"Everybody's working together to make the city safer," Brown said.

"I'm all for it," said Greg Woytila, the school superintendent. "When you've got 3,000-plus students and two or three are out of control, that's too many. One's too many. Sometimes the police officers are the only ones trying. The families have given up."

North Tonawanda already had a law on the books that established the principle of parental liability for kids' misbehavior – a curfew law that bars unaccompanied minors from being on the streets after 11 p.m. on weeknights or midnight on weekends.

It allows the police to cite the parents of the curfew violators, although it is seldom done. Brown, the city attorney, said he saw no more than one or two such tickets in 2016, seven or eight so far this year.

That law previously required the city judges to let parents off with a warning the first time they were charged with allowing their kids to break curfew.

But since a unanimous Council vote Tuesday, the first time could now lead to jail time. The Council also included the possibility of charges for parents of bullies or hosts of rowdy parties. But the jail term or the maximum fine are not mandatory.