Police Kill Texas Teen At School

Police in Brownsville, Texas fatally shot 15-year-old Jaime Gonzalez in the hallways of his school this week. The boy was brandishing a pellet gun, which police believed to be a handgun, the Chicago Sun Times reported. The police fired three shots at the boy, including one that entered the back of his head, suggesting that the boy was facing away from the police and not an imminent threat, according to the WSWS.

The boy’s parents are accusing the police of using excessive force and demanding they be punished. While many of the details of the case have yet to be released, it does seem excessive to have shot the boy three times, particularly in the back of the head, when a single bullet to the leg would have likely brought the boy down and ended the standoff. Also, the school was apparently locked down, which meant the threat to other students was minimal, giving police more time to try to talk to the boy and negotiate a surrender.

This tragic event will no doubt add to the general national hysteria around school safety and school shootings. It should be noted, however, that student homicides are rare at school, accounting for less than 2% of all youth homicides, according to USA Today, with kids 50 times more likely to die violently outside of school (often at the hands of their parents or other relatives). According the U.S. Department of Education, there were 15 school homicides in 2008-2009, the most recent year for which data is available, compared with 34 in 1992-93. Sadly, this week’s school homicide was at the hands of the police.

Teen Curfews: More Snake Oil For Affluent White Folks

In an attempt to curb teen violence, Oakland City Council is considering a new ordinance that would set night time and school hour curfews for teenagers, the Bay Citizen reported today. The ordinance, known as the “Juvenile Protection Curfew,” is being pushed by council president Larry Reid and council member Ignacio De La Fuente. It would prohibit minors from being outside anywhere in Oakland between 10 pm and 5 am Sunday through Thursday, and 11:30 pm to 5 am on Friday and Saturday. It also includes a school day curfew from 8:30 am to 1:30 pm.

There are numerous exemptions written into the ordinance, ostensibly to protect children’s rights and liberties. Some of the exemptions include being involved in an emergency, being accompanied by parents, going to or from work or exercising free-speech rights (such as participating in a protest). This latter exemption, of course, leaves open the possibility that adolescents could stay out all night with picket signs protesting the curfew itself, or hang out on a street corner claiming the neighborhood as an act of neighborhood pride.

In reality, any curfew could be a seen as an infringement on speech and assembly rights, while the “free speech” exemption could be interpreted however the authorities please in order to justify arrests and harassment of youth. For example, what happens when youth are peacefully exercising their free speech at a demonstration and the police decide to create a riot by attacking protestors and mass arresting them, as often happens during peaceful protests? Will they be charged with curfew violations in addition to the usual disturbing the peace and failure to disperse?

Of course teen violence and deaths are a serious matter and reducing them ought to be a social priority. However, curfews do nothing to address the causes of teen violence and there is little evidence they reduce violence. In fact, a study by Mike Males, in 1999, showed no reduction in youth crime resulting from California curfews.

Yet why should evidence be considered a relevant factor in social policy?

The Oakland policy is modeled after the Long Beach curfew, which has been in place since 1983. When pressed for data on the program’s effectiveness, Long Beach’s Police Information Officer (PIO), Nancy Pratt, said that there’s no way to measure how many crimes have been prevented as a result of the curfew. “How do you quantify that?” she said. “We don’t know how many youth have been protected from becoming a victim, or prevented from committing crimes.”

This is not a very compelling case for stripping away civil liberties from an entire class of people. It is also a load of malarkey. One can look at crime statistics and see that, in fact, youth crime had been dropping in Long Beach, but at roughly the same rate as other Los Angeles and Orange County cities that did not have curfews (see Los Angeles and Orange County Cities' Crime by Status Arrests, 1990-96).

The fact is that youth crime has been declining throughout the country, including violent crime.

One might argue that curfews help keep some kids out of trouble, but this would also be a terrible argument. In order to enforce curfews, police must patrol areas where youth frequent, interrogate and arrest them, book them, fill out paper work, contact parents and social services, taking them away from more urgent and potentially lethal situations like traffic accidents and actual homicides and assaults.

If the goal is to protect youth, then it would be wise to consider when crimes against youth occur and where. According to the Bay Citizen, most crimes against youth – such as burglary or assault– occur after school between 3pm and 6pm, which would make a curfew pointless. A cheaper and more constructive solution would be an investment in sports and after-school programs.

More appallingly, thousands of youth are killed and hundreds of thousands are injured in their own homes each year by adult family members. For some kids, being out on the streets at night may actually be safer than being in their homes.

None of this should matter much to policy makers, whose primary constituents are the affluent residents of Oakland. They could do nothing, and the affluent residents would be no worse off. Teen violence is essentially a problem affecting poor teens and remains safely cloistered in poor neighborhoods away from middle class youth. A curfew will do little to change this, but it will allow the horrified middle class do-gooders in the hills to feel like they have helped their poor neighbors in the flatlands. And they can win these Brownie points without making any significant social investment in those poor communities, without sacrificing any of their wealth or privilege, without addressing the high unemployment rate among black youth (41% nationally).

Epidemic of Youth Homelessness

Protesting Youth Homelessness (Image by LarrybobSF)

Over 21,000 students in Washington State were homeless in 2009-2010. This represents a 5% increase from the previous year and a 56.5% increase from 2005-2006, according to a recent report from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The number of students living in motels was up by 12%, and those living with friends and relatives increased by 9%. Actual numbers are probably much higher due to the difficulty in accurately acquiring this data and the fact that many families hide their homelessness due to the stigma that is attached to being homeless.

The data for Washington are appalling, but not unique. One out of every 50 American children (1.5 million) are homeless. However, most of these live in one of 11 states. Washington is far from the worst, ranking 25^th in the number of homeless children. The 10 states with the greatest percentages of homeless youth (in worsening order) are: California, Mississippi, Kentucky, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, Louisiana, New Mexico, Arkansas, Georgia, and Texas. In California, more than 200,000 teens between the ages of 12 and 17 are homeless on an any given night, with only 1,000 shelter beds available for teens. Homeless youth are often turned away or harassed at adult homeless shelters.

How serious is this problem?

Image by Shrued

Homeless children are twice as likely to experience hunger as other children. They are twice as likely as middle class children to have moderate to severe health problems. About 50% have anxiety and/or depression, which is not surprising considering that 42% of homeless youth who live on their own have been abused, while 25% have witnessed violence. Needless to say, this has a profound effect on their academic success, resulting in a doubling of the likelihood that they will have to repeat a grade in school, get expelled or drop out.

How does 2011-2012 Shape Up for Homeless Youth?

Many states, Washington included, are slashing programs that assist poor families and children in order to cut their budget deficits. In Washington, the governor wants to eliminate pre-school assistance for more than 1000 poor children, health benefits for 27,000 poor children, cut Basic Health Plan that covers 66,000 low income residents.