gawd, i love local politics. last month, the city hatched a plan they’d been quietly incubating for two years, with little or no advance warning, during the quiet of summer. in response to a very small problem, they’re instituting a rather draconian solution: curfews for all kids under 18 out during school hours. so this means that independent study students, studens in advanced placement classes going to and from the college, and homeschoolers, will now regularly be pulled over, questioned and detained.
this means the good kids, the hardworking homeschoolers heading for a piano lesson, the motivated students taking college classes, and the independent study kids, will start having bad police experiences. try to imagine how it would feel to be pulled over and interrogated when you’ve done nothing wrong. is this how we want our kids to feel? does this sound a bit like police state, jr. to you? we could do like oxnard and target the actual cause of the problem, or we could just round up the kids first and ask questions later.
sometimes living here is just annoying. what is the city council thinking?
They’re trying to pull the same BS in the city where I work (and that reactive crud is why I don’t live there). Same problem: legit kids getting rolled.
and the oxnard program worked so well! it focuses on absences by known truants, has intervention-type tactics and social services as a response, and they’ve really made a difference.
if this was three years ago, my daughter, who didn’t do so well in the structure of school but thrived on independent study and working, would be one of those good kids getting rounded up by the cops.
Have they been taking lessons from DOJ? I mean, pick ‘em up without even probable cause? I hope you have a good bunch of parents there who start raising hell. Tell the parents to focus on the cost of this program and the police time lost for more serious infractions.
from what i caught on the local cable access coverage of the council meetings, there were some homeschool parents there raising hell about the whole thing *and* the fact they sprung it out of nowhere in the middle of summer while everybody was on vacation.
and yeah, this really does put a strain on police resources. are we going to have to fund special units just to go round up teenagers and haul ‘em in for questioning? or is this going to spread existing law enforcement even thinner?
not that they’re spread that thin, i mean, when i got my ticket for being a frumpy forty-something woman in a grey buick with tags one month out of registration, i had two cop cars and a motorcycle officer, just standing around … standing around. that would indicate boredom, one would think. made me feel kinda special though
but still. it’s no reason to scoop up kids in a big net like that.
As a good citizen, and going along with the national TIPS program it is your duty as a good citizen to detain and report every person under 18 who is out in public unaccompanied by an adult.
Damn right the homeschooling parents will fight this. We have the same “curfew” here in Texas. There have been homeschool kids who have been harrassed at the FUCKING LIBRARY. yeah, great…I am going to skip school so I can go to the library. i’m an evil truant.
i knew here in Texas at least that this is not a law to keep truancy under control (although that’s the way it’s packaged to the community who buys it because for some reason the vast majority of people think that staying in our crappy public schools is the only way to get an education) -it’s just another law to try to keep PEOPLE under control.
How freakin’ stupid. I hate governments, I really do. Big meanies.
Think of it this way, though — while I don’t support the pulling over for no real reason thing, they’re going to create a large group of kids who, when they turn 18, will vote.
And they will be really fucking pissed.
Then, maybe then, something will happen in this country, you know? Maybe then someone will DO SOMETHING to change all the shit we’re constantly getting into because of the idiots we have in office.
Or maybe not, but I like to be at least a little optimistic.