http://www.komotv.com/news/local/7634146.html
I dont know if this is a law anywhere else in the country, but it is the first in Washington state to do so.
By Associated PressSUNNYSIDE, Wash. (AP) - City officials have sent a message to gang members that they're not welcome in this central Washington town.
The City Council voted unanimously to become the first city in the state to make gang membership a crime.
The city has identified about 50 adult and 200 juvenile gang members living in the city, about 35 miles southeast of Yakima.
The new ordinance makes being a criminal street gang member, recruiting members and using threats to coerce someone into being a member gross misdemeanors carrying a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $5,000 fine.
The ordinance, modeled after a California law, defines a criminal street gang as a group of three or more people with a leader and an identifiable name which takes part in criminal activities. It also makes being a parent who "knowingly permits" a child to break the new gang law guilty of a civil infraction carrying a fine of up to $1,000.
More than 80 people from Sunnyside, Toppenish and Yakima attended the special meeting Monday on the proposed ordinance.
City Manager Bob Stockwell said most of the city's crime is being done in the name of gangs.
"We literally have children in our streets carrying loaded firearms," he said.
But Nancy Palomino of Sunnyside said the new law could encourage racial profiling and wouldn't help the already overtaxed criminal justice system.
"It's sad," she said. "Locking everyone up is not the solution. I don't believe this sort of thing is going to help."
I dont know if this is a law anywhere else in the country, but it is the first in Washington state to do so.
By Associated PressSUNNYSIDE, Wash. (AP) - City officials have sent a message to gang members that they're not welcome in this central Washington town.
The City Council voted unanimously to become the first city in the state to make gang membership a crime.
The city has identified about 50 adult and 200 juvenile gang members living in the city, about 35 miles southeast of Yakima.
The new ordinance makes being a criminal street gang member, recruiting members and using threats to coerce someone into being a member gross misdemeanors carrying a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $5,000 fine.
The ordinance, modeled after a California law, defines a criminal street gang as a group of three or more people with a leader and an identifiable name which takes part in criminal activities. It also makes being a parent who "knowingly permits" a child to break the new gang law guilty of a civil infraction carrying a fine of up to $1,000.
More than 80 people from Sunnyside, Toppenish and Yakima attended the special meeting Monday on the proposed ordinance.
City Manager Bob Stockwell said most of the city's crime is being done in the name of gangs.
"We literally have children in our streets carrying loaded firearms," he said.
But Nancy Palomino of Sunnyside said the new law could encourage racial profiling and wouldn't help the already overtaxed criminal justice system.
"It's sad," she said. "Locking everyone up is not the solution. I don't believe this sort of thing is going to help."
