Council OKs Crackdown on Curfew Violators

One month after it overturned the Police Commission’s five-neighborhood pilot project to beef up youth-curfew enforcement, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday gave its unanimous blessing to a citywide version of the program.

The council’s 10-0 vote cleared the way for improved enforcement of the city’s years-old 10 p.m. curfew law, which can begin immediately in the five communities that were to have been the test areas. But it could take several months for police and community members to prepare custom-tailored procedures throughout the city.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, in urging his colleagues to move ahead with the project, said its expansion citywide, along with some added conditions, persuaded him to change his mind and support the program.

“The real idea here is not to leave this up to the Police Department alone,” Ridley-Thomas said, alluding to fears expressed in heavily minority communities that the original five-neighborhood program could result in selective enforcement, with black and Latino youngsters bearing the brunt of the enforcement.

“We’re overjoyed,” said Joe Gunn, a retired LAPD veteran who is a special consultant to Mayor Richard Riordan on police issues. “This is exactly what we had wanted in the first place; we always wanted this to be citywide, but the department said it didn’t have the resources.”

In an interview later in the day, Riordan also hailed Wednesday’s vote.

“Community leaders from every part of the city have all come to me demanding that we enforce the curfew. . . . I’m happy for them” that the council reversed its earlier vote, Riordan said.

On May 22, the council invoked its power to take jurisdiction over decisions made by the 40 policy-setting commissions appointed by the mayor, scuttling the Police Commission’s decision to step up enforcement of the city’s ban on youths under 18 being out without adult supervision after 10 p.m.

To address fears that low-income minority neighborhoods would be singled out, the commission chose five pilot areas that represented all the city’s racial diversity, including Hollenbeck in the heavily Latino Eastside and Devonshire in the largely white west San Fernando Valley. But the council was unsatisfied, expressing concerns that limiting enforcement to certain areas still could unfairly target minorities.

The expanded version does not include any more money for citywide enforcement, but department officials said they will juggle what they have to do the project.

LAPD Cmdr. Richard Legarra, assuring council members that each area would have flexibility in deciding how to implement the policy, said the program has strong support in the Hollenbeck area, which provided the model for the new project, and in the Harbor area, where community and police leaders have been meeting about youth crime issues.

“We’ve had lots of positive input from the communities, and they want us to move forward,” Legarra said.

Neighborhood police officials always have had the power to enforce the curfew, but the approach has been spotty and inconsistent. Under the new program, community leaders and police will identify neighborhoods most affected by youth crime and, as they did in the Hollenbeck pilot program, for two unspecified nights each month, will target curfew-violating youths, take them to the station and call their parents, referring the family to counseling in some cases.

The council-approved additions to the program recommended by the council’s ad hoc Committee on Gangs and Juvenile Justice, which Ridley-Thomas chairs, included having the Police Department describe how it was gathering community ideas in each of its 18 geographic areas, working with juvenile crime experts Malcolm Klein of USC and Diego Vigil of UCLA--both committee members--and identifying social services agencies that can help the department steer youthful violators onto a straighter path.

The program is to be tracked for effectiveness and fairness.

“This is such a critical time in the city,” Councilman Richard Alatorre said in urging the council to approve the project citywide. “We’ve had a decline in crime, but at the same time, there’s been an increase in crime involving young people. This is going to be used as a vehicle to look at problem areas, an open vehicle that can be used by people to take back their neighborhoods.”