Charlotte parents call teen curfew charges confusing, say it threatens their jobs
Shana Sturgis said her kids are never uptown, but her younger son had an appointment on June 20. He was supposed to take a scooter to meet his older brother and get home.
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That evening, Sturgis was visiting her mother in the hospital after getting off work uptown when she realized something was wrong.
Her eldest son told her his younger brother, 15, hadn’t arrived at the meet-up point yet, and he wasn’t answering his phone.
Around 11:30 p.m., Charlotte police called Sturgis and told her to pick up her younger son from a police station.
She arrived. And then police wrote her a misdemeanor citation for three charges, including contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She wasn’t able to go home with him for another two hours after she arrived.
She told The Charlotte Observer in an interview that her son was on a scooter when someone he knew from school pushed him off of it and provoked a fight amid a “teen takeover” event uptown.
“Even the officer was like, ‘We saw it. We know that your son didn’t have anything to do with it,’” Sturgis said. “But yet, I still have to go through this.”
Sturgis is one of several parents to express confusion and frustration about their citations from CMPD stemming from their children’s arrests on curfew and other violations that night. Some said their jobs are in danger because police have charged them. They made their initial appearances at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in a June 22 press release touted its citations to what the department said were 13 parents from the “teen takeover.”
“When juveniles violate this [curfew] ordinance, we intend to hold them and their parents accountable,” CMPD Chief of Police Estella Patterson said in the press release.
Documents obtained by the Observer in a public records request indicate that all but one of the citations issued included a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor — a Level 1 misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of 120 days in jail.
One of the individuals cited, Jahaan Norvell, told a magistrate during her court appearance Tuesday she had “no clue” what she was doing there.
According to her citation, she was charged with two misdemeanors: contributing to the delinquency of a minor and simple affray — or fighting in a public place.
“The citation is not even written clear,” Norvell told the Observer. “It’s written as though I was in a fight.”
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The teen in question in her case is a foster child temporarily under her care, she said, and the teen had run away.
Norvell had told the teen’s Department of Social Services case manager that the girl hadn’t come home after going to dinner on her birthday — two days before the uptown gathering.
The DSS case manager potentially could have picked up the girl at the police department after the girl was detained, and Norvell said police called the case manager but didn’t get an answer. So Norvell went to pick up the teen.
“I know that when I was sitting in the police precinct, the police officers were not really sure of how to fill out the paperwork,” she said.
Jamila Tucker, another parent, also appears on paper to be charged with her son’s actions — namely, resisting an officer and trespassing. She told the Observer that there is cell phone video footage that disproves it.
“There’s kids that were out there that have a video, and my son is vividly in the video being arrested, but he was not resisting,” Tucker said. “So what they have is false.”
Melissa Mendicino-Hizel said she is also confused about the situation. She said she had dropped her 13-year-old son off that day and had planned to pick him up before the curfew.
She got a call to pick up her son at a police station.
Mendicino-Hizel said her son was not a part of the “teen takeover” — that he had just gotten swept up in the crowd and ended up in Romare Bearden Park, where he was considered to be trespassing.
Sturgis and Norvell both said these charges are putting their employment at risk.
“I almost lost my job to even have to come here [to court] today,” Sturgis told the Observer after her appearance.
The cited parents who appeared on Tuesday and Wednesday are due back in court in November, causing even more uncertainty with their jobs, they said.
Norvell, the woman who was temporarily caring for the foster child who ran away, doesn’t believe issuing citations to parents is the best solution, saying it’s not a proactive way to stop “teen takeover” events.
“If you give a person jail time behind this, you’re creating even a bigger problem for the kids that need youth programs. These kids — they need programs or outlets that can guide them in the right direction. That’s how you stop it,” Norvell said. “You don’t really stop it by punishing the parents.”
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