, will likely play a central role as Becerra works to finalize the reforms by summer. It goes to the heart of the question that has divided law enforcement from community members when it comes to CalGang: How much trust should be afforded to a system that is largely immune to public scrutiny?
Using anecdotal evidence like Allen’s experience, critics have argued that under current rules, overzealous officers can use anything from a sports jersey to a casual conversation with a gang member as proof that a person belongs on CalGang. Because agencies are not required to share what evidence they used — even when a person goes to court to fight the label, as removal sometimes requires — those on the CalGang list often have no idea what prompted their inclusion.
Currently, law enforcement can use information such as the clothing a person is wearing, the neighborhood where police encounter them and identification as gang members by “reliable” sources to add someone to CalGang. Only two or three of eight possible criteria need to be documented, depending on circumstances.
Schaeffer said leaving broad categories to identify gang members is essential because gangs have grown more pragmatic in evading scrutiny. Critics of the latest proposed regulations said they lack substance by leaving loopholes that allow police to continue adding people to CalGang for the same subjective reasons they have in the past, and rely on self-policing by law enforcement to ensure accuracy.
Melanie Ochoa, a staff attorney with the ACLU, said the problem with allowing subjective criteria like clothing or the place where police see a person is that they can be discriminatory and are open to abuse. More than 90% of people in the database in 2018 were men of color, predominantly Latino and black, according to data from the California Department of Justice.
secret gang database' ))