I was reading up on this. Basically the entire town of 15,000 is under martial law. It is really kind of fucked up, actually, but the fact that most people in the town approve the curfew lets you know how absolutely terrible it must be to live there. The mayor is pretty gung ho. He's basically like "yeah, you can sue us, but I was elected to do this, and that's what I'm doing." He is a bit of a despot himself.
None of them can sell their houses and move, because nobody wants to live there, so it's either be imprisoned by the gangs or imprisoned by the police. At least the latter won't mug you.
The police can stop you for questioning and searching if you're on public property. If they find anything they can arrest you. 30-something people have been arrested with felony charges since this started, but the ACLU is going to probably get all of these people off because of that whole "fourth amendment" deal.
The mayor is kind of a total asshole. He's a small town dictator and he's upped his salary to ,000 in a town who's average income is less than ,000 per household. His brother is the city attorney.
The police and city attorney say it is legal because it is a "Terry Stop", which allows a stop to frisk when there is probable cause that a crime is about to be committed, or that an officer's personal safety is in danger. Then again, the mayor also releases strays into the local national forest because he didn't want to work with volunteer organizations to fix up the animal control center.
Anyone else terrified of children committing crimes because of the reduced penalties for minors? Fucing The sailor who fell from grace with the sea scarred me for life.
"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. The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution."—Helena-West Helena Mayor James Valley
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” - Benjamin Franklin
I remember driving through Manassas ark and being surprised at how ghetto it looked. This coming from someone from Memphis. Little Rock is pretty bad too, hbo made a lil doc about it back in the day. Basically just don't go to any part of arkansas. Unless you wanna buy crack/meth