Now there’s a battle cry for all taxpayers to make.  Instead of putting up with double dipping of their tax money.  Of course as Ohio native Mary Nix noted in addressing the Amherst daytime curfew issue, there’s also this solid point too:

To add a daytime curfew simply puts innocent chidren in a position of being guilty until proven innocent. That violates a child’s civil liberties and takes up an officers time when he could instead be monitoring criminal activity.

 That freedom issue in the good ole US of A seems to be ignored by the general public, the policy making authorities and lawyers maintaining their ‘business’.  Here’s what I’ve observed in reading about the Rockford/Winnebago County fiasco in the Rockford Register Star and Rock River Times. 

RRS pointed out some IL towns last year that have daytime curfew now.  Looking at those IL municipalities who have daytime curfew, one of the long termers is Waukegan, which  has had a daytime curfew in place since ‘92? However, Waukegan is still one of the state leaders in truancy with their current 11.4% (district-wide) and 32.1% (Waukegan High School) chronic truancy rate. Daytime curfew there and the district-wide truancy rate of 11.4% compared to the 2.2% average appears to have been very unsuccessful.  Seems pertinent.  And let’s not forget the points made that overall, the Rockford truancy rate has increased in the past year despite all the bureaucratic/moneyed plans to curb it in the past year.  And it’s definitely not stopping the county (Winnebago) wanting to get ‘involved’ too. 

So with that  pathetic success rate, why is daytime curfew the answer ?  It’s apparently not the answer in addressing public school kids  finding something better to do.  Could it be about the money?  If I was a taxpayer in those towns, I’d be hanging  onto my wallet.  But the fact is, they’re  looking for state funding to finance their city  side show.  The city attorney Gilberti says:

Despite the improvement, more work needs to be done, he said, stressing the need for the truancy ordinance: “[Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey] looks at this as another tool to combat truancy. We still have a problem.”

Looks to me like you’ll still have a problem looking at the historical results of daytime curfew.  But maybe despite some who have good intentions, others just like the idea of control of who, when, and where kids can be on the streets.  A suggestion was made by the Rockford school district officials for homeschoolers to come on in to the school office and get an ID to protect themselves.  Gimme a break!