Gavin Gets Tough on Crime

In response to all the killing going on around here, Gavin has finally come up with a solution-- enforce laws passed years ago. The law? A curfew for children under 13 between midnight and 5 AM, a law that was passed in 1990. Actually, that's not all of it. The measure will also increase police presence in crime-riddled neighborhoods and will send authorities to the homes of school-cutting scofflaws. All of this was announced after huddling with aides, judges, probation officers, and police.

The measures will cost $3.7 million which means the Board of Supervisors have to weigh in on it. This is where the fun begins because the Board have been pretty cranky about Gavin's anti-crime measures and calling for more substantive things to be done, like extra cops and communty funding. This probably isn't what they had in mind.

The curfew is also controversial in that one of the reasons why it hasn't been enforced is because it's seen as something weighing too heavily against minority youths in minority neighborhoods. That, of course, being the fairly obvious reason that if a Getty Jr. was wondering around Pac Heights at 2 in the morning, everyone knows they won't be picked up.

All of this comes because of the increase in murders in this city, now at sixty-six for the year, and with other increases in juvenile crime. Like this story in the Examiner about four teenagers going on a mugapalooza. They rode around in a carjacked Honda for six hours and mugged five people before being apprehended after a car chase over the Bay Bridge.

Nice.