This short monologue podcast is a trailer for an upcoming full length podcast on the topic of Fresno Gang Injunctions. This trailer is a brief background of gang injunctions and police predictive software. For the upcoming podcast, I will be talking to a man who alleges he was falsely accused of being in a gang. Sadly, this is not uncommon, as the ACLU has found. Several cities in America have already banned gang injunctions in the courts due to unconstitutionality and civil rights violations. Not so in Fresno.

Citations: 

Academic Studies on Gang Injunctions: K. Babe Howell, Gang Policing: The Post Stop-and-Frisk Justification for Profile-Based Policing, 5 Univ. Denver Crim. Law Rev. 1 (2015) https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1067&context=cl_pubs

Thomas A. Myers, The Unconstitutionality, Ineffectiveness, and Alternatives of Gang Injunctions, 14 MICH. J. RACE & L. 285 (2009). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl/vol14/iss2/4 

Owens et al., How Valuable are Civil Liberties? Evidence from Gang Injunctions, Crime, and Housing Prices in Southern California. Feb.2019 NOTE: While the Owens’ study was not about the violation of civil liberties, but on the impact on housing prices in adjacent areas, there were sections that made reference to the fact that gang injunctions are not proven to work to significantly reduce crime. 

Other Sources Used: ACLU FAQ on Gang Injunctions: https://www.aclunc.org/article/gang-injunctions-fact-sheet 

Gang Injunctions Banned in LA [2018]: https://www.aclusocal.org/en/press-releases/court-issues-historic-ruling-against-gang-injunctions-la 

Gang Injunctions Banned in North Carolina [2019]: https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/en/press-releases/court-agrees-end-unconstitutional-wilmington-gang-injunction 

The Atlantic, an Article on the Historical Bias in Fresno Policing [2018]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/crime-in-fresno/567931/ 

Book Quotation from: Police, A Field Guide, written by David Correia and Tyler Wall. [2018, Verso Books] https://www.versobooks.com/books/2530-police 

PREDICTIVE POLICING: “Councilman Clinton J. Olivier, a libertarian-leaning Republican, said Beware was like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel and asked Dyer a simple question: “Could you run my threat level now?” Dyer agreed. The scan returned Olivier as a green, but his home came back as a yellow, possibly because of someone who previously lived at his address, a police official said. “Even though it’s not me that’s the yellow guy, your officers are going to treat whoever comes out of that house in his boxer shorts as the yellow guy,” Olivier said. “That may not be fair to me.” He added later: “[Beware] has failed right here with a council member as the example.”” [2016] 

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/the-new-way-police-are-surveilling-you-calculating-your-threat-score/2016/01/10/e42bccac-8e15-11e5-baf4-bdf37355da0c_story.html 

After Getting Flagged, City Council Says No to Purchase of BEWARE [2016]: https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article69337677.html 

Study on predictive policing: https://www.upturn.org/reports/2016/stuck-in-a-pattern/ 

The Guardian article on predictive policing [2016]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/04/us-police-data-analytics-smart-cities-crime-likelihood-fresno-chicago-heat-list 

Support us on patreon! https://www.patreon.com/southofshawmedia