Destroy the children to save them
Curfew struck down as “too restrictive”, ACLU says curfews are okay, and police wonder what to do about blacks without the law.
Noting that “sometimes you have to destroy the village to save it,” Indianapolis city counsel Beth White expressed “disappointment” with a judge’s ruling striking down mandatory curfews and drug testing for teenagers. “These laws are intended primarily to protect kids,” said White. “We feel that the court system is a nurturing environment and would prefer that all children enjoy the experience of going through it at least once.”
White expressed hope that the program could be extended to parents soon. She noted that if the city could keep the law in place for a few years, teenagers would become used to it, “and then we can start extending the laws to adults, as the kids grow older and we’ve conditioned them to acquiesce to such laws.”
Responding to critics that noted the possibility of jail time and police harassment for kids who fail the tests, White argued that “this is a feature, not a bug. Children who are exposed to the prison system are more likely to grow into adult criminals. This means more prison jobs, more police jobs, more court jobs--more jobs for Indianapolis in general.”
ACLU attorney Kenneth Falk said that they hoped to work with Indianapolis to craft a better curfew law. “We don’t feel there is anything wrong with curfews,” said Falk. “We just thought this one went too far, too fast. The city needs to start out small and then slowly tighten the laws.” Falk noted that the ACLU generally supports the notion that citizens should rely on government protection, but that “the city was too blatant in this attempt.”
Judge John Tinder noted in his ruling that while Indianapolis might be without a curfew law temporarily, “Hoosier youth should not run wild through the nights.” Indianapolis police officer Maynard Brown concurred. “While this could be viewed as a setback in our minority control efforts, we have other ways to harass minorities,” said Brown, “and I’m sure the city and the ACLU can work together to restore the curfew as well.”
- Federal judge throws out Indiana’s curfew law
- ACLU says that they feel curfews are okay, it was just this one that was bad.
- West Virginia high court hears arguments over city’s juvenile curfew
- Police say they would never use curfew laws to target minorities for harassment.
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Readers Comment
I’m 11 years old do you have a job for me?
max
The Reader Responds: We have no positions currently open. However, I understand that the New York Times has a few positions available in both management and journalism.—Shaheen Hamedi
well this is not a comment its just that ive got my exams at the moment and i need some help for my english exam i need to give a speech about cerfews and i really am stuck i really do hope that u can help i have 2 days to do this please help!!!!!!!!!!
aiyasha
The Reader Responds: Well, Aiyasha, here at the Reader we have quite a bit of sympathy for your situation, as we also write most of our articles at the last minute and with the Internet as our major research source. I recommend that you give your speech the same way any professional, objective journalist would. First, decide what conclusion you wish to come to, and then find experts to bolster your arguments. If you can’t find any experts who agree with your conclusion, make some up.
For example, let’s say that you want to make as your speech that children should be shot on sight if they are found on the streets after 9 PM. As a layperson, you might think that you should talk to child psychologists about the dangers of staying up late, but you would be wrong. A professional journalist would recognize that child psychologists know too much about this particular issue, and are thus out of touch with the average person. You need to find someone who doesn’t know too much but still looks like an expert.
One of the best ways to find such “non-expert experts” is to find victims of crimes. Once an individual is a victim of a crime, they can be called an expert in the discussion of that crime. So, you find some individuals who lost close family members to child crime. Your non-expert experts might not even support your argument, but you don’t have to mention that. Just quote them talking about their loss.
It will be best if the lost family members were children, but in your case you’ll need to skirt around the issue of what the victims were doing out past nine.
You might also find experts in unrelated fields useful. Just put them in a white coat if you ever show them on television.
Once you find two or three non-expert experts who support your argument, you’ll need to find a token opposition argument. You’ll want a very long interview with this individual. The longer your interview, the easier it will be to choose the “best” quotes from that interview. Choose statements that don’t directly address any of the issues you raised, and always follow your opposition argument with a quote from someone who lost a child.
Now, it might be that your dead children did not actually die after nine. That’s not a problem: just don’t mention it. If your opposition expert does mention it, don’t use that quote. (And don’t use that expert again either.)
If you follow this advice, you should be able to write a balanced speech with true professionalism and journalistic detachment. Thank you for writing us, and I hope your speech goes well.—Shaheen Hamedi