Daytime curfew for kids as the Nanny State mainlines steroids

It is astounding how willing liberal constituencies are to allow their local governments to push them around. During the hunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the citizens of Watertown were subjected to warrantless door to door searches of their homes and ordered out at gunpoint with nary a whimper of protest. Maybe the the population of Watertown thought it was worth it under the circumstances but elsewhere the mayor, the governor, the police chief and maybe the cops themselves would be hounded from office and sued to the limit.
The authorities in Watertown could at least claim that they were responding to a threat and while the violation of the centuries old castle doctrine had been violated it was after all an emergency. There is no emergency in Baltimore yet the leadership is hell bent on establishing a police state at least as far as young people are concerned. Under an ordinance that was approved by a 13-2 vote children under the age of 16 will only be allowed on the public streets a few hours a day. There will be 7:30 AM to 3:00 PM curfew on weekdays for all under 16. Violators are subject to detention but not arrest which I'll deal with in a moment. From 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM all kids under 14 will have to be indoors. It's not clear why the city council deigned to allow them out from 6:00 AM to 7:30 AM. Maybe it was an oversight. For people 14 to 16 lock down doesn't begin until 10:00 PM but that should be sufficient to quell the perceived need for federal funds to promote midnight basketball.
Evidently parents must accompany teens on trips to the dentist or doctor should an appointment be scheduled during school hours. The good new is curfew violators will no longer be arrested: merely detained at a "connection center" where they will be questioned without their parents' permission or without the right to remain silent should they so elect. Pity the teens who look young for their age.



I cannot imagine the uproar such a proposal would have evoked in my neighborhood when I was a kid. Any councilman voting for such an ordinance probably would have had to leave town. It would not fly even today but luckily I no longer live in the state of Maryland much less Baltimore.