Out After Dark: Fayetteville’s Proposed Curfew
posted by Suryah Ethridge | September 18, 2023 | In OpinionOn September 5, Fayetteville’s Police Chief Kemberle Braden proposed a city-wide curfew for people under the age of 18 to the City Council. This proposed curfew would mean that anyone 18 and younger has to be off the streets from 12 a.m. to 5 a.m. during weekdays. On weekends (Friday-Sunday), they must be off the streets from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. Those who are 16 and under must be off the streets Monday through Sunday from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.
The curfew even goes as far as talking about students who are suspended from school. Students who are suspended from school have to be off the streets from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Anyone who violates the curfew can be charged with a misdemeanor and their parents can be fined up to $100.
This proposed curfew also enables stop and frisk policies. Stop and frisk allows police officers to stop anyone who they think looks underage, question them, and even do a brief search. This could allow police officers to target and harass individuals who are older than 18 but look young.
This curfew increases the likelihood of adolescents having a negative interaction with police. This can be extremely harmful, given recent news about police brutality and misconduct. We want our children to feel safe and to reach out to the police for help, but laws and regulations such as this proposed curfew can often scare children.
The curfew criminalizes non-criminal behavior, so a person who has done nothing wrong can be stopped simply because they look too young to be out. This also raises concerns about discrimination because you can be stopped based simply on how you look.
The point of this proposed curfew is to reduce crime and gun violence in the city. This will not stop anything. In order to stop gun violence, we must have gun reform. Preventing children from going out does not solve the problem, it ignores the problem. There are other ways that we can reduce crime without having harmful impacts on our young citizens.
Thankfully, citizens of Fayetteville protested last Monday, September 11 against this proposed curfew, and city officials had a special meeting concerning the curfew on Monday, September 18 where the curfew was rejected on a 7-3 vote. However, the majority of city council members have indicated that the curfew is not dead, and instead will be revised considering the concerns brought up at the meeting.
Photo Courtesy of Jalexartis Photography.
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