Lubbuck: City council discusses juvenile curfew
Published: Thu, 09/15/22
Lubbuck: City council discusses juvenile curfew
Police propose 2-man teams patrolling for violations
KCBD
By Natalie Faulkenberry
Published: Sep. 13, 2022 at 8:59 PM GMT-6
Updated: Sep. 13, 2022 at 9:27 PM GMT-6
LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) - Lubbock Police Chief Floyd Mitchell says his officers are too busy answering emergency calls to patrol for curfew violators. If the police are going to focus on curfew enforcement, Chief Mitchell says it will take six officers working mandatory overtime at night.
The officers would patrol the city, seeking violators. “We just don’t have the staff for that,” said Mitchell
During the summer, Chief Mitchell proposes the police would use the east Lubbock substation as a detention area. This would require parents to come to pick up their children and receive a $147 citation for violating the curfew ordinance. Even without that, Chief Mitchell says his officers are taking more initiative.
“We are taking it upon us and our command staff to make sure our officers know, hey, they need to conduct more of these traffic or more of these contacts, whether they be in a vehicle or out there on the street when they get calls for service to see if they are violating the ordinance and issue the citations to them and their parents,” Mitchell said.
Chief Mitchell presented crime data from January 1st of 2019 to June 30th of this year. It shows 241 juvenile arrests in that time period, including charges of evading arrest, drug crimes, and burglary. While that only represents less than 10 percent of all juvenile arrests, Chief Mitchell says a stronger curfew would still prove effective.Mitchell said, “We are trying to keep them under their parents’ purview during the midnight hours when a lot of our adult bad actors are out.”
Some council members expressed concern over whether and when parents would pick up their children. Sheila Patterson Harris, representing district two, worries about the parents who refuse to show up.
Assistant Police Chief Nathan White says, " At that point, we would have to contact CPS and find somebody to come to pick them up and go from there. We couldn’t just release them, they have to be released to an adult or CPS.”
If the council approves a change, the overtime shifts and enhanced enforcement would be focused on the weekends. Floyd Mitchell says, “You are looking at direct enforcement on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from midnight to 6 o’clock.”Municipal Judge Jorge Hernandez, who handles most of these cases, says stricter enforcement would not slow down the court system.
“By the numbers that I am seeing I don’t think it’s going to put that much of a burden on us. We are going to be able to process them in a timely manner in order to give them their due process,” said Hernandez.
The next public hearing for the juvenile curfew center is set for September 28th.
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