Juvenile Loitering Ordinance Draws Fire in San Gabriel

A city ordinance designed to keep kids in school is under fire in San Gabriel.

Under the daytime juvenile loitering ordinance, San Gabriel police officers have jurisdiction to issue $177 tickets to students found off campus during school hours, Police Chief David Lawton said.

The ordinance has been in place in San Gabriel since August. But because of increased complaints of vandalism and theft from business owners near the high school, police have been coming down extra tough on loiterers.

Department records show that police issued more citations in the last three weeks of school than during the first nine months of the school year, Lawton said. This indicates officers are finding more culprits or that they’re defining more people as culprits. Many parents who initially supported the ordinance believe its success is due to the latter.

Alejandro Gandora said his 14-year-old daughter, Alexis, was unfairly issued a ticket from two officers parked on Ramona Street, right outside the school.

“The idea of this was to keep the kids from loitering and ditching,” Gandora said. “They get issued a ticket and they know that they’d better get [themselves] in school. . . . But we did not expect the police to be on school premises.”

The police were not on school premises, but they were close.

Officers station themselves near the campus so they can hear the bell ring. But there may be some confusion as to which bell police are supposed to listen for, said Councilman Sabino Cici, who heard both sides of the debate at Tuesday’s council meeting.

The school uses a common two-bell system: the first rings at 12:44 p.m. to signal the end of lunch. As for the “tardy bell” that sounds 10 minutes later, school officials said students should only hear that one when they are seated in class.

Though teachers do not consider their students late until after the tardy bell rings, 90% of the tickets issued in the last three weeks of school were handed out between 12:44 and 12:54 p.m., Lawton said.

Alexis, who is scheduled to appear in Juvenile Court next month, said she and her friends had their run-in with the law two weeks ago while walking back to school from a nearby deli.

Busy writing up three other people, officers asked the surprised students to wait in a kind of ticket lineup. At that time, Alexis’ watch read 12:46 p.m.--no sweat, she thought. But while she and her friends were waiting their turn, the late bell rang.