Rights Issue : Teen-Age Curfews--a Revival

Leaning against the window of Aahs, a trendy Westwood card shop, and sporting a blond crew cut, Chris Hornick was hardly the image of a juvenile lawbreaker. Dressed in crisp Bermuda shorts, the teen-ager was chatting with another boy and their girlfriends, and there were no cigarettes in sight, no beer bottles, no whiffs of marijuana in the air.

“We don’t come here to cause trouble,” Chris said. “We just come to meet friends and hang out--what else is there to do?”

But by “hanging out” at 11 p.m., Chris was breaking the law. Only 15 years old, he was violating a city curfew that prohibits minors from loitering after 10 p.m. He could have been picked up and taken to the police station by any of the dozen officers patroling Westwood Village that night.

Court Decision

A 1972 Supreme Court decision that struck down a Florida vagrancy law held that walking, loafing and strolling at night “are historically part of the amenities of life as we have known them,” but the maxim does not always hold for minors. For nearly a century, curfew laws have been used across the country to keep teen-agers off city streets at night, and, like muscles and miniskirts, they are currently enjoying a revival.

In the last two months:

- The Newport Beach City Council revised its abandoned 1949 curfew ordinance and advised teens that they’d better hang out elsewhere after residents of Balboa Peninsula complained that they were being intimidated and vandalized by hordes of teen-agers swooping down on weekends from inland Orange County. A police spokesman said “less than five” teen-agers have been picked up since the ordinance was revised last month.

Merchants Complain

- Los Angeles police dusted off the city’s antiquated curfew law and pressed it into service in Westwood after merchants complained that their businesses were suffering due to sidewalks jam-packed with teen-agers. Since the latest round of sweeps started in June, more than two dozen young people have been detained.

- The Los Angeles City Council voted to force three teen discos in the San Fernando Valley to close by 10 p.m. on school nights and by 1 a.m. on weekends, effective Aug. 31. Currently, the clubs may stay open until 2 a.m. every night.

Not since a local television newscaster opened his show with, “Parents: It’s 10 o’clock--do you know where your children are?” have Southern California’s teen-agers had to watch the clock so attentively.

Curfews have been around since the Middle Ages, when French rulers ordered their subjects to couvrefeu , or “cover the fire,” and remain inside after the curfew bell had rung. In England, the practice was probably introduced by William the Conqueror in the 11th Century.

Omaha passed America’s first curfew law for minors around 1880 (8 p.m. for children under 15), and similar laws in other towns soon were spawned by the widespread belief that juvenile crime was caused by poorly supervised immigrant children, said Edward Wise, professor of law at Wayne State University.

Los Angeles has had a juvenile curfew ordinance on its books since 1904, and residents then were able to set their clocks by the 9 p.m. curfew whistle of the Los Angeles Gas Co. on Ramirez Street. The whistle was eventually abandoned, and the age and hour of the curfew have crept up, but Sec. 45.03 of the Municipal Code remains essentially unchanged. It currently reads:

Rights Issue Raised

“No person under the age of 18 years shall loiter about any public street, avenue, alley, park or other public place between the hour of 10:00 o’clock p.m. and the time of sunrise of the following day unless accompanied by his or her parent or legal guardian having legal custody and control of his or her person or by his or her spouse over the age of 21 years.”

Lawmakers and police say curfews cut down on juvenile crime, protect minors from becoming crime victims and reinforce parental control over their children. But many teens and parents resent what they think is unnecessary government interference in their lives, and civil libertarians argue that such laws violate teen-agers’ fundamental rights.

The Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is preparing a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles on the grounds that its curfew ordinance is unconstitutional.

“What we’re defending is the right to come out of our houses and walk around at night,” said ACLU attorney Joan Howarth. “Kids come to Westwood to watch people, to meet them, and there is no reason why they should be stopped by police officers.”

But Newport Beach Police Chief Charles Gross says the threat to children’s rights posed by curfews is less significant than the need to protect young people--from themselves. “They do not have fully matured judgmental capabilities,” said the silver-haired Gross, who spent 28 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, mostly working in juvenile law enforcement.

“Where there is a large concentration of kids without direction, they tend to lose their identity, and they are easily manipulated into doing things they wouldn’t do in their hometown. With adults, we have to wait until they commit a crime (to arrest them). With juveniles, thank God, we don’t.”

Flock to Newport

Each weekend, teen-agers from as far away as San Bernardino County flock in droves to Newport Beach, where they mill about aimlessly at the foot of the pier near Balboa and Main streets. Noise, litter, jumping on cars at stoplights and urinating against houses are among the complaints most frequently heard by Balboa residents, said City Council member Evelyn Hart.

The troublemakers, says Mike Halley, a 16-year-old from Newport Beach who has four eight-inch-long prongs of blond hair protruding from his head, come from out of town and he resents being punished for their excesses. “This is our home,” said Halley. “If they don’t like us here--where are we supposed to go?”

“Balboa has not been safe since these hordes of kids are there,” said Hart, who is winning a fight to put the city’s new curfew into effect at 10 p.m. rather than 11 p.m. “There reaches a certain time when the community deserves peace and quiet--if the kids want to go to a movie, or have a weenie roast, that’s fine, but if they don’t have any money, they should go home. What business do they have just standing out there at night?”

Jo Lemons, 15, of Newport Beach disagrees. “We’re just out here socializing, scammin’ on guys,” she said. “And not all of us have 10 bucks to spend every night. So what are we supposed to do--go to sleep at 10 o’clock?”

Police Role

Opponents of the curfew argue that increased police presence and better enforcement of existing laws against vandalism and disturbing the peace would allay residents’ fears without sweeping all teen-agers into the curfew’s net. The imposition of a curfew, says Dr. Martin Guggenheim, professor of juvenile law at New York University, “is a blatant recognition that the police aren’t doing their job.”

In Los Angeles, curfew proponents point to the increasingly young age of children cruising the streets, and to the harm that could come to them. “We picked up an 11-year-old boy supervising his 5-year-old brother at 11:30 the other night,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, whose district encompasses Westwood Village. “Common sense dictates that society not countenance young children being out on the street unsupervised after a certain hour.”

Yaroslavsky says he is chiefly concerned about the young children, but the LAPD’s recent enforcement of the curfew--which appears to have driven scores of youths away from the village--affects everyone under 18 years old.

“I’m a good girl--I think I’m responsible enough to be on the streets after 10,” said Jennifer Woo, 17, of Burbank. Her parents don’t expect her home until 2 a.m. on weekends, she said, and she thinks the earlier police curfew is unfair. “Besides, if they throw us out of Westwood, kids will just get into more trouble somewhere else--they’ll go to a parking lot and drink. At least here everything’s out in the open.”

Westwood business owners, however, say their customers, if they can even make it to the stores, are forced to witness drug deals, fights and scary hairdos. “The kids block the sidewalk, they litter, they hem and haw--they don’t come here to shop,” said Beth Gonzales, manager of Dino shoe store, which does a brisk post-movie business. Since the latest round of curfew sweeps, the store’s weekend night sales have picked up 25%, she said.

“I think the cops are doing a real good job,” Gonzales said. “They’re not harassing anyone who looks like they’re decent.”

Night Patrols

A visit to Westwood on a recent Saturday night found seven policemen patroling the village on foot and another five on horseback. Sgt. Curt Hussey explained that the volunteers stationed on the tops of nearby buildings with binoculars and walkie-talkies are there to warn the officers of any developing trouble spots.

“If they’re (teen-agers) going to or from a movie, or waiting for their parents, we won’t do anything,” Hussey said. “But if they’re cruising, or if they jump into the street to talk to friends in a car, then we’ll nail them.” After being taken into custody, children are released only to a parent or “responsible” guardian.

That kind of discretionary law enforcement is “invidious,” says law professor Guggenheim--even though it results in fewer curfew detentions than would be the case if the ordinance were strictly enforced. “Totalitarian societies set curfews in non-emergency situations,” said Guggenheim. “In our democratic society, we don’t punish people before they commit a crime. The police are supposed to enforce clearly defined laws, not seize citizens based on whether they think their activities are reasonable.”

Legal challenges to teen-age curfew laws have had limited success. Where they have succeeded, the laws have usually been worded too vaguely, or they did not contain enough exceptions to protect teen-agers engaged in legitimate nighttime activities. An Opelousas, La., curfew ordinance whose only exceptions were for teens on emergency errands or accompanied by an adult was struck down in 1982 by a federal appeals court judge, who found that the overly broad law infringed on minors’ rights of association and movement, and on the right of parents to raise their children free from state interference.

The majority of curfew decisions, however, have upheld the laws, especially if the laws protected socially sanctioned activities. That is why Newport Beach’s city fathers wrote into their new curfew law a clause exempting teens attending “constitutionally protected activities,” such as sports events, religious meetings and dances. Newport Beach City Atty. Robert Burnham is confident that the ordinance could withstand any legal challenge.

“Courts use a balancing test to evaluate the validity of a curfew,” Burnham said. “They look at the law’s furtherance of city interests, and balance that against the extent to which minors’ rights are violated. Since our exceptions are so broad, the impact on protected rights is minimal. But the city’s interests--reducing juvenile crime and protecting them--are greatly furthered.”

‘Compelling Interest’

A simple balancing test, however, is not the one that should be applied in cases in which fundamental rights are affected, says ACLU counsel David Lash.

“The state must show that it has a ‘compelling interest’ in discriminating against a particular class of citizens. Its arguments must withstand “strict scrutiny,” and not merely a “rational basis” test ensuring against “unreasonable state action.”

“In other words,” Lash explained, “the state would actually have to prove that juvenile crime and the victimization of juveniles are serious problems that can best be alleviated by removing all teen-agers under 18 from the streets at a certain hour.”

“Which test should be applied is the key legal question that the courts have not yet addressed,” said Guggenheim, whose appeal of a Middletown, Pa., ordinance, to the Supreme Court in 1975 to decide that question was turned down. “Kids have fewer rights than adults, on occasion, but how different are they? If adolescents’ rights are given short shrift, and not found to be fundamental rights, then only the ‘rational basis’ test need be applied and the curfew law would probably be upheld.

“If, however, minors’ rights are given greater weight, then the compelling interest criteria would apply,” he said.

Guggenheim is pessimistic about the chances of a landmark decision against curfews anytime soon. “The spirit of the federal judiciary is toward social control, even where liberties are restricted,” he said.