Preaching to the choir

A town in Arkansas has imposed a 24-hour curfew. As I understand it, people under 18 can't be on the streets at any time without adult supervision. All adults are subject to being stopped by the police at any time of the day or night. If they don't provide a good enough explanation of why they're walking down the street, they'll get extra attention. The articles I have read on the subject have not explained the policy in any more depth than that, but the article to me suggests that police will literally stop and question any person they encounter on the street. I wish I had more information about the mechanics of this curfew. People have to go to the grocery store, people need to go to the store, people need maintenance workers to fix air conditioning or electricity. So obviously not all people can be cited for violating the curfew. I suspect the curfew policy is really in place to provide cover for police stopping and questioning the usual suspects without having to be bothered with actual reasonable suspicion to stop them.

The policy is a response to random shootings and drug-fueled violence. Some citizens of the town report having their children sleep on the floor to keep them out of the path of stray bullets. The town, especially the most targeted neighborhood, sounds like a bad place to live. If I lived there and lacked the means to move out, I would sure want the police to step up and make it a safer place again. But this just can't be the way to do it.

I just saw a news program where a prosecutor and a police detective were discussing this policy. Both of them expressed the idea that if you weren't doing anything wrong, this shouldn't pose any problem for you. Just like I shouldn't object to having to show an id upon demand. And I shouldn't object to the government listening to all my international phone calls. And I shouldn't object to the government getting a list of what books I've checked out from the public library.

Well, I'm not up to anything. I've done nothing wrong and I'm not carrying drugs or any illegal weapons. But I object. I have a constitutional right to traverse the streets of this country without police interference. As do all of you. And I resent the implication that those of us who are interested in protecting our constitutional rights are doing something wrong.

But people are scared and having their kids sleep on the floor, so that fear leads them to willingly accept this kind of intrusion, even to see it as no intrusion at all. I understand that feeling safe to sleep in our own beds and walk down the street without being shot or robbed is important. But is this really the kind of safety we want?

It's easy for people to think that in this particular situation, the curfew policy is a necessary evil, maybe even a reasonable response to the crime that has taken over the town. But it's always easy to agree with each, individual, seemingly small, and short-lived violation of our civil liberties. Before you know it, those seemingly small violations add up to a pretty big chunk out of our That's why we have to be so vigorous in resisting all proposals that would infringe on any of our rights, no matter how innocuous they seem. We simply have to stop being so willing to cede our rights in the name of security. The security we think we're getting is nothing compared to the absolute security of being able to walk down the street when we want, say what we want, and read what we want without any governmental interference.

And if that doesn't convince you this curfew policy is a bad idea, how about this: just wait until the defense lawyers start filing suppression motions on all those guys who have been arrested with drugs or guns. An awful lot of those cases are going to be tossed for violating the 4th Amendment rights of those defendants. At least, they ought to be by principled courts. Because our courts are supposed to be the last defense against infringements on our individual rights, regardless of how willing the majority is to tolerate those infringements.