Wells proposes emergency summer curfew for D.C. teens
By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
June 1, 2009
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| D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells, right, here with Mayor Adrian Fenty, is pushing for an earlier summer curfew for juveniles to help curb crime. (Examiner File) |
The D.C. Council will consider Tuesday whether to establish a temporary earlier curfew for juveniles under 16, an initiative designed to head off the annual spike in youth crime and violence over the summer months.
It would be the city’s first earlier summer curfew in three years.
The proposal, offered by Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells, is the only anti-crime measure on Tuesday’s agenda. A smaller emergency version of Mayor Adrian Fenty’s 100-page omnibus crime bill, dealing strictly with gangs, guns, drugs and car theft, will not be considered until June 16, Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans told The Examiner on Friday.
“This gives everyone enough time to digest what the bill was,” Evans said, explaining why the bill won’t be considered this week.
“There’s every reason to do this, to give police and law enforcement the tools they need for the summer.”
The deal to wait until mid-June, Evans said, was struck during a meeting last Monday between himself, Chairman Vincent Gray and Councilman Phil Mendelson, chairman of the public safety committee.
The District’s existing curfew law forces all youth 17 and under off the streets by 11 p.m. on weeknights and midnight on weekends. In 2007, Wells sought to cut that back by an hour between June 15 and Sept. 15, but his emergency bill was not considered.
In his 2009 version, Wells only goes after youth 15 and under. The city “experiences an increase in both youth becoming the victims of crime, as well as the perpetrators of crime,” during the summer, he wrote in a letter to Gray justifying the legislation.
“We still have had some issues of youth out too late and causing problems around Gallery Place, around two of my Metro stops,” Wells said Friday. “I really don’t think that it’s safe for 15-year-olds and younger to be out too late at night.”
Attorney General Peter Nickles said the council must make the case, with hard evidence, that lowering the curfew for certain groups is justified, or else it could get tossed out by the courts.
“I’m confident if something like that is enacted it would be challenged,” Nickles said. “I’d want to see the evidence they have used to justify it before they enact it.”
The District has not had an earlier summer curfew since 2006, during a “crime emergency” declared by former Police Chief Charles Ramsey. The one council member to vote against it: then-Ward 4 Councilman Adrian Fenty.
