City’s Curfew Sweep Turns Up No Truants

SEAL BEACH —  Nathan O’Keefe was stoked--all he had planned for Monday morning was to catch a few waves by the Seal Beach Pier and then head off to school.

He didn’t expect to be stopped by the Seal Beach police as a possible truant.

Suddenly he had to explain why, at mid-morning on a school day, he was carrying a surfboard rather than a textbook. And his high school was telephoned by police to verify that the 17-year-old senior didn’t begin classes until about 1 p.m., just as he claimed.

O’Keefe was one of seven young people stopped Monday and Friday, the first two days the city’s new daytime curfew law was in effect.

The law, which allows police to stop, question and issue citations to school-age children caught outdoors during school hours, broadens police ability to enforce existing truancy laws. Seal Beach, and the three other cities in the county with such laws, adopted it as a way to stem daytime burglaries and other crime and problems attributed to juveniles who should be in school.

Under the terms of the ordinance, children ages 5 to 17 can be stopped from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and issued an initial $100 citation if found to be truant. Fines can increase to $500 for subsequent citations. Previously, police did not have the authority to issue such citations; usually truants were returned to school or their parents.

Some youths are not happy about the new law, which a coalition of law enforcement and county education officials have urged all 31 cities to adopt.

“This is a joke,” said O’Keefe, who was not ticketed. “It shouldn’t be this way, we need a little freedom.”

In La Habra, which in early September became the county’s first city to implement a daytime curfew law, teens have spoken out publicly against the ordinance.

“After seeing the law in action, we’ve come to oppose it,” 16-year-old Travis Knowles told City Council members during a meeting recently. “We’ve seen friends stopped by the police when they’ve done nothing wrong. Your law provides for discomfort. Students will lose respect for the police because this is seen as harassment.”

Some parents have also objected to the law, saying it infringes on their civil rights and those of the their children.

Parents who educate their children at home are among the more vocal opponents. They worry that police will stop their children, who don’t follow public schools’ traditional schedules, even though they are outside for legitimate reasons.

To ease parents’ fears, council members excluded children with their parents from curfew enforcement.

“This is just another tool to allow officers to do the best possible job they can within the scope of the law,” Seal Beach Officer Kevin Vilensky said. “I’m in support of any tools available to us to help us do our jobs--without violating the rights of anybody.”

In a quest for school-age children hitting the streets instead of the books, both Vilensky and Officer Randy Frey drove through parking lots, neighborhood streets and beach parking lots on the first two days the ordinance was in effect.

Hiram Argust and Matthew Gahafer, both 18, came to Seal Beach on Friday to surf but chose to stay out of the water because it appeared foul after recent rains. They were stopped by Vilensky near the beach, questioned, checked and absolved--the two are high school graduates and legal adults.

“I don’t mind being stopped because I know I’m not getting in trouble,” Argust said of Vilensky’s questions.

Gahafer wasn’t so charitable. “I’m not in [high] school, and I shouldn’t have to be stopped,” the college freshman said.

After his initial panic, 13-year-old Tim McLaughlin smiled through a mouthful of braces when Vilensky explained why he and his two buddies had been stopped crossing Main Street. The trio, detained at 11 a.m., were let go after a dispatcher verified their Long Beach school was not in session that day.

“On a school day I guess it’s OK,” McLaughlin said of his stop. “On a Saturday it would be sort of stupid.”

In all, Vilensky stopped six people during his rounds Friday--none was found to be a truant. On the second day, Monday, Frey stopped only O’Keefe. Officers check for truants during their normal rounds.

After two months of enforcement, La Habra police have issued 34 citations after stopping 90 students, according to police statistics. Sixty students were stopped--and 20 ticketed--in September and 30 stopped--and 14 ticketed--in October.

Of all the students stopped and questioned, only one was taken into custody on suspicion of a crime--possession of a stolen bike. The 16-year-old was released to his parents.

The fact that the number of students detained or ticketed has dropped since police began enforcing the ordinance shows “young people clearly are paying attention to this new tool and those who were inclined to be truant have made some adjustments,” La Habra Police Chief Steven H. Staveley said. “You could see it on the street.”

Crime, he said, has dropped 20% in the period compared to last year. But he said he had not analyzed the data and could not conclusively tie the drop to the law.

Recently, the constitutionality of curfew laws has been questioned, though none of the curfew laws in Orange County has been challenged in court.

A federal court on Monday ruled unconstitutional a curfew law in Washington that required children under 17 to be off the streets from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. on weekdays and midnight to 6 a.m. on weekends. The court ruled that the curfew law violated the rights of children and their parents.

Robyn Nordell, a founder of the Fullerton-based Citizens for Responsible and Constitutional Laws, which opposes daytime curfews, predicted the ruling “might scare off the cities who want to pass this without looking at the constitutional implications. You’re dealing with the movement of kids and parental rights. I hope that those who haven’t adopted it will be more reluctant.”

In addition to Seal Beach and La Habra, Buena Park also recently adopted a daytime curfew. Cypress has adopted such a law, but it is not as strict as those cities’ and the fines are not as high.

Villa Park rejected such an ordinance, and several other cities said they would not take up the issue or are studying it.

Staveley called the controversy and criticism of the curfew “much ado about nothing,” and defended the law as ensuring “schoolchildren are in school when they are supposed to be.”