Louisville passes juvenile curfew ordinance
According to a revived curfew ordinance, when Louisville police officers catch juveniles out with no good reason between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., it will be the parents who pay.
In a recent called meeting the city council voted unanimously to approve adding the juvenile evening curfew ordinance, originally passed in 2008, to the city’s current code of ordinances.
City Administrator Ricky Sapp said that the ordinance was inadvertently left out of the 2019 codification process and so has been officially off the books since then.
Police Chief Jimmy Miller asked for the curfew to be put back in place.
“It’s a tool that we really need to have back in our belt to utilize because of the issues we’ve had in the past,” Miller said. “We’re catching kids at 3:30 in the morning. We take them to the house and the parents tell us they are back there in the bed, and I tell them no, they are in the back seat of the patrol car.”
The ordinance itself reads that the curfew originally ordered after the city recognized an increase in violence and crime by persons under the age of 18 including robberies, assaults, batteries, drug use, breaking and entering and vandalism.
“There has been a significant breakdown in the supervision and guidance normally provided by parents and/or guardians of minors resulting in an increase in crimes, substance abuse, school drop-out rates, juvenile pregnancy and other illicit behavior,” the ordinance reads. “The City of Louisville has an obligation to provide for the protection of minors from each other and from other persons, for the enforcement of parental and/or guardians control over and responsibility for children.”
The ordinance makes it unlawful for any minor to “loiter, wander, stroll or play” in any public place if they are unsupervised by a parent or other adult over the age of 21 who has custody of that juvenile.
Exceptions are offered for minors who are on an emergency errand, traveling directly home from a school-sponsored event, returning home or traveling to lawful employment, attending or traveling to or from an event involving the exercise of his or her First Amendment right to free speech or exercise of religion, just passing through the community with parental consent or if the child is next door to the home where they reside with that property owner’s permission.
Sapp said that the key point for citizens to recognize is that if a juvenile is discovered to be out past curfew without meeting one of these exceptions, then the parents, not necessarily the child, could be charged.
“The first offense, the parent is given a warning,” Sapp said. “Thereafter they can be charged.”
It's a progressive fine that gets more severe with each violation, ranging from $250 to $1,000.
Council members Phil Polhill and Matt Hodges both said that they have had vehicles in their yards entered illegally within the past several months.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Louisville passes juvenile curfew ordinance
