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In March 2010, as teenagers roamed City Heights’ streets, a swarm of cops gathered at a nearby elementary school, checked their watches and prepared to strike.
At 10 p.m., the cops spilled across the neighborhood and arrested every minor violating the city’s curfew law. When they ran out of handcuffs, police used plastic twisty ties.
Police trucked two boys walking down University Avenue back to the elementary school, a home base for the operation, and eventually released them to their parents. That night, 55 other kids followed in the same footsteps.
It was a typical curfew sweep in City Heights and part of a dramatic rise in curfew enforcement by the San Diego Police Department. Police began conducting regular sweeps in 2008 and have since expanded their use to much of the city’s urban core.
In these neighborhoods alone, police have more than tripled curfew arrests in the last five years, forcing hundreds of more children to pay fines, participate in weeks-long diversion courses or fight police in court. And all of it’s been done on an unproven hunch.
When pushed to justify the arrests, police and elected leaders have claimed the sweeps are responsible for a recent drop in crime. They cite isolated crime statistics or anecdotal stories, but never an analysis of whether the program has actually been effective. No analysis has ever been done.
Proponents have argued their program saves lives and prevents kids from becoming victims of violent crime. They’ve also argued it prevents kids from becoming perpetrators of crime by pulling them from a dangerous environment and educating them about the risks of staying out late.
But an analysis of juvenile crime statistics by voiceofsandiego.org challenges whether either of these claims are true. Neighborhoods without the sweeps have reported greater drops in crime in the last five years than those with them.