New Laws Clip Wings of Teenage Nighthawks

At 10 p.m., police all over Ventura County are empowered to drag teenagers off the streets, ticket them and send them home.

It’s called curfew.

For years, Ventura County cities have used California’s curfew law as a pretext for keeping teenage nighthawks from burglarizing houses, tagging walls or otherwise doing harm.

Now--with an eye toward keeping teens from being harmed too--cities like Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Fillmore are enacting a new breed of local curfew laws, custom-tailored to fight truancy and gang violence.

The newest curfews have sharper teeth.

Staying out past 10 once meant a citation requiring Junior to do little more than sit through a 45-minute class or perform some community service.

Now, breaking curfew or skipping school in Thousand Oaks or Fillmore can mean fines or loss of driving privileges for teenagers and fines against Mom and Dad of up to $2,500.

Police, city fathers and even some parents praise the new curfew and truancy laws as the antidote for juvenile delinquency.

Teenagers cause fully half the nighttime disturbance calls between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. in Thousand Oaks, said Sheriff’s Sgt. Michael De Los Santos, head of the city’s Special Enforcement Detail, which targets gangs.

“We’re trying to curtail gang activity,” added Sheriff’s Sgt. Harold Humphries, head of the city’s community-oriented policing unit.

“This is not to imply that all the kids in our community are in gangs, because surely they’re not,” he said. “But those who are not in gangs are at risk from those who are. We’re trying to be proactive.”

Thousand Oaks deputies issued their first curfew citation under the new ordinance’s anti-truancy clause on May 15: they ticketed a 15-year-old girl riding around in her 18-year-old boyfriend’s car during school hours.

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Now, the girl must answer the curfew charge--and face possible fines and loss of her right to a driver’s license until age 18--in traffic court.

“Normally, she’s a very good student and doesn’t do this, so her mother was overjoyed with us stopping her and citing her,” Humphries said. “The school is very supportive of this ordinance and they see it as a tool to ensure kids stay in school--and to ensure they aren’t out at night after curfew.”

Curfew laws have been on Ventura County’s books for decades, aimed at stopping “juvenile loitering” between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

But as graffiti tagging and gang-related crime rose here in recent years, police began using the law as a tool to stop violent face-offs before they start.

Oxnard police curfew teams began hitting the streets two years ago to quell simmering hostility among gang members and to head off the kinds of vandalism, car thefts and volatile parties that erupt when summer and late sunsets leave teenagers with more time on their hands.

Last weekend, on Friday and Saturday nights, Oxnard commanders again dispatched curfew squads to roust teenage loiterers, after recent gang shootings left one teen injured and another dead, said Assistant Police Chief Tom Cady.

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Oxnard police plan to continue the crackdown for several weekends, citing and driving home first-time curfew-breakers who might once have gotten off with only a warning, Cady said.

“We do see a reduction in some of the calls that come from youth problems” after curfew crackdowns, he said.

Oxnard police rarely cite the parents for their children’s curfew violations and seldom get criticism for bringing the wayward kids home after 10 p.m., he said.

“Every now and then, you’ll get that complaint, ‘The kids really weren’t doing anything, they were going there or coming here,’ ” Cady said. “And most of the time if you explain where the kids were at--if they’re hanging around on a street corner or some business parking lot, or especially if they’re at a party someplace where they’re not supposed to be--the parents are supportive and cooperative.”

First-time violators and their parents in Ventura County have always attended a 45-minute class on the consequences of petty crime, said Senior Deputy Probation Officer Julie Hedrick.

Second-timers are ordered to contribute $25 to charity, but if they fail to pay, probation officers do little more than recommend their criminal file remain unsealed when they turn 18, she said.

And repeat offenders get more thorough attention, ranging from tutoring and counseling to good-behavior contracts they sign with their parents, she said.

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But busy probation officers sometimes give curfew cases less attention than they do serious crimes such as burglary and assault, she said. And truancy violators are usually left up to panels called School Area Review Boards for discipline.

So some cities went looking for a bigger hammer.

They wrote tougher and broader curfew laws, geared toward truants and gang members, with stiffer penalties meant to hit parents as hard as the kids themselves.

Thousand Oaks passed its new curfew code in late March with little fanfare or protest.

Fillmore passed a similar law last month.

But when the Simi Valley City Council considered passing its own curfew law last week, more than two dozen students and parents marched up to the podium at City Hall--some waving petitions thick with signatures--to protest.

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The Simi Valley ordinance exempts youths coming home from work, running errands for parents, attending movies or official school functions, but it forbids most others to be on the streets from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m..

It also exposes parents of curfew violators to fines of up to $2,500--plus the risk of being billed for the cost of police time spent collaring their wayward children.

“It’s unfair,” Joanna Narbonne, 14, a ninth-grader from Sequoia Junior High School, told the council.

She showed council members a petition she said bore signatures of 161 schoolmates who oppose the new curfew law.

And she cited police statistics that show only 67 of the city’s 28,000 minors are arrested each month. “We’re punishing the other 99 1/2% for the few who broke the law.”

Single parent Joe Galati said he works hard to be a good father, but does not always have control over his teenage daughter.

“I don’t see anything wrong on a Friday or Saturday night that [my daughter] can’t go see a movie and go afterward to have something to eat at Denny’s,” he said. “But what you’re telling me is that if my child disobeys me you’re going to fine me $2,500 for what she does, and it’ll be because I don’t have any control over my daughter.”

A handful of parents told the council they approve of the new curfew regulations, but the bulk of speakers said it will unfairly punish well-behaved teens who just want a chance to get out and socialize on weekend nights.

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Yet the City Council voted 3 to 1--with members Sandi Webb opposed and Barbara Williamson absent--to make it local law.

“It’s just unfair that the youth in many ways have been targeted,” Butch Lyons, 15, a ninth-grader at Valley View Junior High, said in a later interview.

“There are some kids who do definitely need to learn, but I don’t think slapping a $2,500 fine on their parents is the right way to go about doing that,” said Butch, a member of the Simi Valley Youth Council, which reports to the City Council.

“The parents of the kids who are violating the law are not going to care anyway,” he said. “What needs to be done as opposed to a fine is some sort of counseling, to show what’s right and wrong, and to show the parent what he needs to do.”

Roberta Payan, Ventura’s gang prevention and intervention program coordinator, agreed.

“This is a population that doesn’t have the means to pay a fine, they can’t afford to get a license or they don’t have a car to drive anyways,” she said of poorer curfew violators who may be at risk of joining gangs.

“You’re dealing with the symptoms, not the real problem,” said Payan. “We keep putting on Band-Aids and building jails and enhancing sentences. . . . And it is not a deterrent. If you enforce laws like that, they have to go hand in hand with intervention and prevention.”

She told of watching an impoverished teenage girl being fined $75 in court recently for violating curfew.

“And the public defender whipped a $100 bill out of his pocket to pay it, and the judge said, ‘Put that away, she’s going to have to pay it herself,’ ” Payan said. “And the girl started crying. The point that the PD made was it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t have the money, and the $35 assessment fees she doesn’t have either, and if you give her four months to pay it off, she’s still not going to have it.”

But police say that as long as the laws are on the books and cities want a way to keep their teenagers out of trouble, they will enforce the curfew.

“It’s the old idle-hands-become-the-work-of-the-devil,” said Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Ken Kipp, who oversees patrol deputies in Camarillo, Fillmore and Ojai.

While Fillmore and Ojai deputies cite about five to 10 curfew violators a week, Camarillo deputies ticket about twice that number, he said.

“We were all young once, we all understand,” said Kipp. “Unfortunately in today’s world, this idle time sometimes leads to criminal activity or places [kids] in a situation where they could become victims of crime.”

Added Port Hueneme Police Sgt. Ken Dobbe: “I just do not believe that a 13- or 14-year-old should be allowed to be out roaming the street at will. There’s absolutely no purpose for it.”