Throwing the Book : Reiner Will Seek Maximum Jail Sentence for Gang Members

Los Angeles County prosecutors will stop routinely plea-bargaining with gang members and seek additional jail or prison time against them, no matter how petty the crime, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner announced Tuesday.

Unveiling his latest initiative against street gangs, which he called “a new and dangerous form of organized crime,” Reiner declared:

“The objective is to use each occasion that a gang member is arrested for a crime, no matter how minor, as a means to remove him from the streets for as long as possible.”

‘No Pretense of Rehabilitation’

Under the new policy, for example, a gang member caught drinking in a public park--typically a minor offense that results in a fine--would be prosecuted with a six-month jail term in mind, he said at a press conference.

“There is no pretense here about rehabilitation,” Reiner added.

While acknowledging that society must continue to address the underlying socioeconomic conditions that contribute to gang activities, Reiner said, the effects of those efforts “will not been seen, if at all, for a generation or two. We need to deal with those problems today.”

The district attorney said gang-related killings are occurring at a record pace that will likely “far exceed” the 452 such killings in 1988. He said an average of two people die in gang-related shootings “day-in and day-out,” and half of them are innocent bystanders. “More often than not, they are children,” Reiner said.

He said the new policy takes effect immediately.

“We’re going to be trying to single out gang members in every case where they appear before the court for far more severe sentencing than any other criminal would have received for the identical crime,” Reiner said.

Policy Quickly Endorsed

The policy was quickly endorsed by law enforcement groups, but criticized by at least one civil rights lawyer.

“We would have some real problems if an individual’s sentence is based on who his or her friends are,” said John Hagar, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “We have a First Amendment right to have friends. The issue is very murky.”

Hagar spoke only as an individual attorney. Officials of the ACLU said they would study the Reiner policy.

Police representatives were nonetheless supportive of Reiner’s efforts.

“The police officers of L.A. are going to like Mr. Reiner’s new policy, and the public ought to love it,” said Lt. George V. Aliano, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League.

‘We Can’t Fail’

“There’s no turning back the clock on religion that fails, parents that fail, counseling that fails, schools that fail. We can’t fail,” he said.

Mel Jones, vice president of the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, said his group “whole-heartedly” supports the new policy, adding: “The people are fed up with the violence and they want to take their neighborhoods and streets back.”

Reiner said he also has consulted many Municipal and Superior Court judges in Los Angeles, as well as with Sheriff Sherman Block. They also back the get-tough approach, he said, regardless of whether there is sufficient jail and prison space to accommodate gang members.

Vastly Overcrowded

Prisons and jails throughout California are vastly overcrowded. In Los Angeles, for instance, the County Jail’s capacity is about 12,600. But at any given time there are as many as 23,000 prisoners being held there. As a result, many convicted criminals sentenced to 41 days now actually spend one day in custody.

Just hours after Reiner’s announcement, the City Council voted 11 to 0 to prepare a legal action to block expansion of the Men’s Central Jail near downtown--considered key to relieving the overcrowding.

Residents of the downtown and East Los Angeles areas have vigorously protested the proposed expansion, arguing that their region is already saturated with federal, county and city detention facilities. The city earlier had opposed a state plan to build a prison on the eastern edge of downtown.

In arguing against the new policy, the ACLU’s Hagar noted that “‘we all have to recognize that the jail has limited capacity.”

But while Reiner conceded that “it’s obvious we need more prisons,” he added that “we are simply not going to allow people to remain on the street who are violent, who are killing, just because we feel there is no room. Room is going to be made one way or the other.”

Since April, police across Los Angeles County, at Reiner’s instigation, have served legal notices to more than 500 gang members, warning them that gang membership alone now can be prosecuted as a felony under a new state anti-terrorism act.

About half a dozen such prosecutions are under way, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Genelin, who is in charge of Reiner’s hard-core gang section.

Despite Reiner’s blanket statement that there would be no plea-bargaining with gang members, R. Dan Murphy, Reiner’s director of special operations, conceded that there still will be cases where there is no option but to plea-bargain.