Dara Kerr

The gang injunction hearings continued in Alameda Co. Superior Court

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman heard testimony from three more witnesses on Wednesday about the proposed Fruitvale gang injunction. The witnesses included a police officer involved in investigations of alleged gang members, the sister of an alleged gang member and a tax enforcement officer for the City of Oakland.

So far, during the course of the on-going hearing that began in February, Judge Freedman has heard from five witnesses over three days. There’s still no end in sight as to when the hearing will conclude and the judge will decide whether to impose the injunction against 40 alleged Norteño gang members in the Fruitvale neighborhood.

If imposed, the proposed gang injunction would create a “safety zone” of two square miles in which alleged gang members would have to abide by a 10 pm curfew, could not associate with one another or wear clothing with gang colors, among other restrictions. The goal of the injunction is to curb crime perpetrated by the Norteño gang in the Fruitvale neighborhood.

The injunction includes an “opt out” clause, under which people named in the injunction can try to show in court that they have no gang affiliations and that their name should be stricken from the list. During this hearing, some of the defendants named in the injunction that have been called to the stand as witnesses have tried to show the court they have no gang ties.

On Wednesday, the court first heard from Esmeralda Quintero, the sister of Javier Quintero, an alleged gang member named in the injunction. Javier Quintero previously testified that he is not a gang member. His defense lawyers called his sister to the stand to testify that police presumed her brother was a gang member when he was not. During her testimony, Esmeralda Quintero told the judge that she lives with her brother and has not seen him involved in gang activity.

On the stand, Esmeralda Quintero spoke about the time her brother was arrested in connection with a 2008 drug and weapons seizure at a shed located one block from the house where the Quinteros live. At the time of this incident, Javier Quintero was on parole for a felony conviction for possession of marijuana; after the incident he was charged with a parole violation and served four months time.

During his arrest at the shed, Esmeralda Quintero said she witnessed her brother lying handcuffed facedown on the ground with arresting OPD officer Douglass Keely allegedly standing on his back with both feet. She testified that Keely asked her if she knew that Javier Quintero was a gang member. “I said no, he was not,” she said. The she said that Keely told her, “Javier is a bad person and [Keely would] do what it would take to send him to jail and make him stay there.”

Oakland Deputy City Attorney Rocio Fierro sought to discredit Esmeralda Quintero’s claim by pointing out that in the complaint Esmeralda Quintero subsequently filed with the OPD’s internal affairs department, she stated that her brother was in a police car when she first saw him after his arrest. There was no mention of Keely standing on Quintero’s back. “That was a mistake,” Quintero replied, referring to the fact that she did not include that detail in her complaint.