Before the Black community celebrates Columbus' new youth curfew, ask yourself one question. Who is most likely to pay the price? The first violation is a warning. The second can lead to a citation and court involvement. Now ask yourself something even bigger. How does an officer know who is 15, 16, or 17 years old just by looking at them? They don't. That means more young-looking people may be stopped, questioned, and asked to prove their age during curfew hours. Even when an officer is acting within the law, those encounters can affect teens who have done nothing wrong other than look young. Research has consistently shown that Black youth have more contact with the juvenile justice system than many other groups. If that pattern continues under a curfew, then our community has to ask whether we have fully considered who will bear the greatest burden of enforcement. Protecting our children is a goal we all share. But protection cannot be measured only by how many teens are taken home after curfew. It must also be measured by how many unnecessary police encounters we create, how many young people are introduced to the juvenile justice system, and whether the policy actually makes our neighborhoods safer. The real question is not whether teenagers should be home at night. The real question is whether we demanded proof that this approach works before giving government another reason to stop, question, and investigate young people based primarily on the belief that they might be under 18. If our goal is to protect Black youth, then we have to ask the hardest question of all: Does this policy reduce violence, or does it simply increase police contact with the very young people we say we are trying to protect?