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Many readers of a certain age probably remember the famous public service announcement at the start of the late-night news asking parents if they knew where their children were.
It was a staple of Buffalo news stations in the 1980s and into the 1990s.
The genesis of the "”It’s 10 p.m.; do you know where your children are?” began as far back as the 1960s by WNEW-TV in New York City as a nightly reminder for parents to enforce the Big Apple's curfews and to know where their children were at night.
Fast forward 60 years, and it's obvious that some parents in Jamestown need that nightly reminder. Jamestown police took the notable step recently of reminding parents of Jamestown's curfew laws and their intention to begin holding parents responsible with endangering the welfare of a child charges and curfew violation citations because of a heavy increase of juveniles under the age of 16 found in the streets during the overnight hours. Before the JPD issued its warning to parents, officers had responded to an incident on the city's east side for a report of youth attacking people in the area and breaking windows on a residence. It didn't take long for police to find the youths – they had been involved in enough incidents that officers knew where to find them. Then, while issuing charges to the first group of youth, a second group – out in the middle of the night – refused police orders to go home and allegedly tried to open patrol vehicle doors to let the first group of teens out. One teen allegedly tried to hit an officer during the incident.
Charging parents for not controlling their children is a good first step, in our view, but only if the city police department is able to consistently enforce the curfew. A social media post backed up by little action because police are usually too busy to deal with curfew violations doesn't back up the message for a segment of our city's youth, and their parents, that actions have consequences.
The other problem is Jamestown police can't deal with the problem alone. Officers can type citations until they have carpal tunnel syndrome and it won't do much good if the court system lets parents and youth off with a slap on the wrist. We're not saying jail sentences are needed. But there needs to be a punishment that changes behavior and backs up the police department's tougher stance, because what we're doing isn't working.