Because we all know teenagers never do unsavory acts behind their parent's backs or try to blame adults for their own sneaky misdeeds, Laguna Beach government officials are imposing a new anti-teen drinking ordinance designed to criminally punish parents accused of not stopping underaged drinking on their property.
In a scene stolen from Mao's communist China playbook, the city's Social Host Ordinance (SHO) also protects the intoxicated teenagers from accountability for drinking with an “immunity clause.”
All the teens have to do to keep their own criminal records clean is call police and inform on their parents for not properly supervising them inline with government demands.
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Laguna Beach Police Chief Paul Workman sees the nanny state rule, which expands his powers, as an excellent way to finally nab “very irresponsible” adults.
(Have you ever seen a cop turn down more authority?)
Rich Kane's Laguna Beach Patch has an excellent story outlining the debate over the ordinance and includes a fitting quote from Maurice Possley, a Pulitizer-winning journalist who lives in the city.
“It's an ill-conceived, vaguely worded and unnecessary law that will inevitably have unintended consequences for taxpayers, for parents, for our students and our village,” said Possley. “I have seen no evidence at all that it's a problem that requires a solution. It's a solution without a problem . . . Our nation increasingly turns to law enforcement to solve our social problems. That is not a solution.”
Exactly.
(You know, the city council could end all underage drinking in homes if police placed surveillance cameras inside all houses. No, wait. Then, the kids could empty Coke cans, pour alcohol inside and nobody would know. Rats. So . . . the council could station a cop in every home to make sure their fears aren't realized.)
Nevertheless, the measure passed 5-0 and, according to Kane, is scheduled for final city approval at a December council meeting.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.