Daytime Curfews Endanger Rights

* Ken Williams was right on in his editorial, “Daytime Curfew Clamps Down on Rights of Parents, Students” (Orange County Voices, Nov. 30)!

Buena Park Police Chief Richard M. Tefank, as well as other police chiefs from around Orange County, have lobbied for the passage of a statewide daytime curfew.

Additionally, a powerful coalition of Orange County police chiefs, school superintendents and the district attorney’s office tried unsuccessfully to pass a one-size-fits-all daytime curfew plan in all 31 Orange County cities. In many of their presentations, Monrovia was held up as a “model” daytime curfew city.

Monrovia, which is currently being sued over its ordinance, offers a great lesson in the damage that fully implemented daytime curfew laws can do to constitutional freedoms and basic common sense.

In Monrovia, a 16-year-old was detained and questioned five times by different police officers while walking to a fast-food restaurant during his school’s fall break. Two teenage brothers who attend public school for a couple of classes and are then home-schooled for the rest have been stopped on at least 20 occasions while walking between school and home. Even youthful-looking adults have been repeatedly questioned about why they were not in school.

Both the Buena Park and Monrovia daytime curfew laws are unconstitutional. The major difference between the two is their current implementation. Buena Park residents and visitors should not have to depend on current policy to protect their constitutional freedoms; they should try to get this dangerous law repealed.

ROBYN NORDELL

Coordinator, Citizens for

Responsible and Constitutional Laws

Fullerton

* I am thankful for the wise assertions of Orange County Department of Education board member Ken Williams.

The daytime curfew was enacted in Buena Park this November after strenuous objections from the citizenry. That makes three of the 31 cities in Orange County that have fallen to the scourge.

Williams reminds us that this onerous ordinance may fall into the category of unreasonable search and seizure. [It has the potential for] misuse as a discrimination tool, usurping parents’ decisions for their children, interfering with school districts changing to double-day sessions.

If you are in favor of daytime curfews, don’t tell me about exemptions. Exemptions are taken away with the swipe of a pen. Exemptions will not right the wrongs that have been done.

Subjugated youth become subjugated adults. Williams has the qualities of courage and bravery to speak up on this matter. I hope the rest of us will follow his leadership example.

LINDA LEE GRAU

Irvine

* People questioning the appropriateness of a daytime curfew law are quite justified in their misgivings. Those in favor argue that the law will keep would-be truants in school. This may or may not be true, but one must ask whether we need students in school who do not want to be there.

In this day of overcrowded schools, far too much space is taken up by those who see no need for education. Far too much teacher energy is spent on those who could not care less about achievement, learning and respect.

Far too many decent and striving teenagers are robbed of time, space, materials and attention because of disruptive and inattentive malcontents who are intolerably inconsiderate of their wishes to be educated.

Why in the world do we want those people in class who damage the education of others and who would rather not be there anyway? To say that these disinterested, and very often disruptive, students must be there is to punish those for whom education holds value. We must be very careful when we choose laws that would punish the majority for the untoward actions of a minority. Most students are good and decent kids who have good reasons when they are out of school during school hours. We must not oppress these young people.

Any time a law is enacted we give up certain rights. The need for some laws is so great that we are often willing to give up certain rights, but this is not one of those cases.

MILTON B. ROUSE

Dana Point