At long last, a glimmer of common sense

Finally, finally, a tiny bit of common sense shows up on city council. And of course, city council voted right over the top of it. Still it’s an indication that someone appears to understand the city’s favorite method of operating, or MO for you sleuth story buffs. How do they operate? Well, it’s like this:  when they don’t like something they simply pummel it with laws and restrictions. That’s the ticket now isn’t it?  Let’s get tough on all these outlaws and hoodlums. Or is it just modern day tough love?

Recently-elected councilman Betsy Luck nailed the problem. Within the city of Colonial Heights, there really isn’t much for the kids to do. But the city clamp-down on the curfew isn’t really a problem solver. All it will do is move the conflicts/problems back an hour earlier, sort of the way daylight savings time works.

Kids don’t drive here from Chesterfield because the mall closes an hour later. It would take too long to drive here just to ruffle feathers for a few minutes. This really is a local problem, and perhaps pushing the curfew back an hour would save a bit of OT for the police department, since now the problems would happen an hour earlier.

It would be nice to see some supporting evidence about who these problem children are and where they come from.  Teen curfew doesn’t just affect high-school aged children, just like teen pregnancy doesn’t mean every girl in high school is getting knocked up. Some pregnant teens are actually married, but God forbid we look that close at the statistics. Besides it’s much more fun to lambaste a whole class of kids, right?

Back to the point, if we have made so many arrests, why not chart them by home address? How many, for instance, involve Colonial Heights teens, or Fort Lee, or Chesterfield, or Prince George, Hopewell, Petersburg, or even Dinwiddie? More to Ms. Luck’s point, shouldn’t we be allowing parents to take care of their own children? Whatever happened to the phone call to the parents “come get your kid, he’s at the police station?’ Doesn’t stuff like that work anymore?

Yes, yes, yes, I have seen a bunch of younger people, teens possibly, hanging out in the parking lots of some of the restaurants late at night.  But by 11 o’clock or even midnight, you’re not talking about the busy dinner hour.  It’s actually closer to the closing hour, except for the hard-core guests siphoning down that last pint or shot before attempting the DUI gauntlet on Temple Avenue, which by the way is a much better use of our police department than herding teens is.

Ms. Luck says she thinks it amounts to overreach. Hooray! It is overreach. Some argue that it would bring us in line with the curfews in other localities, and yet I have seen the same argument used in the other direction when it serves the purpose. You know the one, “we don’t want to be like the other localities.” Why do we want to be like other localities? And what other locality is truly like Colonial Heights, or wants to be? Not many, I assure you.

And none around here:  not by population, not by commercial tax base, and not by much of anything else, really. Don’t get me wrong, despite my complaints, I have lived in good ole CH for 27 years and while not a “native” it has stood me well over the years.

It seems to me, looking from the outside no doubt, that lowering the curfew merely treats the symptom. It doesn’t address the real problem. And the real problem is that, with all of this magnificent business growth, we haven’t done anything to address the needs of our “teens.” They truly have nowhere to go, except for those places where a small congregation can gather. And, no doubt, that will lead to confrontations and issues. Kids are not well known for always behaving well in public. Yes, I too have winced at the performance of my kids from time to time, who hasn’t?  Be honest.  In general, they are pretty well behaved. But there is always that one or two who are not. And, it seems, that those one or two are always the ones that create the problems. You remember them from school; I am certain you can name them.

Some city residents have battled for a long time to find a place that would be a suitable “hangout” for our teens. At one point, it appeared we nearly had it figured out, when the former Circuit City building was viewed as a potential Teen Center. That failed due to contract issues, but not because it wasn’t a good idea. It was in fact a great idea. It put a place for teenagers to hang out right where they appear to be having problems now, the mall area.

Since the curfew action is already a done deal, one of the things council ought to request is some empirical data showing how well the new curfew has worked/is working. Let’s collect a little up front data supporting the “need” for the new curfew, and then in six months or so let’s pull the corresponding data and see if the curfew really helped.  I know, it is statistics and by gosh statistics never directly addressed any problem on earth.  But statistics can help support a case, and with this one I would love to see how it works out.  On the other, other-hand, isn’t crowd control something the police department is supposed to do?