Recently, flash mobs have become really popular in The City of Brotherly Love (Philadelphia). However, I'm not talking about the type of flash mobs that gathers in the hundreds, if not thousands, to sing and dance out of the blue. I'm talking about the type of flash mobs that goes around and punches random people in the face and/or rob stores. Both types of flash mobs can and will occur at anytime. Unfortunately, Philly has been terrorized by the bad kind of flash mobs.

Last Friday, the city took measures in it's own hands (ordered by the mayor, of course) to do whatever it takes to prevent another bad flash mob incident. What did they do? They imposed a teen curfew in the DOWNTOWN area. I had to emphasize the word "downtown" because Center City (downtown Philadelphia) is just a small section of the city. There are over 2 million people living in the city; there are just about 88,000 or so living in the downtown area. With this new curfew in place, anyone under 18 caught walking around the downtown area after 9PM will be arrested and sent to their local jail.

Since last Friday, the Philadelphia Police Department have arrested over 66 kids. Most are probably innocent and knew nothing about the curfew. Heck, I didn't know of it until that Friday morning.

Anyway, it's been several days since the curfew took effect; is it really preventing new incidents from occurring? Perhaps. Or, not at all. Sure, there may be no incidents right now, but that doesn't mean that the dangerous group of teens aren't planning another attack during the pre-9PM hours. Does the city have a plan to prevent that from happening??? They say they do, but I disagree. There's absolutely no way to prevent every single person from attacking another person EVEN if you have ALL of officers walking around and patrolling each and every single neighborhood. BTW, Philadelphia does not have that many cops to be able to do that.

Oh by the way, the city spent over $56,000 on overtime last weekend for their curfew-flash-mob-prevention program (according to the Commish). There are 52 weekends in a year, so let's do the math here... $56,000 X 52 = OMFG city debt crisis! The total is around $2,912,000 BTW if you don't know how to use a calculator. That's not including each and every officers' yearly salary either.

In short, the City of Philadelphia is on a desperate move to protect it's citizens from random acts of violence caused by random groups of teens. Their efforts may seem to be working, but they may also be putting the wrong teens in jail. Flash mobs, especially dangerous ones, may and WILL happen anywhere at anytime. THAT is why they are called "flash mobs".