LA City attorney is talking about an "end-of-days scenario" for suspected taggers in south LA. She is also intending on arresting them even if they are not caught tagging...
It sounds like an unconstitutional threat is coming from the LA City Attorney.
---
PROMISE AND PERIL IN SOUTH L.A. -L.A. Times, August 24, 2009, by Scott Gold
'Tagging' or just hanging out -- busted either way?
L.A.'s city attorney wants to give police the ability to arrest graffiti 'taggers' simply for hanging out together, without having to catch them in the act. The proposal raises constitutional issues.
Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich wants to give police the ability to arrest "taggers" simply for hanging out together, without having to catch them in the act -- raising thorny constitutional issues as he lays the groundwork for a campaign to tackle the city's vexing graffiti problem.
In an interview, Trutanich said his staff has begun amassing street-level intelligence and reviewing legal strategies that would pave the way for a series of injunctions targeting graffiti and "tagging" crews. The measures would be lawsuits of sorts, brought on behalf of the public, treating much of the graffiti that mars buildings and overpasses as a criminal enterprise and arguing that it has become such a nuisance that it requires an extraordinary police response.
Los Angeles is the national leader in the use of civil injunctions to combat criminal gang behavior -- the model for Trutanich's proposal. The city has 43 injunctions targeting 71 gangs, including one rolled out earlier this year over a 13.7-square-mile area of South L.A., the largest in California. The tagging injunctions would focus on neighborhoods where graffiti is a particularly acute problem, such as the Harbor Gateway area, the San Fernando Valley and, especially, South L.A.
"I'm going to put together an end-of-days scenario for these guys," Trutanich said. "If you want to tag, be prepared to go to jail. And I don't have to catch you tagging. I can just catch you . . . with your homeboys."...link to complete LAT article
image: graffiti in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay
photo by MT Hernandez
No comments:
Post a Comment