Thirteen-year-olds should not be out strolling the village at 1:08 a.m. It is long past curfew. It is not safe. It is against the law. And there are consequences.
Five buddies found that out over the summer when they hit the 7-Eleven, allegedly on their way to another friend’s house. They ran into Oak Park cops who issued them curfew violations and called their parents to pick them up.
This all sounds right to us. And when Police Chief Rick Tanksley says curfew is one of the few areas where his officers don’t have discretion, we understand the logic. A cop lets a kid drift into the night, that kid gets roughed up, then the liability — moral and legal — is on the cop and the village.
So how do you explain the parents of some of these wandering children who came to a recent village board meeting to lodge a complaint that, in addition to the citation, their precious offspring were also assigned 24 hours of community service — i.e. trash pickup?
“Over the top,” is how the parents described the “sentence” handed out by the village’s adjudicator. Quibble if you want over whether it should have been 10 hours or 24, but we’re more concerned about the message these parents are sending their kids. Young people are smart. They knew they were in the wrong when they went out on a lark at 1 a.m. They got caught. They got punished. The role of the parents here was, in our opinion, to reinforce the consequence not to undermine it.