Washington Town Adopts Daytime Curfew Toppenish Teens Not Allowed In Public During School Hours

Javier “Junior” Morfin isn’t worried about the daytime curfew here.

“I don’t care because I’ll be 18 soon,” said Morfin, 17, sitting lazily on his bicycle on a residential street corner in this dusty, south-central Washington town of about 7,000. “To the younger people, it’ll matter more.”

He was more upset that curfew violations would be printed in the local newspaper “so your teacher can say, ‘You got picked up by the cops!”’

As juvenile crime increases around the nation, some communities are endorsing daytime curfews aimed at keeping young people in school. Toppenish became the first city in Washington state to adopt a daytime curfew in March, and nearby Wapato and Granger followed earlier this month. Their ordinances are modeled after one in effect in San Antonio, Texas, since 1992 and a similar one in Little Rock, Ark.

The Toppenish curfew is popular among business people. Angie Garcia, who works at Windflower Unique Indian Arts & Crafts, said she noticed the effect immediately.

“They weren’t wandering around during the day, riding their bikes on the sidewalks and getting in the way of the tourists,” Garcia said. “Right now, during the summer, there’s lots of things for them to do. But during the year, if they skip school, there’s nothing to do except cause trouble.”

“I used to wonder why they weren’t in school. At least now, if they’re not in school, they’re home,” said Miriam St. John, who works at Homecrafters Arts & Crafts Gallery.

Toppenish, “The Town Where the West Still Lives,” offers tourists horse-drawn-buggy tours of its primary attraction - 34 murals of western life. Downtown storefronts recall the 1800s.

But once out of the three downtown blocks, which look more like a movie set than a business district, many of the homes look run down.

Police Chief Jim Andrews told the City Council in March that 68 percent of the city’s crime was occurring between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.

He hasn’t determined whether the daytime curfew is affecting the crime rate. He planned to run a computer comparison in the next couple weeks to see whether crime decreased while the curfew was in effect, or simply shifted to evenings.

Police picked up more than two dozen offenders in the first few days the curfew was enforced, but then the rate slowed to one or two a week, Andrews said. He had no statistics on how many juveniles were picked up for curfew violations before school let out in June.

Under the ordinance that went into effect March 27, school-age youngsters 17 and under who are found out in public between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on school days are escorted to school by police. After an initial warning, parents face progressive fines that start at $25 for a second offense and cannot exceed $300.

“We don’t seem to have any repeat offenders,” Andrews said.