'We were never contacted': Meck­lenburg sheriff pushes back on Charlotte's new teen curfew – Spectrum News

‘We were never contacted’: Meck­lenburg sheriff pushes back on Charlotte’s new teen curfew  Spectrum News

Mecklenburg County's sheriff says his deputies won't enforce Charlotte's new teen curfew, citing lack of communication and guidelines. CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Less than a week after Charlotte’s new teen curfew took effect, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden says his deputies will not participate in enforcing the pilot program, citing a lack of communication from city officials and concerns about how it will be enforced. The curfew, which went into effect Nov. 1, requires anyone under 18 to be home by 10 p.m. every night, with certain exceptions. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Estella Patterson says the 10-month pilot program is designed to protect young people, following a series of large, unsupervised teen gatherings known as “teen takeovers” across Charlotte and the state this summer.

“The curfew pilot that we’re doing is about safety. It’s not about enforcement. It’s not about a pipeline to prison for our young people. It’s about their safety,” Patterson said. Patterson said the goal is to prevent violence involving young people. “The hardest thing that our detectives have to do, our homicide detectives, is to go to a parent and tell them the bad news that their child has been killed. We don’t want that to happen. So as much as we can minimize that, that’s what we want to do," Patterson said. However, not all law enforcement