Anti-Gang Activists Support Measure J : Corrections: At the site of a drive-by shooting, they argue that more jails are needed to curb crime.

ANAHEIM — Representatives of an anti-gang community group and the Orange County Gang Investigators Assn. on Thursday stood outside a building where a man was killed in a drive-by shooting and said that gang violence can only be stopped if there are more jails.

Mike Salgado of the Anaheim-based Parents Against a Gang Environment and two Costa Mesa police officers urged passage next Tuesday of Measure J, which would authorize a half-cent sales-tax increase for construction of a new regional jail and other criminal-justice facilities.

“A lot of people in this county are trying to do something to stop the gangs, but we’ve got to have a place to house the prisoners,” Salgado said. “Without a place to put them in, they’ll end up right back on the street.”

Salgado and the two officers stood outside the white, two-story apartment building on Leatrice Lane where 25-year-old Francisco Serrano Viegra was killed May 3 by shots fired from a passing car as he was in his apartment.

They said they chose to hold a news conference in Anaheim because the city’s mayor, Fred Hunter, is one of the most vocal opponents of Measure J. Hunter has contended that the sales-tax initiative is too vague.

Measure J does not specify what kinds of criminal-justice facilities would be constructed with the estimated $343 million a year the 30-year levy would raise or where those facilities would be built.

“Mayor Hunter is a former police officer, and for a former police officer to oppose a new jail, I think, lacks credibility to other officers on the beat,” Salgado said.

Costa Mesa Officers Vern Hupp and Tim Schennum, both gang investigators, said the lack of jail space thwarts their efforts to stop crime. Because of a federal cap on the population at the Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana and overcrowding in the rest of the county’s five-jail system, about 850 inmates a week are released immediately after arrest or before the end of their sentence, according to Sheriff’s Department figures.

“We, as officers out on the street, attempt to take a lot of offenders to jail and Juvenile Hall, but we can’t book them because of overcrowding,” Hupp said. “Even if we do arrest them, most of the time we’ll see them back on the street in a day or two. It’s very frustrating.”

Salgado said gang-related violence in Orange County is escalating every year. Last year, he said, there were more than 1,000 drive-by shootings and a record 23 gang-related murders. So far this year, there have been 15 gang killings, he said.

Jail overcrowding hampers efforts to stem gang violence, Salgado said, because many times when an accused gang member is released for lack of jail space, potential witnesses are intimidated into not testifying at the trial.

Hunter and other Measure J opponents have accused supporters of using scare tactics to persuade voters to approve the sales-tax initiative. They say that dangerous criminals are not being released from jails and that most of them are sentenced to serve their time in state prisons, not county jails.

Measure J opponents will hold a pre-election rally at Anaheim’s Peralta Canyon Park on Saturday, beginning at 11 a.m.