Call to suppress gang validation forms renewed

While awaiting a judge’s final order in a civil nuisance case that aims to keep 31 alleged gang members from associating with each other in East Lake Courts, a defense attorney has filed another motion calling for the state’s main piece of evidence to be thrown out.

In a June 19 motion filed in Hamilton County Criminal Court, attorney Chrissy Mincy said prosecutors shouldn’t be able to enter gang validation forms as evidence under a “business exception rule” because the information contained within them is secondhand, outdated and unverified.

“This [business rule] is the only exception cited by the District Attorney General,” Mincy wrote. “However, this exception does not apply for a multitude of reasons.”

Validation forms are what the Chattanooga Police Department uses to categorize someone as a gang member. Officers use a points system to “validate” someone, and each criteria, be it tattoos, confessions, social media posts, or being spotted with other gang members, has a different value. For example, admitting you’re a gang member to an officer carries nine points. A person needs only 10 points to be validated as a member, and anything less means you can be “associated” with the gang.

Since he filed his case in September 2016 against the 31 men, who allegedly belong to the Grape Street Crips and Gangster Disciples, Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal Pinkston has relied on those forms. He entered them as evidence during a hearing in 2016 and used them during a hearing in April to determine whether a permanent version of his petition should be put into effect.

In his petition, Pinkston said he wanted a judge to approve a “safety zone” that would prohibit the 31 men from drinking beer, owning graffiti equipment, alerting others to the presence of police, using guns or drugs and hanging out with each other. Pinkston said the zone would give police officers another tool to stop routine troublemakers, and he said each man could be fined $50 or face up to 30 days in jail for violations.

Pinkston also has argued gangs can be treated and served like registered businesses, and his office recently indicted 54 alleged members of a different street gang under the state’s racketeering law.

But Mincy and other defense attorneys believe the validation forms, though helpful intelligence to patrol officers, shouldn’t be allowed in a courtroom. For instance, Mincy argued in April, one officer could use information from another to compile a validation without verifying whether the initial information is still correct.

The case, in large part, will boil down to the validation forms since prosecutors didn’t enter criminal convictions into evidence and didn’t show how each man contributed to violence in East Lake, Mincy said.

The final decider is Judge Barry Steelman, who presided over the April hearing. Steelman has not yet released his ruling on whether the nuisance case can stand, but he’s scheduled to hear more arguments on the case Monday.

Interestingly, Pinkston’s nuisance petition has never been formally enforced, but law enforcement said the message alone caused troublemakers to leave the neighborhood, resulting in decreased crime rates for East Lake. Pinkston also noted that only eight or so of the 31 targeted men challenged his petition.

Defense attorneys have regularly countered that Pinkston’s nuisance petition is unconstitutional. Telling someone who they can and can’t hang out with runs afoul of a person’s constitutional right to freedom of association, they say.