Legal News

24-Hour Curfew in Arkansas Town Raises Ire of ACLU

By Ashby Jones

Holly Dickson, a lawyer for the ACLU of Arkansas, addresses a City Council meeting in Helena West Helena, Ark., Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008, regarding the city’s curfew in some neighborhoods. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)

We’ve never been to Helena, Arkansas, but these days it doesn’t sound like such a welcoming place. The poverty-stricken town has been under a 24-hour curfew for a week, during which time officers armed with military rifles have been stopping and questioning passers-by in one neighborhood.

On Tuesday, the Helena-West Helena City Council (the two towns merged a few years ago) voted 9-0 to allow police to expand that program into any area of the city, despite a warning from a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas that the police stops were unconstitutional. Here’s the AP story, and one from the Helena Daily-World.

According to the AP, Helena-West Helena, with 15,000 residents at the edge of Arkansas’ eastern rice fields and farmland, is in one of the nation’s poorest regions, trailing even parts of Appalachia in its standard of living.

Police Chief Fred Fielder said the patrols have netted 32 arrests since they began last week in a 10-block neighborhood. The council said those living in the city want the random shootings and drug-fueled violence to stop, no matter what the cost.

“Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I’m fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here,” Mayor James Valley said. “The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution.”

Holly Dickson, a lawyer for the ACLU of Arkansas who addressed the council at its Tuesday meeting predicted that any convictions coming from the arrests likely would be overturned. “The residents of these high-crime areas are already victims,” she said. “They’re victims of what are happening in the neighborhoods, they’re victims of fear. But for them to be subject to unlawful stops and questioning . . . that is not going to ultimately going to help this situation.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 13, 2008 (boomark / email).