About 30 Dallas police officers are paroling the streets, keeping an eye out for kids under 17 breaking the 11 p.m. nightly curfew that was reinstated Thursday. One Preston Hollow girl broke curfew and ended up handcuffed in a police squad care. These cops are not kidding.
Jan Petree’s 15-year-old daughter, Hanna, had a friend spend the night earlier this week and after a late night swim in the pool, the girls decided to go around to the front door so they wouldn’t wake up Hanna’s mom. They got to talking, as teenage girls do, and they ended up hanging out in the front yard, eventually strolling the block of their neighborhood near the Park Forest Library close to 4:30 a.m. Police saw the girls, handcuffed them and drove them home, issuing a $329 fine.
“It was a huge wake-up call for them,” Petree says. “These cops are serious about this curfew thing.”
When I was in high school, the cops would just stop and ask you what you were doing, advise you to go home, and that was it. Times have changed, and I don’t really understand why a cop would handcuff two, very nonthreatening teenage girls. Hopefully Hanna’s story will help other kids not make the same mistake.
