This is my question for every mayor still enforcing a curfew. Have you managed to go a single night without any officers infringing on somebody's rights by misapplying the curfew?
If the answer is no, are your cops CAPABLE of enforcing a curfew correctly?
If the answer is no, are your cops CAPABLE of enforcing a curfew correctly?
The DC municipal government put out that "only two" cops interfered with ACTUAL VOTING on election night by enforcing the curfew wrong.
Does that not suggest a deep flaw in the training and skill here?
Does that not suggest a deep flaw in the training and skill here?
Where the curfews exist, we see journalists being illegally harassed and detained. We see essential workers being illegally harassed and detained. We see people on their way home in compliance with the curfew being harassed and detained.
The phrase "failure to abide by the curfew" - cannot that apply to police officers who start attacking people for "curfew violations" before the time is actually reached, for police officers who are detaining and harassing people after curfew but outside its actual terms?
And if the police cannot safely abide by the curfew, if the police either willfully or ignorantly are breaking the terms of the curfew every night by "enforcing" it while ignoring its actual provisions...
What public safety interest is served by keeping it?
What public safety interest is served by keeping it?
You wouldn't, I hope, send police out on the streets with complicated weapons they're not trained to use. You wouldn't, I hope, send police out on the streets with vehicles they don't know how to operate.
But city after city sends police out to enforce curfews without training.
But city after city sends police out to enforce curfews without training.
And "without training" is the charitable interpretation, that the police don't know better because nobody explained to them how the curfew works and nobody tested them on that knowledge, not that they don't know because they don't care, or they do know and don't care.
Regardless of the how or why of it, I ask every mayor who is operating a curfew: how many nights in a row can you have multiple police officers misapplying the curfew to beat, harass, and detain law-abiding people before you declare the curfew is a failure?
