ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, NO MORE GANG INJUNCTIONS!

Tomorrow the Re-Entry Council will consider taking a position in opposition to gang injunctions. We need a large show of support to let them know how critical this issue is, and move them to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, NO MORE GANG INJUNCTIONS!

The city attorney and police have used this out-dated tool of repression for years, and have never demonstrated its use in establishing public safety. On the contrary, gang injunctions push African American and Latino families out of SF and dismantle entire neighborhoods. Gang injunctions are actually a tool for police to racially profile and harass us in our own neighborhoods, putting the safety of people of color in jeopardy and making it impossible for us to stay in our homes.

Officials in San Francisco have been in the business of making racial profiling and other forms of police harassment sanctioned public policy for too long, and we’re going to stop them! Dennis Herrera is feeling the pressure. On Monday Herrera issued a press release after finally conducting the first known review of the injunctions, reviews that should have been conducted every 3 years since 2006 according to his own policy. In the press release he makes outrageous claims, stating that the injunctions are not stay away orders, and “They do not restrict anyone, including enjoined gang members, from living, working, going to school, or otherwise being present in the safety zones.”  This is an outright lie. We know that the persons named have been harassed and arrested for being at their work sites, for picking up or dropping off their children at school, visiting family members; if you can’t conduct functions necessary for living a normal life in your neighborhood then one’s neighborhood is unlivable. In short the injunctions are meant to drive those named, and by necessity their families out. SHAME ON YOU DENNIS HERRERA!

Upcoming: Save the date, June 13th at 4pm the BOS Public Safety & Neighborhood Services committee will hold a hearing on the injunctions at City Hall room 263.