The Newburgh Advocate

At the City Council Work Session Thursday evening, May 22, Police Chief Eric Paolilli gave a presentation on comparative curfew statutes at various cities in New York State. He drew on the examples of Troy and Binghamton as comparable to the city of Newburgh in that they had a similar population size and size of enforcement agency.

Both of those agencies reported that they used it; they used it as a tool; and they used it to their opinion to great success…
However, when I asked them what kinds of problems they dealt with, neither of those jurisdictions deal with the kind of street-level population that we do, especially come the summer months… ‘They don’t see anything like what we see here.’

One statute of interest to the Chief was the City of Troy’s provision to hold parents responsible in addition to the children. “On second offense, [the City of Troy] subjects both the parent and the child to 25 hours of community service.”

He concluded that

the experience, by in large, with everyone that I spoke to, was that it [a curfew] was an effective tool, and they would recommend it.

The council continued discussion on the curfew; concerns included what would happen if the child was brought home by the police and no parent or caregiver was present.

City Manager JeanAnn McGrane concluded that they would conduct more research of how curfews worked in other places, even outside of New York State, in an effort to establish a best practice.