I’ve been doing more research on the Buffalo, NY region and its share of problems created by decades of overbearing local government, and I came across another OpEd regarding the Buffalo/Rochestor region and a law enacted to try to solve a problem that doesn’t seem to exist: the problem with teens being out after dark. Adam McFadden, member of the Rochestor City Council, has an OpEd article in the Democrat and Chronicle titled Is curfew remedy for teen crime?.

McFadden says he has been studying for years various cities that have an established curfew to try to combat juvenile crime. His opinion is that Rochester’s policy must include a secured curfew center that would be centrally located so police officers could drop off minors in a reasonable time. Instead of throwing teens who are outside of the home at night into jail, he wants to create a new jail system for them — he calls it a secured curfew center. To get community buy-in, we would create the infrastructure to allow counselors to assess the child and family situation. He also wants “community involvement,” which to me generally means bringing in counselors from government maintained departments of Children and Family services.

In a teen is picked up for violating curfew, the parents would be fined $25 for the first offense; $50 for the second. A parent wouldn’t have to pay for a child completing some light community service. Even if the teen is doing nothing but driving around or hanging out at a restaurant with friends, they’d be “secured” in a “curfew center” and sit there with possible criminal teens until the parents can come to pay a fine and pick them up. A non-violent non-intrusive act of being in the public square is paid by fines, jail time and who knows what sort of abuse that comes along with the incarceration.

He finishes by saying I support having a curfew because I believe we must do a better job of protecting minors from crime. I read it as “I support having more government to be used to scare teens who are doing nothing wrong. Instead of penalizing actual crimes against actual victims, we’ll create new crimes so we can expand the State and expand my individual power. Rather than lowering taxes so that one parent can stay home to nurture and educate their children, we’ll have to raise taxes so even more kids have parents who are MIA during normal waking hours.”

This is nothing new to me. As usual, the State wants to be the parent and wants to reprimand people even if they haven’t committed an act of violence against a victim. As usual, I ask Where are the parents?

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