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Police tell Council repeated stationhouse adjustments and parental noncompliance limit juvenile accountability
Summary
Florence police told Council that repeated stationhouse adjustments and parental nonresponsiveness make holding juveniles accountable difficult; Sergeant Shafer reported over 20 stationhouse adjustments in the district this year and said officers try to pair corrective steps with mentoring.
Sergeant Shafer told Council that the police department faces limits keeping juveniles accountable when parents do not engage and when school-based stationhouse adjustments are repeated.
"They had over 20 different stationhouse adjustments in the school district this year," he said, and described the department’s approach of combining required clean-up tasks with mentoring conversations; he added that among students handled this way there were no repeat offenders in the period he described. Shafer said DCP&P is contacted when parents refuse to pick up juveniles; otherwise the department performs well-being checks and coordinates with schools.
Chief Boldizar reminded the meeting that legal remedies often require court or prosecutor involvement and said an ordinance used in a larger town to charge parents produced limited charging ("6 out of 24 juveniles," he said anecdotally about that town) and required review by the county prosecutor’s juvenile unit. Council and residents spoke about the need for parental accountability while recognizing legal and practical limits to enforcement.
