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Jaded at the age of 17, Jose isn't very hopeful when he
hears that police are pledging to rid his Southwest Los
Angeles neighborhood of the "cancer" that gangs have
inflicted on it.

"Even if they try and clean up the gangs, this stuff's
still gonna happen," he said, his teenage friends nodding
their heads in resignation as they hung out Saturday
afternoon on a graffitiridden street corner. "They're
still gonna come by and shoot, and you're still gonna have
the drivebys and the gangs. It's never gonna end. That's
the way it is here."

Such is the cynicism of Cloverdale Avenue, ground zero
in a new antigang push announced Saturday by law
enforcement officials against the infamous 18th Street
gang.

Buoyed by a recent state Supreme Court ruling that
validates civil liberties restrictions in the fight against
gangs, city officials are seeking an injunction against at
least 18 suspected gang members who have allegedly
terrorized a small, fiveblocklong neighborhood in the
shadow of the Santa Monica Freeway east of Culver City.

If a judge signs the injunction, suspected gang members
would be barred from even being seen together publicly in
the targeted area. It would also be illegal for them to act
as "lookouts" for other gang members, harass and intimidate
residents, use vulgar or abusive language or engage in a
host of other activities.

But as television crews trolled through the neighborhood
Saturday to film its boardedup houses, some young men in
the area insisted that the initiative is only the latest
blow in a pattern of official harassment and brutality
against anyone who even looks like a gang member.

"This is bull. It sucks," said Efrain Moreno, a
30yearold painter who is named in the complaint as an
active member of the 18th Street gang but says he dropped
out of the gang several years ago.

"If you're baldheaded and you're Latino, then you're
automatically in a gang," he said. "It's just police
harassment. You can't even stand here any more without them
getting you for being a public nuisance."

City Atty James K. Hahn's request for the injunction,
filed Friday, portrays a neighborhood at war against one
subgroup of the 18th Street gang, regarded as the largest
gang in Southern California with an estimated 20,000
members.

Gang members "fire guns at members of rival gangs,
members of the public at large, and randomly into the air
in order to show their 'bravado' and mastery of their
'turf,' " the complaint says.

Thick notices of the requested injunction were served
Friday night on all but two of the 18 suspected gang
members"the baddest of the bad," as Los Angeles Police
Department Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker characterized them at
a news conference outside the Southwest Division station.

Despite protests from civil libertarians, the state
Supreme Court ruled in January that cities can enact broad
restrictions on suspected gang members as a legitimate way
to fight crime. Los Angeles and several Southland
communities have obtained similar injunctions in the past
decade. Hahn's office said it had been awaiting the Supreme
Court decision before seeking another injunction.

A hearing on the request for the injunction is set for
April 15 in Los Angeles Superior Court. If successful,
Kroeker said the LAPD intends to do a detailed, empirical
study of criminal patterns in the Cloverdale area to
determine whether it is working. "If it doesn't pay off,
we're just spinning our wheels, and we're not going to do
that," he said.

Some neighbors were cautiously optimistic Saturdayif a
little bewildered by all the sudden attention.

Irma Garcia, 28, who has lived in the neighborhood for
15 years, spent the afternoon outside on her front lawn,
right next door to a boarded up home with smashed windows
and yearsold gang graffiti. As children played at her
side, she said gang activity seems to have lessened in the
last few months as police have mounted a greater presence
on the streets. Drugpushers seem scarcer, and the
cholosas she calls the gang members"don't really bother
us. But the shootings scare you. You never know if there'll
be a driveby shooting or what," Garcia said.

The climate, said Jose and his teenage friends, who
didn't want their full names in the paper, means they
cannot even walk around in fashionable baggy clothes
without the risk of being hassled by police or shot at by
gang members. They are not sure that a piece of paper with
a court stamp on it will change anything.

So what do they want? Said 16yearold Hugo: "I just
want to get out of here."

Antigang Zone

Law enforcement officials are targeting a small
Southwest Los Angeles neighborhood in a new antigang
initiative, seeking a court order that would prevent
suspected gang members from congregating within certain
boundaries.