crime. Yes, the Sunnyside cops probably know most of the scumdogs in town, but proving gang membership in court is going to be an interesting little exercise in semantics. How do you define a gang? Do they keep membership rolls? Is there a secret handshake? Or can you distinguish - in court - between a gang and a bunch of guys who keep getting in trouble and happen to dress similarly? How? Where's the line? It may come down to the classic definition of pornography: I know it when I see it.

It looks like Sunnyside has shot itself in the foot with this one, and all they're going to do is help some ACLU lawyers buy Jaguars for their wives.

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