MILWAUKEE — Roughly halfway through summer, the Milwaukee Police Department is renewing its focus on enforcing the city curfew for minors.
During the summer months, the curfew hours are between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. and apply to people under the age of 18.
Children out after hours without a valid reason and involved in an incident will see a $94 fine. Parents and guardians will also get a ticket for $195.
The latest announcement from MPD came after more than a dozen children were hurt or killed in a shooting over 10 days.
In the last 10 years, the number of curfew citations has declined.
Officers gave out 422 in 2013; that number dropped by almost half the following year. By 2017, tickets fell below 100 annually and have stayed that way since.
"I think I think there's probably a couple different reasons for it. We've entered into an agreement with the ACLU that restricts officers from just randomly stopping people and a curfew thing is a judgment call," Andrew Wagner, president of the Milwaukee Police Association, explained.
Wagner thinks staffing shortages and responding to priority calls also play a role in the decrease. He added that stopping someone for curfew has other challenges.
"You can't release the juvenile back onto the street so you have to find the juvenile's parents or guardian," Wagner said. "Trying to find a guardian for that child is sometimes difficult. It takes a lot of manpower and resources and if the parents aren't home then where do I go next."
However, Wagner hopes cracking down on curfew now will curb the violence among young people.
"Other crimes that you see a lot with juveniles right now is because there's no repercussions on the lower ends of things. So I think teaching a child that when they do something wrong, there's a repercussion, I think will help," Wagner said.
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