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Sacramento Bee
HEADLINE: Teen curfew urged for Sacramento

DATE: January 27, 2003
BYLINE: Christina Jewett

A proposed ordinance meant to make Sacramento streets safer is already making Alyson Woo, 18, nervous. It would create a daytime curfew for school-age youths.

"I'm 18, but I look like I'm 12," said Woo, a Sacramento City College student. "What if I get stopped?"

The proposed ordinance would target expelled and suspended students, who some city leaders say roam the city unchecked because truancy laws apply only to students who are supposed to be in school. But others fear that the daytime curfew would widen police powers to hassle law-abiding students.

Councilman Dave Jones said the Cops in Schools program has been successful, but officers say expelled and suspended students are often scofflaws beyond school boundaries.

"Kids ... are released into neighborhoods and wandering around and getting into trouble," Jones said. "Police don't have an effective way to hold them or their parents accountable."

The ordinance would levy fines and penalties on parents or guardians: $100 to $250 and up to 10 days in jail for a first offense, and up to $1,000 and up to 90 days in jail for the third offense.

Police Capt. Rich Shiraishi said the ordinance would also protect crime victims. For example, about 20 school-age youths annually report daytime sexual assaults. Shiraishi said youths are prone to narcotics use, robberies and vandalism during the day.

"With year-round school it might be hard to figure out who should be out and about," Shiraishi said. "But we'd be concentrating on junior high and high school students -- most year-round schools are elementary."

That's not a convincing argument for Michael Farris, general counsel for the Home School Legal Defense Association. He hopes to end daytime curfews in California and plans to file an appeal to the California Supreme Court this week.

He's representing Monrovia private school students who were stopped by police 20 times in one month on their way to or from school. He's also representing a 21-year-old -- who looks younger -- who feels hassled by the daytime curfew ordinance in Monrovia, a San Gabriel Valley community east of Pasadena.

"If we want the next generation to be leaders of a free country, we have to treat them like leaders when they are young, not like they live in a police state," Farris said.

He said the ordinance is unenforceable because state and school district truancy laws already override local curfew laws.

Such laws don't really reduce crime, said Daniel Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco. He said his organization studied daytime curfews enacted in California from 1978 to 1996.

"(Daytime curfews) were being put out there as cure-all for youth problems," he said. "It was completely false."

He said most of the students affected by the curfews were African American or Latino. And even though they saw the greatest consequences of the curfew laws, their crime rates did not go down where curfews were enforced. Asian and white youths committed more crimes in areas with daytime curfews, he said.

"We found no evidence," Macallair said. "None. Usually you get something, but virtually no measure we looked at showed any connection to curfews as an effective policy."

The proposed Sacramento ordinance would ban youths from public places during the day unless they are: with a parent or guardian, on an errand directed by a parent, working or traveling to or from work, on their own or a neighbor's property, or at a recreational, civic or religious function under adult supervision.

Also, school-age youths exercising their First Amendment right to freedom of religion, speech or assembly would be exempt.

During a Law and Legislation Committee meeting Thursday, City Council members Steve Cohn and Bonnie Pannell praised the proposed ordinance.

Cohn suggested "working on other outreach" to surrounding cities to consider such an ordinance.

Jones said Thursday that the proposed ordinance appeared to be on track for a City Council hearing and vote within a month.

The law would be a valuable tool for Sacramento police, said Justin Risley, police spokesman.

"Someone who's been expelled out walking around -- the potential is always there for problems," he said. "We go out to solve problems and address community concerns, obviously not to harass people."

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