The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is seeking to dissolve all existing gang injunctions covering neighborhoods in more than a half-dozen local cities, a move celebrated by civil rights groups that have long opposed what were once mainstays of local law enforcement’s anti-gang efforts.

Gang injunctions — civil court orders limiting the actions of documented gang members in specific neighborhoods where there were increases in gang crime — were once commonly used by police and prosecutors. More than a dozen were instituted in Orange County over a years-long span, covering neighborhoods in Santa Ana, Anaheim, Fullerton, Orange, Placentia, Garden Grove, San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano.

It has been nearly a decade since Orange County prosecutors last sought a new gang injunction, however, as increased opposition by civil rights groups — followed by key changes in state law — led to a more skeptical view of such injunctions in the courts.

Orange County Superior Court Judge David Hesseltine must still rule on the OC DA’s motions to dissolve the existing 13 gang injunctions, which were filed with the court on Monday. Several hundred people are currently on those injunction lists.

District Attorney Todd Spitzer cited the state law changes, which narrowed who could be legally considered a gang member, in a statement released Tuesday. Spitzer said his office had consulted with the Sheriff’s Departments and local police chiefs before seeking to dissolve the current gang injunctions.

“After numerous audits and years of proactively removing individuals from these injunctions, we are now satisfied that these 13 gang injunctions have served their intended purpose and have now sought their dissolution,” Spitzer said. “Gang injunctions are not intended to last for perpetuity; they are designed and implemented to correct criminal behavior, and it is clear that these 13 gang injunctions have served that exact purpose…

“We are constantly reevaluating the tools we have in order to protect our communities in the most efficient and effective way possible,” Spitzer added. “These injunctions proved to be an incredibly powerful vehicle to protect people who have to live in gang-infested neighborhoods with those who terrorize and cannibalize their own neighborhoods through criminal street gangs.”

Sean Garcia-Leys, Executive Director of the Peace and Justice Law Center, one of the community groups that has long fought the gang injunctions, said legal pressure from his and other civil rights groups had resulted in the end of what he described as a racially discriminatory program. Garcia-Leys compared the injunctions to national efforts under the Trump administration that civil rights group argue are undermining the rights of immigrants and other vulnerable groups.

“This is a major civil rights victory, hard-won by residents who refused to give up,” Garcia-Leys said in a written statement. “Gang injunctions turned everyday activities into crimes for a generation. They were built on racial profiling, deliberately used to bypass due process, and for those reasons, abandoned in nearly every other county in California…

“With the Trump administration weaponizing this kind of racist gang suppression to undermine due process across the country, it is more important than ever that we ensure all of Orange County’s communities are treated equally under the law,” he added

The first injunctions in Orange County in 2006 were approved in the courts with little debate. Authorities at the time said they were pursued at the request of residents who were fed up with violence, intimidation and vandalism in the community but were afraid of confronting gang members.

The injunctions essentially severely limited who someone could talk to or hang out with or what they could wear, if the court found that law enforcement had proved they had gang ties and the behavior was tied to local street gangs.

Specific individuals named in the gang injunctions, for example, were barred from associating with other alleged gang members, showing gang signs or wearing gang clothes or taking part in other activity authorities claimed was tied to gang culture, among other restrictions. Violating the terms of a gang injunction could land someone in contempt of court, a misdemeanor that carries up to a six-month sentence.

Civil rights groups argued that the injunctions wrongly targeted and marginalized minorities and poor communities, criminalized youth and childhood behavior — such as talking to childhood friends who may be associated with a gang — and labeled residents as gang members and made them eligible for arrest even if they hadn’t been convicted of a crime.

Groups that fought the gang injunctions argued that some were arrested for simple actions such as “taking out the trash after curfew, standing on their porch with family, or doing their laundry.”

“This victory came from 18 years of struggle rooted in a deep love for our people that inspired us to keep pushing,” said Albert Castillo of Chicanxs Unidxs, an Orange County civil rights group,

“Gang injunctions never kept us safe, unless you think safety means punishing people for their culture,” Castillo said in a statement. “Our communities need real solutions that will end cycles of violence, not mass incarceration.”

By the time gang injunctions were filed against alleged street gang members in Orange in 2008, opposition by civil rights groups had increased significantly, a dynamic that intensified when new injunctions were filed for neighborhoods in Santa Ana and Anaheim, among other communities, in the subsequent years.

In 2018, the DA’s office — under then-DA Tony Rackauckas for the first time moved to dismiss a gang injunction, in that case one targeting rival crews in two of Placentia’s oldest neighborhoods. Prosecutors at the time said they made the move in response to an “unprecedented” drop in violent, gang-related crime in Placentia. Critics contended that prosecutors hadn’t been able to prove the alleged gang backgrounds of those targeted by the court orders.

Under increased scrutiny by the courts, many jurisdictions in California drastically scaled back the use of gang injunctions. And local prosecutors several times over the past few years conducted an internal audit of the list of those covered by the gang injunctions, removing dozens of individuals.

Spitzer, in his statement, said his office will prioritize gang crime prevention, including by providing resources to the Orange County Gang Reduction and Intervention Partnership (OC GRIP), a program that seeks to keep local school age kids away from the gang life. But the DA also added that gang injunctions “remain a lawful crime prevention tool” and that his office” reserves the right to implement additional gang injunctions in the future in conjunction with local law enforcement.