He was planning to rebuild his life after 10 years in prison. big plans.
Step one was to open a party supplies company. The idea came to him while he was in prison. He started small, sticking to quinceañeras and graduation parties at first. And one day, they might level up to larger corporate events, where organizers are willing to splurge on big tables, inflatable bounce houses, and plush satin chairs straight out of home design magazines.
To restart his dream, the formerly incarcerated entrepreneur sought funding from the city of Los Angeles, specifically an anti-gang injunction (a court order that law enforcement has used to limit gang activity since the 1980s). ) was counting on a $30 million settlement fund for the thousands of Angelenos affected. A place that people can visit frequently.
After a federal court found that the curfew included in the injunction unfairly punishes people based on neighborhood and family ties, the city will pay up to $7.5 million a year for four years through 2021. Agreed to pay $. Even if you are not arrested for violating the curfew, your lawsuit is eligible for benefits.
About 6,000 class members were eligible to receive some of that funding, but after seven years, only 4 have actually received compensation, according to city data cited in court filings. Approximately half of the funds remain unused.
In recent months, attorneys for class action members have returned to court to demand an explanation from the city for the undistributed funds. Administrative costs account for a third of the total spent so far, according to court records, and the judge in charge of the case ordered a forensic audit.
A man who spoke to the Times about his party supply business was among those left unhappy. He requested anonymity, citing concerns that authorities could retaliate against him for speaking out or that he could lose potential clients because of his criminal record.
The past few years have become a nightmare of unanswered phone calls, misplaced checks and case managers who can’t seem to talk to each other, he said. Lawyers representing him have submitted documents showing he is entitled to payment from the lawsuit.
“They’re trying to hold us down by the neck,” he said, referring to city officials in charge of managing the $30 million.
Others trying to collect their share claim they were forced to jump through all sorts of hoops or told their time was up, plaintiffs’ lawyers said. What types of services are eligible for reimbursement, some beneficiaries said, in a settlement that secures not only rent and utility payments, but also other expenses such as funeral costs, work clothes, and transportation costs. It is reported that this information is being kept secret.
The city’s Department of Economic and Workforce Development, which oversees the payments, said in an email that it does not comment on pending litigation. The city claims in court filings that it has met its obligations under the settlement and continued to run the program beyond its original four-year schedule.
The city also claims it is prioritizing payments to new members, but plaintiffs’ attorney Ghirrandi Goodetti remains unconvinced. Guidetti said that doesn’t explain why some people are said to be eligible for less than $10,000, citing a class member who runs a party supplies business.
Guidetti said his case is “one of several cases where the issue has come to our attention.”
Mr. Guidetti and the businessman provided court records, financial documents and other documents detailing their struggles to obtain compensation.
His troubles began more than a decade ago, when he was arrested while visiting relatives in an area of northeast Los Angeles that the Avenues gang has long controlled. Although he denies being actively involved in a gang, he still faces criminal charges and spent 10 years in prison as a result. When he came out, he said he wasn’t looking for benefits, but when someone mentioned the Stay at Home Settlement Fund, it seemed like it would provide an unexpected lifeline.
He showed up to his first appointment after rehearsing his business plan and was confident of being accepted. To prove his sincerity, he carefully removed a stack of manila envelopes from the backpack he was carrying and showed them to reporters. Inside are the numerous trade certificates he has earned over the years, as well as letters of recommendation and business receipts, which he keeps neatly stacked together in different colored binders to mark the month. I was there.
He said he frequently went to one of the city’s WorkSource centers when he was turned away for not having the proper documentation. He was then told by his litigator that the maximum payout was about $6,000, far less than the $10,000 his attorney told him he was entitled to. Other times, no one would return my calls and I received different advice from different people I talked to. But the real shock came when he learned he had already received three checks totaling several thousand dollars, according to city ledgers. That was news to him.
He said after months of appeals, authorities admitted they had made a mistake and mistakenly issued the funds to someone else with the same name. He never received an apology.
City officials said in a court filing that the plaintiffs have only presented “evidence that fewer than 20 troubled class members were having difficulty raising funds.” Officials said they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars disseminating information about the settlement through advertising. The city also argued that it should not be held responsible for misinformation conveyed by WorkSource Center employees responsible for distributing the funds.
The city said in its filing that the class participants “proved to be a more difficult population than[the department]has traditionally served, and it took significantly more effort than originally anticipated to provide the necessary support.” “It required a lot of staff time.”
With millions remaining unclaimed, plaintiffs say many people lining up for money are either unaware of or unable to engage with a court system that has so far only punished them. I suspect that they are reluctant to do so.
In September, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee acknowledged the city’s “good faith efforts to implement the program” in light of the pandemic and staffing shortages, but officials ultimately found that it was unable to protect the purpose of the deal. He said he couldn’t.
“There was a contract, and that contract was violated,” Gee said, according to records. “I’m not saying it’s due to malice or nefarious motives, but that’s part of the reason why we’re ordering an audit to find out what the facts are about some of these costs.”
The settlement stems from the June 2009 arrest of a teenager named Christian Rodriguez for violating a curfew near his home in the Mar Vista Gardens housing project, home of the Culver City Boys. This goes back to the class action lawsuit that triggered this.
Rodriguez’s lawyers argued that Rodriguez was included in the injunction only because of his brother’s gang ties, and a court ultimately found the law to be discriminatory. . However, authorities can seek injunctions under narrower circumstances.
Cities across the state have enacted anti-gang injunctions since the late 1980s, when drug turf wars escalated gang violence to unprecedented levels. A civil court order issued by a judge, an injunction is intended to disrupt gang activity by restricting people from wearing clothing with the gang’s colors or insignia. Interacting with friends and family. or engaging in certain activities in so-called “safe zones” that are considered havens for certain gangs. Violators can be charged with contempt and sentenced to up to six months in prison.
Scott Hulse, a former LAPD gang lieutenant, said that a few years ago, police and prosecutors were still enforcing dozens of restraining orders across the city. He defended the order as an imperfect but necessary measure to crack down on areas besieged by gang violence, saying authorities were “very keen to help document those targeted.” “We are working on it,” he added.
“We don’t just say, ‘Okay, you’ve got a gang injunction,'” said Flass, who was head of Hollywood’s anti-gang unit when he retired in February 2023. ” he said.
With gang activity and overall crime trending downward across Los Angeles, there is growing debate about whether the injunction still makes sense, especially given past legal troubles. At a press conference in Watts earlier this week, city and police leaders touted the latest crime statistics showing gang homicides are down about 50% since this time last year.
Ana Muniz, an assistant professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, who worked on the Rodriguez case, said the injunction grew out of “white panic over the crack epidemic and the war on drugs” in the 1980s and early 1990s. Ta. In the years that followed, these policies disproportionately targeted countless young African-Americans and Latinos who were not affiliated with any criminal organization simply for being in an outdoor public space, Muniz said. spoke.
“Gang injunctions are about racial profiling. They’re aimed at confining people of color, especially black men, to certain areas of the city,” he said, “and restricting the free movement of newly emancipated blacks.” He likened it to the Vagrancy Law, which was passed after the abolition of slavery and imposed strict restrictions. “We replace explicit references to black men with coded language about going after gang members.”
Tina Padilla, executive director of Community Warriors 4 Peace, a gang intervention group based in northeast Los Angeles, said the injunction was intended to prevent families from being “blacklisted” from public housing. It is said that this resulted in an unexpected result.
“Apartment managers have lists and won’t rent to people from certain streets,” she says.
Padilla said the enforcement of community-wide curfews and other blanket injunctions will inevitably lead to racial profiling, forcing families to carefully plan their social lives and home visits, and forcing them to avoid doing so. He said he was at risk of being arrested simply because he was “seen talking to Primo or Prima.”
Some people are arrested without being given a chance to prove they are not gang members. Padilla, who works to combat gang violence through diplomacy and social work, said simply wearing the wrong clothes or standing in the wrong block can lead to problems with police.
“If I feel like I’m wearing Nike Cortez and I want to wear a flannel because it’s cold, I don’t want to participate in that. “Because I want to go,” she said. .
Padilla’s organization works with a former incarcerated man who started a party supplies company, and he shares her view that injunctions led to discrimination and left a stigma that people still feel. was.
Since he didn’t receive any settlement money from the city, he took out a loan from a bank and borrowed money from his retirement savings to cover the $30,000 he had already invested in the business. He said he had to turn down opportunities because his work required extra chairs and tables.
He doesn’t want to seem ungrateful about the settlement, but said he can’t help but feel like he still has to answer for his past. Thugs, they’re a bunch of scumbags…why should we? [pay them]?They don’t deserve the money. ”
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