Augusta curfew will be enforced: 'Nothing good happening for teenagers after 12 midnight'
Instead, Sheriff Eugene Brantley on Friday publicly reminded parents and their children that Augusta's 1993 curfew statute is still very much in effect and will be actively enforced.
So, copy and paste: Anyone younger than age 18 cannot be in public without an adult in Richmond County past 11 p.m. weekdays and midnight on weekends.
"There's nothing good happening for teenagers after 12 midnight," he said.
The idea of the renewed enforcement initiative isn't to pad arrest statistics or entrap potential offenders. Local juvenile justice officials will work with law enforcement to help ensure that curfew cases have swift, fair resolutions and no repeat offenders.
Richmond County Juvenile Court Judge Tianna Bias has seen both sides of Augusta's curfew – as an adult jurist and while growing up in Hephzibah.
"This is not a new law that's on the books," she said. "This is something that was on the books when I was a teenager, and we realized that there's a lack of information that's been presented to the public."
Parental involvement is crucial, Brantley and Bias said.
Officers don't want to turn a teen's one-time impulsive curfew infraction into a gateway toward committing more serious crimes, Brantley said.
"We had a 17-year-old juvenile who accidentally shot his finger off while trying to hide a firearm during a traffic stop. We've had groups of juveniles out at 2 and 3 in the morning that we've apprehended trying to break into cars to steal firearms," the sheriff said. "These aren't harmless mistakes. These are life-changing decisions, and they're happening when teens are unsupervised and are out past curfew."
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Richmond County's new teen curfew strategy focuses on prevention
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