It strikes me as unjust to punish all kids because of the acts of a few. So when I heard about the Aurora Mall’s new curfew for children, set to start Sept. 9, I was immediately suspicious.
The mall is calling it part of its Families First “program,” a phony spin to what casts all kids as irresponsible and disrespectful. No other mall in Colorado bans unaccompanied kids on Friday and Saturday evenings.
I asked Alisa Sill, a spokeswoman for the Aurora Mall, to explain the reasoning.
“We’ve been noticing an increase in the number of youth at the mall on Friday and Saturday evenings, specifically unsupervised youth,” Sill began. “Often times, if there are large groups of youths, it can intimidate shoppers.”
I told her I’ve never been intimidated by groups of teens at a mall.
“You might feel different,” she told me. “In our experience, it can be intimidating.”
I doubt she’s talking about groups of girls.
Let’s be real. What she’s really saying is that groups of teens – particularly black and Latino dressed in hip-hop clothing – scare adults who associate the look with gangbangers.
That explains why 17-year-old William Tate says he’s followed nearly every time he goes to the Aurora Mall.
Tate, who is black, wears size 38 jeans, even though he’s really a 32, because “that’s the style I grew up with.” The day I met him, he was wearing a baggy black T-shirt depicting Al Pacino in “Scarface” and a black do-rag over his head.
It doesn’t matter that he buys something every time he goes to the mall. Security guards tell him and his friends to “split up” if there are more than four of them walking together, which is mall policy.
“We have to say all right, otherwise they tell us to leave,” Tate told me. (He complies because he knows they are serious. He says he’s been asked to leave on three occasions.)
He said security guards follow him and his friends like shadows, and if they start to laugh too hard the guard will walk closer. “I say: ‘We’re just laughing, man. We can’t laugh?’ ”
Apparently, in America if you’re a teen wearing the wrong kind of clothes, you get put in the same camp as the thug-wannabes who come to the mall to cause trouble.
No doubt the mall has had problems with kids who misbehave.
The problem for security guards is that in a culture dominated by hip-hop fashion – gold chains, do-rags, droopy clothing – you can’t tell the good kids from the troublemakers.
The preppy-looking kids get a slide. White kids can dress preppy or wear skater clothes and not get guff. The pressure is intense for male blacks and Latinos to conform to the hip-hop “uniform.” But it makes them targets.
The suspicion doesn’t go away, because there’s always some numbskull dressed the same way who thinks he’s got to act loud and tough to keep up his image.
Instead of increasing security to deal with those kids, no teens under age 17 will be able to hang out at the mall without an adult after 5 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays – one of the few safe places for them.
Nina West, a freshman at Eaglecrest High School, who likes to hang out at the mall on Friday and Saturday nights, says that aside from the movies, the mall is the only place in town she can go to with friends.
After studying hard at school all week, what will she do on weekend nights?
“I probably won’t go anywhere. I will probably stay at home and do nothing,” she told me.
If I were her, I’d do something else: Get some signs and protest outside the mall.
Cindy Rodríguez’s column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in Scene. Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
