Camarillo Council to Consider Daytime Curfew

On the heels of a state Supreme Court decision striking down San Diego’s curfew ordinance, Camarillo officials are struggling over how to retool their city’s law.

Should daytime curfew restrictions be applied to Camarillo youths, even those who are home-schooled or on split-school schedules? Or would a daytime curfew infringe on their constitutional rights?

And what about holding Camarillo business owners responsible for minors who hang out in their establishments after curfew? Does this mean theater and fast-food outlet staffs would have to do a sweep every evening, asking for identification?

Camarillo leaders will be struggling with these and other questions in the city’s curfew ordinance at 3 p.m. today.

Currently, the curfew for youths 17 and younger is from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily.

The proposed revisions would change the hours Friday and Saturday to midnight to 6 a.m. It also calls for a school-day curfew of 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., as well as holding business owners responsible for ensuring that minors are not in their establishments after curfew.

Camarillo City Atty. Robert Flandrick said he recommended the changes after a federal judge struck down San Diego’s juvenile curfew law earlier this year, calling it too vague.

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But council members and parents quickly shot down the revisions last month, citing violation of constitutional rights, and asked the city’s legislative committee to iron out those wrinkles before bringing the ordinance back to the council for approval.

“The consensus seems to be that we’re asking business owners to do too much,” Flandrick said, adding that he will recommend that the committee remove portions that hold business owners responsible, “rather than burden them with what, in essence, is a police problem.”

However, this still does not resolve the controversy surrounding the proposed addition of a daytime curfew. Camarillo would be the second city in Ventura County to institute such a curfew.

To combat truancy, Thousand Oaks revamped a decades-old ordinance last year to include a daytime curfew. Some other Ventura County cities are either in the process of or have already reworded existing ordinances to clear up any vague terms.

An Assembly bill was also introduced in February that would make daytime curfews a state law for all youth who are required to attend school. But the bill wasn’t enacted in the last session.

But Camarillo officials are treading lightly on an issue they say could have explosive repercussions.

There are “some very serious constitutional problems with daytime curfew ordinances,” Councilman Bill Liebmann said.

Daytime curfews are meant to give police a tool to target youths involved in crime, Liebmann said.

“But I have reservations about the use of curfews which would impact all youths--not just those who may be at risk for criminal activity,” he said. “It could be found to violate the constitutional rights of freedom of association and freedom of movement.”

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Rather than endorse an ordinance that could result in civil litigation, Liebmann said he would prefer to address the problem through some other method, such as strengthening the city’s existing truancy laws.

But Camarillo Police Chief Craig Husband says that more than 70 California cities have instituted daytime curfews in the last couple of years.

“There is strong statistical evidence that daytime curfews have a very positive impact on crime rates and serve to keep kids in schools and reduce expulsion and dropout rates,” Husband said, referring to a decrease in daytime crime rates in Los Angeles and Monrovia.

Since Monrovia instituted a daytime curfew two years ago, truancy dropped 44% and the student dropout rate decreased by 54%, Monrovia city officials said. Additionally, crimes ranging from residential burglary and auto theft to weapons offenses and drug activity dropped 49% to 74%.

Monrovia, however, is also involved in a lawsuit over its daytime curfew ordinance because some parents say it violates their children’s constitutional rights and is preempted by state truancy laws.

“Parents of kids who are in home school or are church school students filed suit against the police chief and the city of Monrovia because their feeling is that these students can be out at any time and should not be stopped by police,” said Monrovia City Clerk Linda Proctor.

“But the city has won awards throughout the state for this program, and we are continuing it at this point,” Proctor said.

However, some Camarillo parents say a low crime rate and winning awards has nothing to do with whether a daytime curfew is constitutional.

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“According to the constitution we have a right to be out on the streets and move freely and juveniles have this right, too,” said Denise Dalgarn, who has children ages 19, 16 and 13. “If the city were in a high-crime area and could show significant juvenile violations during the day, I think they would have a better case for it . . . .

“The city should just rely on truancy laws and be prepared for a significant challenge if they decide to go through with the daytime curfew,” Dalgarn said.

The city of Thousand Oaks, on the other hand, has had no problems with its daytime ordinance.

“We believe that we put enough exceptions in so that the real daytime curfew violation would be only if they were truly supposed to be in school, were not and did not have a legitimate excuse,” Deputy City Atty. Jim Friedl said, adding that enforcement of the ordinance is used sparingly and takes home-schooling into account.