Joshua DeLeon admits he was "gang-banging" when he was identified by San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera as one of 32 Norteños in the Mission District who needed to be reined in.
When Herrera's civil gang injunction went before a judge, DeLeon showed up in court - but only, he said, to laugh at the whole affair.
A year later, DeLeon says shame and God changed him. He was baptized in July and enrolled at City College, with a goal of becoming a counselor to gang members and others.
To Herrera, DeLeon's story is a sign that the wide-ranging injunction has been a success. However, that isn't how DeLeon sees it.
Although he admits he was a gang member at the time, DeLeon, 20, believes he was wronged when Herrera tried to drive a wedge into the Norteños by limiting members' movements in a "safety zone" in the Mission.
The 29 men now named in the civil action - two people were dismissed, one drowned in June - can't be seen with other suspected Norteño members in the zone, even if they are cousins or brothers. Nor can they wear red, the color claimed by Norteños, or hang out on the street after 10 p.m.
"We can't go back to our neighborhood where we grew up," said DeLeon, who now lives in Oakland and has an older brother on the injunction list. "I can't see my family and have a barbecue."
Herrera and police gang officers see a different possible moral to DeLeon's story. They believe the injunction may provide gang members with an antidote to peer pressure - an excuse to avoid people and situations that once brought trouble. Herrera called it the "third way."
60 square blocks
The city attorney has obtained civil injunctions against five gangs since 2007. But in geographic terms, the action against the Norteños was by far the broadest, extending over 60 square blocks.
One year after a judge signed the injunction, Herrera said the restrictions on members of a gang with roots in California prisons have delivered positive results.
Just one man on the injunction list has been arrested for a violent crime in the last year, as the gang members lost their "cloak of anonymity," Herrera said. Police said other young men and women in the Mission appear to have toned down their behavior in an effort to avoid the list.
But opponents, citing a string of seven killings in the Mission in August and September that prompted police to beef up patrols, call the injunction a failure. They say it took away basic rights, stigmatized young Latinos, wasted money and did nothing to address why youths are drawn to gangs.
Supervisor Tom Ammiano, whose district includes the Mission, supported the injunction. Yet a year later, he says he wants a hearing on its effectiveness after listening to frustrated residents.
"If my constituents are in doubt," Ammiano said, "there's either a lack of communication or a lack of facts."
Strict enforcement
One thing that has become clear is the rigidity of the injunction against the Norteños. DeLeon said he had stayed almost entirely off the streets in the "safety zone" for fear of an arrest and a sentence of up to six months.
Kevin Chavez, who is 23 and lives with his parents in the zone, said he has taken similar precautions since being named in Herrera's injunction. He said that when he leaves his house, he first walks out of the zone, then continues on toward his destination.
"I could be walking with my cousin, and they could say he's a gang member and take me in," Chavez said.
Chavez disputed police reports that he had admitted to being a Norteño, but acknowledged that he had been in and out of jail for years. He said he was trying to go straight by quitting drugs.
The injunction has illuminated the depth of the Mission's gang problem and the vigor of disagreements over how to fight it.
Norteños and Sureños, who claim blue, are offshoots of prison gangs that have been at war since the 1960s.
Gang culture still floods the "safety zone." Shop owners stock few items in red or blue because shoppers try to avoid both.
Teenagers say they are often "checked," or asked whether they are Norteño or Sureño, a question that can carry grave consequences. Sgt. Dion McDonnell of the police gang task force said he had seen photographs where parents posed children wearing red clothing and flashing gang signs.
DeLeon said he had gotten into trouble because many of the older youths in his neighborhood were gang members.
"It seemed like it was the thing to do, the place to go," he said. "Doing those bad things, I enjoyed it. I loved it. I had a passion for it. Doing those bad things was my fuel that kept me going."
Holding up a Bible on a recent afternoon in a downtown park, DeLeon said, "Jesus has opened my eyes and shown me it's not the way to go. It's the devil's path."
Strategy pioneered in L.A.
In suing Norteños, Herrera used a strategy popularized in Los Angeles and tried to build on what he saw as the success of his first injunction a year earlier. It targeted 22 men in four square blocks around the Oakdale housing project in Bayview-Hunters Point.
Police said crime fell there, but noted that younger men stepped into a power vacuum. Herrera said he may add more names.
The Mission injunction was more ambitious. Police gang Officer Mario Molina, in a court affidavit, said the city had as many as 300 Norteños who sold drugs and robbed and attacked people.
Herrera faced criticism from defense attorneys, including Public Defender Jeff Adachi, and gang outreach groups. They said the city attorney took advantage of some features of civil court - such as the lack of a right to an attorney at no cost - and gave police too much power.
They called the injunction a form of racial profiling that cast suspicion on young men simply for growing up in a hardscrabble area. The charge infuriated Herrera, who is Latino himself.
Raising his voice, he called it "demagoguery" and asked, "Since when did it become liberal or progressive for people not to be able to walk down their street without fear of violence?"
Stopping teens on street
Several teenagers said they had been stopped by police since the injunction was put in place and asked if they were on the list. McDonnell said officers were trained not to do so.
"The people who get stopped or contacted by police, there's usually an independent reason why," McDonnell said.
Police said they could not provide crime statistics for the "safety zone." Herrera said the best measure of the injunction was what happened to the targeted men.
Men on the list have been arrested 23 times overall and 15 times in the injunction zone, according to Herrera's office. Of those 15 arrests, all but one were for violating the injunction. Seven men accounted for the arrests. The 15th arrest was traffic-related.
The injunction has been positive "if you look and measure what it intends to do," Herrera said. He added that recent violence in the Mission might have been worse if the injunction were not in place.
Youth outreach worker René Quiñonez disagrees, saying the injunction fostered distrust between some residents and authorities. He said the nonassociation rule for men on the list was an impediment to groups trying to offer programs to the men.
"A safety zone sounds good in theory, but we need anti-poverty zones," said Quiñonez, a former gang member who directs the nonprofit Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth.
On a recent afternoon, he walked down 24th Street admiring the murals honoring Latino heritage. When a young man with a tattoo that snaked high on his neck walked by, Quiñonez asked, "You want that taken off?"
A few blocks down, a 17-year-old walked past with a red bandana pulled up to his eyes, as if he were about to rob a stagecoach. He said he was representing his neighborhood; he wouldn't say whether he was a Norteño.
"Gangs are providing an identity," Quiñonez said. "Yes, it's dysfunctional, distorted and destructive, but it's something - something society is not providing."
Quiñonez said the Norteño injunction had pushed crime to other neighborhoods - an assertion that Herrera and other law enforcement officials, including District Attorney Kamala Harris, said is not supported by police reports.
Trouble over red shoelaces
An attorney representing Antonio Napoleon, 25, who has been arrested four times on suspicion of violating the injunction, said police were enforcing the program too broadly.
"One time he had red threads on the pocket of his shorts and red shoelaces," attorney Matthew Witteman said. "He allegedly had, on his cell phone, a screen saver that they said was a gang sign. I know they have a problem down there, but come on."
The injunction has also split residents in a neighborhood of contrasts, where homeless people sleep outside million-dollar restored Victorians. Many desperately want change, but some of the same people are suspicious of the motives behind change.
"I feel like we're under siege," Raquel deAnda said while taking a break from her job as a curator at Galeria de la Raza, a nonprofit art gallery on 24th Street.
She said she was talking not about gangs, but gentrification that would raise rents and push out residents. She said the injunction was part of the push.
She pointed toward new, upscale businesses - a lingerie boutique and, near traditional Mexican bakeries, a gourmet doughnut shop offering such flavors as chipotle-cinnamon. The shops, deAnda said, didn't cater to locals.
But outside his parents' nearby barber shop, Ben Castaneda, a 20-year-old college student, said he supported the rigid program - "if that's what it's going to take to stop innocent people from dying."
Castaneda's childhood friend, Noel Espinoza, 19, was killed along with another man Sept. 4 at the edge of the injunction zone. Police said the attack may have been retaliation for the slaying of a man aligned with Sureños.
Castaneda said he believed the victims were not active gang members but had been targeted by rivals of the Norteños because they were on Norteño turf - a scenario that police say is common.
"It's ridiculous," Castaneda said. "Why would you kill over red and blue?"
E-mail Demian Bulwa at
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