The War On Gangs

And while an injunction may dislodge reputed gang members from a neighborhood, Yvonne Mere, the deputy city attorney, offers another perspective. "How many law-abiding citizens have been displaced by the crimes that have gone on in that particular area? How many have had to leave because of the gangs?"

Anamaria Loya, executive director of La Raza Centro Legal, tells a story she heard about an officer mocking a group of young men in the Mission earlier this month. "You're all on the gang injunction list," the cop purportedly said. "Hope you have a lot of money for lawyers, otherwise you're going down." Such anecdotes, whether entirely unembellished as they pass from one listener to the next, provoke sharp resentment among the Latino community.

"There's an undercurrent of rage in dealings with law enforcement," Loya says.

There's also anxiety that injunctions could hasten gentrification. In Hunters Point, not far from the safety zone created by the Oakdale Mob court order, a 1,600-home subdivision sprouts by the day. Last month, the Board of Supervisors narrowly approved a plan for a 60-unit condo project along César Chávez Street — the southern border of the proposed safety zone — that will further shrink the Mission's low-income housing options. Against that backdrop, Henry Hernandez, a CARECEN caseworker, sees the potential injunctions as the first wave in what he dubs "ethnic cleansing."

"In 20 years, we're not going to have our community anymore," he says. "That's what the city wants. That's what the injunctions are for."

Herrera, suffice it to say, thinks otherwise, and he reacts calmly to speculation that he wants to speed gentrification or grease his political fortunes. "When folks are frustrated, they see City Hall as a monolith — the monolith that doesn't want to help them. [But] I think we're all aware that we have a gang problem in San Francisco, and something needs to be done."

In a season of upheaval, that's perhaps the only point on which everyone agrees.