Kids ask curfew questions everyone wonders about

The youngsters' questions to the officials ranged from the general (what if it doesn't work?) to the specific (will kids be handcuffed?). They wanted to know about teenagers who worked late shifts (kids loitering on street corners should be more worried) and about those who didn't have identification (that's up to a police officer's discretion).

An 11-year-old boy who could hardly reach the microphone asked the most pointed question at a meeting this week of young people and public officials to discuss the city's latest proposal to curb youth violence. "What is the whole point of the curfew?" asked Jamal Clarke, an incoming seventh-grader who was representing Edgerton Community Center at the Youth Voice, One Vision council meeting.

"The whole point of the curfew is to protect you," said one of the idea's champions, Rochester City Councilman Adam McFadden.

I don't know if he convinced the nearly 50 kids who showed for the city-county youth council's second meeting on the proposed curfew. Then again, the group of kids there did not seem like the kind police would snag on a curfew violation. That they would take time to voice their concerns in a public forum is just part of it. What also stood out was that parents of the ones I chatted with had already laid down the law.

North Street Community Center representative Jammal Coleman, 13, said he has to be home by 9:30 on most evenings, 11 p.m. on the nights he plays sports. The incoming eighth-grader plays on soccer, hockey, baseball and basketball teams. The lanky teenager shook his head when I asked about the times he came home late. "Consequences," Jammal said, and those would be chores.

Taylor Levy, 13, has until dark to be in her Edmonds Street home in the city. She carries a cell phone so her parents can keep in touch, too. "They want to know to be sure I'm home in one piece, home safe," says Levy, secretary of Youth Voice, One Vision. But she has serious concerns about the curfew proposal — ones that were echoed in questions to McFadden and District Attorney Michael Green, who both attended Wednesday's meeting at Edgerton Community Center to hear the youth perspective. She's worried that the curfew would hurt already vulnerable children, like those who have trouble at home and would be worse off if police called their parents to pick them up.

Others asked about repeat offenders, and they wondered about parents who refused to pay the fines. They asked the smart questions to which we're all waiting answers for, like what happens if the curfew doesn't help the violence.

As they asked the questions, I wondered about the parents and the guardians and the adults in the lives of these children. They obviously raised young people who care about their world and their surroundings. Their children's attendance at the meeting says so.

There's research to prove both sides of the curfew argument, studies that show it can work and others that suggest maybe not. The logistical nightmare of using already overburdened social service agencies or family courts to enforce curfews is just part of what worries me about the proposal.

Jamal, who asked the pointed question, thinks curfews are a good idea. He's also a kid who has to be in the house when the street lights come on, his folks' orders.

Denise-Marie Santiago
30 June 2006

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