San Diego Police Department records used to report the punishment for curfew arrests, often a diversion program, sometimes juvenile hall. But beginning in mid-2019, curfew arrest records started listing “null” instead.
By that time, most large cities in California had stopped enforcing curfew. When KPBS asked the police department why they changed how they were punishing curfew, they did not respond.
KPBS has since learned that San Diego police did not stop enforcing curfew with juvenile diversion programs. They just stopped reporting it in the arrest records.
Jill Edwards Pham’s 15-year-old son was arrested in July for being a passenger in a car out past the curfew time of 10 p.m.
His father is Vietnamese, and Pham said the other boys in the car were not white.
San Diego police officers overwhelmingly arrest Black and Latino youth for curfew violations — being out after 10 p.m. and before 6 a.m. without an adult, with few exceptions. In 2022, they made up more than three-quarters of the arrests.
SDPD did not respond to questions for this story regarding their curfew arrest records.
Pham said she had heard about curfew laws, but didn’t realize there was any punishment involved. She called the level of punishment “absurd.”
Pham’s son was sentenced to a diversion program in order to keep the arrest off his record. He has to attend five workshops on topics like decision-making and values, complete 10 hours of community service and handwrite a 600-word essay.
Pham said if he doesn’t complete those requirements within three months, he can be referred back to the police department for a misdemeanor. And, she said, she will be issued an arrest warrant if she fails to appear in court.
She said that horrified her.
“I think that the police are there to protect,” she said. “I would not think that this level of punishment is appropriate for a 15-year-old child who is out after 10 p.m.”
A more appropriate response, she said, would be for the police to say, “OK It’s a bit late, I’ll call your parents,” and parents can come pick up their child.
The diversion program is in City Heights, and Pham and her husband both work full-time. She said organizing transportation is a burden. She thinks of the other families who may not have a car, or may not be able to navigate the paperwork as easily.
She said this has been her introduction to what it’s like to grow up in America.
“When I was in Queensland (Australia) in the 1980s,” she said, “we were considered to be living under a police state. So this may have been — I think this was even worse than what we would have experienced.”
Mike Males, senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, called curfew a very American and antiquated policy.
“I don’t know why San Diego is creating a crime here,” he said.
Research overwhelmingly shows curfew is not effective at reducing crime, and Males could not think of another city in California that still enforces it.
In fact, he said: “There’s no particular approach to juveniles once they’re arrested that’s effective. The truth is, you really just don’t want to be arresting people in the first place. That creates a criminal record. It creates a lot of antagonism with the police.”
Males also took issue that SDPD records no longer show the punishments for curfew arrests.
“They shouldn't be getting away with just saying we're not going to report what we're doing with them,” he said.
When KPBS first reached out to Males, he didn’t know that San Diego was still enforcing curfew. The state’s online records, which are meant to provide transparency, list no curfew arrests for San Diego in 2021 and 2022. Despite the hundreds of arrests SDPD recorded.
Pham said this experience has shifted how she and her son view the police.
“I would avoid contact with the police because I'm really worried that if something this minor can lead to that level of punishment, imagine if you did actually do something wrong, it would be catastrophic to a 15-year-old child to be in so much trouble,” she said. “And it would be hard to get out of that system, I believe.”
In the three weeks that KPBS has repeatedly asked the police department about this lack of transparency and incomplete records, the department has not provided any answers.
