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Los Angeles approves $30 million settlement in gang injunction case
File: Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich (L) surrounded by Skid Row activists as he tries to announce a new civil injunction against several dozen individuals, including gang members, in an attempt to stem drug activity in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles on April 7, 2010.
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Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
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The Los Angeles City Council approved a $30 million settlement involving gang injunctions that affects nearly 6,000 Angelenos, according to a press release.
The federal class action case started as a lawsuit by Christian Rodriguez and Alberto Cazare, two L.A. men arrested for curfew violations in Mar Vista in 2009, the press release said. The area had a gang injunction in place, but the two men were allegedly not in a gang — an issue attorney Anne Richardson said is common with injunctions.
“A lot of people get sucked in gang injunctions just because of where they live, and they happen to know somebody,” Richardson told KPCC.
In 2015 a judge ruled the city had acted unconstitutionally by arresting Rodriguez and Cazare and approved the class action lawsuit that was settled Monday, the press release states. The 6,000 people whose rights were found to be violated are compiled from 26 different gang injunctions
Richardson, co-lead attorney in the case, said that injunctions that placed a curfew on the gang members it listed were unconstitutional.
The settlement will create a mechanism for people listed on injunctions to get their names taken off. Richardson said some people in the case have had their name on an injunction since as early as 2000. The $30 million will go toward providing job training and apprenticeships to the 6,000 affected. They also have the option to pass along the training to a family member.
"The hope is that this settlement will really show one way for cities to provide a process for people to get off the gang injunction. Whether they ever should've been in the injunction or not, they deserve the opportunity to show that they no longer should be on the injunction," Richardson said.
The court needs to approve the settlement before it becomes official. Richardson said that the case will likely be resolved by the summer.
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