Lower Allen Web Log

Sitting at the breakfast table this morning, I read the Sunday Patriot-News article about Mechanicsburg's apparently new loitering issue:

"A group of young women who want to help solve a problem with kids who have turned a downtown Mechanicsburg block into a late-night, outdoor clubhouse, went before borough council last week with pleas for understanding.

'I'm really sorry if this offends someone but this town is boring,' Cortney Harner, 19, said at Tuesday's borough council meeting. 'We're not bad kids. We don't try to cause trouble. We're just trying to hang out with our friends.'

Maybe so, said council President Rodney White, the former police chief. 'But when you gather up a group of 20 people, it's intimidating to some people, he said...."

For my friends on Mechanicsburg Borough Council, may I offer one low tech solution: Mozart.

In an Economist article in 2005:

"THE question of how to control yobbish behaviour troubles many. One increasingly popular solution is classical music, which is apparently painful to teenage ears. Co-op, a chain of grocery stores, is experimenting with playing classical music outside its shops, to stop youths from hanging around and intimidating customers. It seems to work well. Staff have a remote control and “can turn the music on if there's a situation developing and they need to disperse people”, says Steve Broughton of Co-op.

The most extensive use of aural policing so far, though, has been in underground stations. Six stops on the Tyneside Metro currently pump out Haydn and Mozart to deter vandals and loiterers, and the scheme has been so successful that it has spawned imitators. After a pilot at Elm Park station on the London Underground, classical music now fills 30 other stations on the network. The most effective deterrents, according to a spokesman for Transport for London, are anything sung by Pavarotti or written by Mozart."

So crank up "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik", and watch the sidewalks clear.