OGDEN -- The first Trece member to be sentenced under the fledgling injunction targeting the city's oldest street gang has been hit with fines totaling just more than $1,000.
Isaac Rader, 18, on Tuesday was fined $757.89 for failure to abate, as the charge is generally referred to for violating provisions of the Trece injunction.
It bans members from associating in public, being in the vicinity of guns, drugs and alcohol, or staying out past an 11 p.m. curfew. Rader also was fined $250 last week for a prior offense related to the injunction.
A 90-day jail sentence for Rader was suspended Tuesday by Ogden Justice Court Judge Andrea Lockwood upon payment of the fines. Rader pleaded guilty to the offenses.
Mike Studebaker, public defender in the Ogden court, has filed notice of his intent to appeal Tuesday's case, and asked for a stay of the fine pending appeal. A March hearing was set on the request for the stay. The appeal goes first to Ogden's 2nd District Court.
Studebaker said after Tuesday's hearing he is prepared to take the appeal to the Utah Court of Appeals.
He is among a small group of Ogden defense attorneys, joined by the ACLU of Utah, fighting the Trece injunction on constitutional grounds since it was first filed in 2nd District Court in August.
The injunction is the first attempted in Utah naming a gang a public nuisance, patterned after similar injunctions in regular use in California.
Officials there helped the Weber County Attorney's Office and the Ogden Metro Gang Unit write the 331-page injunction.
Judge Ernie Jones signed it into law Sept. 27. Ogden police are working to serve the estimated 300 to 400 Trece members with their individual copies of the injunction. No member can be charged under the injunction unless he has been served with a copy.
Rader has been arrested twice for violating the injunction, Oct. 7 and Nov. 13, according to court records. He was fined $250 on Nov. 17 by Ogden Justice Court Judge Norm Ashton for the Nov. 13 arrest on a charge of minor in possession of alcohol, with the failure to abate charge on a curfew violation dismissed in a plea bargain.
Mike Junk, lead Ogden City prosecutor, said the Oct. 7 arrest was for violating the curfew in the injunction, plus two other Trece members were in the car with him when stopped by police.
His two companions are among 15 or more members whose cases are pending in Ogden Justice Court for failure to abate, Junk said.
Several of the injunction arrests have led to evidence resulting in felony drug and weapons charges for some of the Treces, officials have said, charges which are pending in 2nd District Court.
The injunction's constitutional questions are pending before the Utah Supreme Court as well as Judge Jones, with the high court still deliberating whether to hear the constitutional challenges. After an Oct. 25 hearing before the justices, the high court declined to place a stay on the ordinance while it considered entertaining the defense motions.
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