Above: Keegan Kyle discusses his investigation into curfew sweeps with Amita Sharma on KPBS Evening Edition.
By Maureen Cavanaugh, Pat Finn,
Amita Sharma and Claire Trageser
Ramla Sahid, community organizer with Mid-City CAN, and Keegan Kyle of voiceofsandiego.org spoke with Maureen Cavanaugh on KPBS Midday Edition yesterday about the expansion of untested curfew sweeps in low-income communities of color. Below is an excerpt from the interview. To listen to the full segment, click here.
Maureen Cavanaugh: We’re talking about an article in Voice about curfew sweeps, and whether or not they are as great as everyone says they are in reducing crime in certain neighborhoods. My second guest now, Ramla Sahid, community organizer with the Mid-City Community Advocacy Network. As a community organizer in City Heights, I know you’re concerned about these sweeps. What is it that you’re concerned about?
Ramla Sahid: So we know that youth are disproportionately represented in the juvenile system in nearly every state of the nation. In San Diego, you have Latino and black youth make up 74% of the population in juvenile facilities. Our concern is that there’s a lot of — there are a lot of questions. And the focus — focusing resources on a practice that’s proven that it doesn’t work, there’s not enough evidence to point to it and say this is why crime has gone down, questions why is that? When we could have more responsive, targeted solutions. And I think people with the curfew sweeps, we have very good-hearted volunteers who think they’re doing great work. And to them, they’re saving lives, right? And so how do we capture that momentum and that spirit? And how do we go to a more collaborative effort between enforcement agencies like probation and our Mid-City Division and include community — regular community members in decision making about implementing programs?
Cavanaugh: So Ramla, one reason is resources, limited resources being used on curfew sweeps, which according to this article are not as effective as everybody has been saying they are. Is there also the problem that getting into the juvenile system itself through the curfew sweep is a problem for some kids?
Sahid: Absolutely. I think research has shown consistently that youth that are engaged in the juvenile justice system early on go on as adults into prison. So it’s about really getting communities to focus on healing through collaborative efforts, and at our momentum team, we’ve realized that we have a high undocumented refugee community that comes from governments that prove to be repressive. So having sweeps, cops going into the community arresting youth for curfew, it just promotes more fear and creates a lot of anxiety in the community and mistrust. So it’s about interrupting that process. And it’s also about how do we move toward creating programs that defer even higher crimes?
Cavanaugh: I’m going to ask you, Ramla, isn’t there any good in having people — young kids who might be victims or might get into trouble actually be diverted into more positive ways to spend their time?
Sahid: Absolutely. I think the intention behind it for a lot of our volunteers is a beautiful one. When they’re out there volunteering, they’re thinking about — they’re saving a kid’s life. They’re probably taking a kid out of the street who would have been victimized otherwise. So the intention is good for those volunteers. However, I think that when you again have a community with high immigrant and refugee populations that come from oppressive governments, that’s not the sense that you get. The other thing is, in a community where for a family of four that earns maybe $19,000 to $24,000 a year, resources are a big issue. Getting caught up in a sweep, you get fined $290.
Click here to listen to the interview