Battle Over Day Curfew Shaping Up

Battle lines are being drawn in city council and school board meetings throughout Orange County over a bid by local law enforcement to impose a daytime curfew for school-age children.

On the one side are civil libertarians and home-schooling advocates, who are warning that the imposition of a countywide curfew could result in a police state for kids, turning school-age children into second-class citizens.

But the proponents--a daunting alliance of the county’s police chiefs, school administrators and prosecutors--say the ordinance they are pushing would put teeth into lax truancy laws for the first time in 20 years. They insist it is needed to fight an epidemic of juvenile delinquency in Orange County.

“We are losing the war against juvenile crime,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan Brown, who supervises the county’s gang enforcement units. “This is an effort to stem that tide.”

Opposition leader Robyn Nordell, a Fullerton resident who runs a church-affiliated home-schooling program, said similar ordinances elsewhere have led to flagrant violations of young people’s civil rights.

“On any given weekday, there are thousands of kids who legally have the right to be out in public,” Nordell said. “They shouldn’t be made into suspects simply because of their age.”

The model ordinance, given preliminary approval by the La Habra City Council earlier this month, would allow police to issue citations that would require a court appearance with a parent or guardian, similar to a traffic ticket.

It would essentially force students from age 6 through 17 who are challenged by police from the hours of 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on a school day to prove they are not playing hooky. A first offense carries a $100 fine, which could be suspended if the student has no further unexcused absences, performs 20 hours of community service and takes part with a parent in counseling sessions. Parents can also be required to attend a court-approved parenting class.

La Habra Councilman Juan M. Garcia, who voted for the ordinance on first reading, said he was initially concerned about the potential for harassment of law-abiding students on nontraditional school schedules, but is now convinced that any problems can be worked out.

“I happen to have a son who goes to a private school,” explained Garcia, who said his concerns were alleviated when he learned that police will be “requesting that these kinds of students show some form of student ID. There’s probably going to be some problems as we go through the process of trying to enforce this, but I think it’s worth the effort.”

Proponents of the daytime curfew had hoped to get all 31 cities and the Board of Supervisors to adopt the model ordinance before the start of school this year. But the proposal is facing stiff opposition in some cities.

Residents angrily denounced the idea during nearly two hours of public testimony last week at a Santa Ana Unified School District board meeting where proponents failed to win the board’s endorsement.

“Most people I’ve talked to are all for keeping kids in school and reducing crime. But what they don’t want to do is create a standard that will not allow enough leeway for students who are legitimately out of school,” district Supt. Al Mijares said. “That’s been a loud and clear reaction in Santa Ana.”

Because two-thirds of Santa Ana’s 50,000 students are on year-round schedules, “a student could be legitimately away from school . . . at any given time during the school year,” Mijares said. “You just complicate things with an ordinance like this.

In Villa Park, Mayor Joseph S. Barsa is so appalled by the idea that he will ask the City Council this week to condemn the proposed ordinance and encourage other cities to do the same.

“They’ve already got all the authority they need, and if they want to put more teeth into it, then they should get the education laws changed in Sacramento,” Barsa said. “I do remember the ‘40s and Hitler. This just smacks of that kind of thing, and I’m going to do everything I can to discourage it. I just have a feeling Orange County would be the laughingstock of the country if we went in this direction. I’m sure our international visitors would be shocked.”

Yet curfew laws are growing in popularity as a law enforcement tool. President Clinton came to Monrovia in July to praise that city’s efforts to fight juvenile crime, including the adoption of the nation’s first daytime curfew ordinance in 1994.

Monrovia Police Chief Joe Santoro says that since the ordinance went into effect there has been a 41% reduction in unexcused absences from public schools, providing the school district an added $200,000 in state attendance funds. Santoro also cites a 54% reduction in school dropout rates and a 38% reduction in juvenile crime during school hours.

“If the civil libertarians don’t think this is right, then tell us what is,” Santoro said. “Tell us what we can do to address this terrible problem. All they say is, don’t do it.”

Orange County’s leading advocate of the daytime curfew, Deputy Dist. Atty. Kimberly Menninger, said the idea was born of the frustration educators and law enforcement officials feel when dealing with ineffective truancy laws.

Under current state law, police must take a truant student into custody and transport the youth either to school, home or jail. But jail is not an option, because state law requires that truants be segregated from suspected criminals, and county juvenile facilities are overflowing with criminal offenders.

Menninger says that all that is left is a hopelessly complex disciplinary system that depends on voluntary cooperation from students and their parents.

The proposed ordinance, Menninger says, would bring swift punishment and provide a strong incentive for families to keep students in school. A third violation carries a maximum $500 fine.

“We are now at 23,000 gang members in Orange County. That is a giant increase,” said Menninger, who prosecutes gang-related homicides. “I’ve never seen a gang member who wasn’t a truant first.”

Critics worry that police will abuse such ordinances, using them as a pretext to detain minority students whose names and photographs will be added to the growing lists police have begun to compile of suspected gang members.

“My fears are that they’re going to pick out people of different ethnicities, and a lot of these names will end up in the gang databases,” said Daniel Tsang, a UC Irvine librarian and lecturer who has been publicly critical of Irvine police for stopping Asian university students late at night and photographing them as possible gang members.

Irvine Police Chief Charles Brobeck, president of the Orange County Police Chiefs and Sheriffs Assn., said the proposed ordinance has broader goals, mainly to catch good kids who may be falling into a pattern of truancy that could lead to more serious crimes and gang involvement.

Some high school students complain that they are already scrutinized too closely by local police.

“You’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty,” said Jean Chauv, a 15-year-old Fountain Valley High School student. “They should have a little more trust in us. It’s not the way the system is supposed to work.”

Santa Ana High School student Ny Pin, 16, said he has friends on nontraditional school schedules who would likely be stopped by police because of their appearance.

“They already stop us sometimes because of the clothes we wear, if we are dressing in baggy clothes, like gang-type stuff,” Pin said. He said police shouldn’t “just stop us for nothing, that would be wrong.”

UC Irvine doctoral student Mike Males agrees. He is the author of “The Scapegoat Generation,” a book that suggests crime-weary adults are increasingly blaming the younger generation for the problems of society in general.

“There’s a real presumption today that teenagers are just up to no good,” Males said. “But you can make that same assumption about adults.”

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Teen Crime Climbing

Juvenile arrests in Orange County have increased during the past five years. About two-thirds of juvenile collars are for misdemeanors:

1990

Felony: 4,759

Misdemeanor: 8,723

*

1995

Felony: 5,080

Misdemeanor: 10,095