The War On Gangs

In targeting three Western Addition gangs — Chopper City, Knock Out Posse, and Eddy Rock — Herrera seeks to carve out two different safety zones that would cover a combined 12 square blocks. His other proposed injunction would delineate a safety zone five times that size in the Mission to quell the Norteño gang.

The Oakdale Mob injunction, the first such order slapped on a San Francisco gang, established Herrera as arguably the city's leading anti-crime crusader. This time around, despite solid support from police officials and residents in the affected areas, he finds himself under siege from a coalition of neighborhood advocates and civil libertarians. Their criticism surged last month with the release of a think-tank study that asserts injunctions fail to deter gang crime. Herrera's foes further argue that such court orders inhibit young men from leaving the streets behind, circumvent their civil rights, and sanction racial profiling by police.

Unlike the Oakdale Mob case, in which only one attorney took up the defendants' cause, the latest lawsuits have attracted a swarm of criminal defense and civil lawyers. They're shrouding their legal strategy in advance of hearings on the proposed injunctions, scheduled for Sept. 18 in Superior Court. In the interim, as the rest of San Francisco marks the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, it's a season of upheaval in the streets.

A sprawling mural in a parking lot near 24th and Capp streets depicts a series of scenes vibrant in color and tone, united by a theme of Latino perseverance. The images range from protesters marching in an immigration rally to a man reading a book to a clutch of youngsters. The man, Rene Quiñonez, points to his likeness — shaved head, trimmed mustache and beard — as he stands before the painting, his presence its own tribute to perseverance.

Quiñonez serves as executive director of Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth, or HOMEY, the group that created the mural. The nonprofit organization works with troubled youth and young adults to herd them away from gangs. The 30-year-old Quiñonez makes an apt mentor, given his recent escape from thug life.

The ex-Norteño member grew up in the Mission near Del Sol Park, the son of a single mother who struggled to support her two children. Lured into the gang by older neighborhood kids, Quiñonez began selling weed and crack in his mid-teens to help his family stay afloat. He dropped out of high school, and though he later earned his GED and enrolled at San Francisco State, the streets usurped better intentions. Quiñonez expanded his drug operation to ease the financial burden of new fatherhood; his venture met a sudden end when federal authorities busted him in 2001.

He served a year in prison before volunteering with HOMEY to fulfill his parole agreement. Observing the group's caseworkers, most of them former gang members, he realized that the program's strength derived from its authenticity: The counselors were proof that you could leave gangs behind. He had found his future.

But Quiñonez frets that such efforts to reform wayward youth could suffer if the proposed injunctions win approval. He and fellow advocates vouch for several people named in the city's lawsuits who claim to no longer belong to gangs. A handful of the defendants volunteer in outreach programs with HOMEY and its ilk, conveying the kind of streetwise credibility to which Quiñonez responded. He contends that the injunctions, by branding those volunteers as police targets, would hamper the ability of grassroots groups to connect with young men and women.

"If someone's name is in the injunction, kids are going to think about staying away from him," Quiñonez says. "But it's the people who've been in gangs who can go into the streets and get kids to trust them."

Authorities estimate that more than 300 Norteños live in the Mission; the city's lawsuit identifies 32 purported members. The injunction would create a safety zone of 60 square blocks, bracketed by César Chávez, Valencia, and 21st streets and Potrero Avenue, a wide swath of the district's southern half.

Police link the Norteños, or Northerners, to 18 murders in the Mission since 2004, the grisly fallout of a simmering turf struggle with the Sureños, or Southerners. The two statewide gangs, both born inside the California prison system during the 1960s, long have warred for control of the Mission's drug trade, sometimes catching bystanders in the crossfire. In June, while standing at the intersection of 24th and Harrison streets, an area inside the proposed safety zone, a 15-year-old boy was gunned down. He had no gang ties, according to police, but may have been mistaken for a Sureño.