1st Daytime Curfew for Minors Set to Take Effect Next Month

La Habra this week became the first city in Orange County to adopt a daytime curfew for youths, a policy that school and law enforcement officials say they hope to have in place across the county by this fall.

Other cities, among them Fullerton and Irvine, will be considering similar ordinances in the next few weeks, officials said, even though the policy has raised some questions among residents who say that it may be unconstitutional.

“I believe that these truancy laws can definitely be exploited,” said Robyn Nordell of Citizens for Responsible and Constitutional Law, a Lake Forest-based group that has been trying to block the daytime curfew.

At a public hearing Thursday in La Habra, she presented the City Council with signatures of 500 people who she said are opposed to the ordinance.

Nordell said that the law is “incredibly over-generalized” and that “the presumption of innocence has totally been turned on its head.” Questioning children would be an “assault on the minor’s right to move about in public,” she said.

But La Habra Police Chief Steven H. Staveley, who also is a trustee of the Magnolia School District in Anaheim, said, “This is the tool that allows us to get the recalcitrant kid back in school.”

La Habra’s ordinance, which takes effect next month, aims to combat truancy by prohibiting anyone between the ages of 6 and 18 who is supposed to be in school from loitering in streets, parks or other public areas from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

The curfew allows police to detain youths, call their schools to determine if they are truant, take them back to school and impose fines of up to $250.

Staveley said Nordell’s concerns are unwarranted. “I don’t think there will be problems when we start enforcing this ordinance,” he said. “Our police officers aren’t going to abuse young people. They will enforce the law in a sensitive, thoughtful and caring fashion.”