Rejecting the possibility of a curfew limited to public housing communities in Annapolis, city lawmakers are instead looking into enacting a citywide curfew for youngsters to help reduce violent crime.
Joining in a chorus of criticism since Mayor Ellen O. Moyer floated the idea this week, the eight aldermen on the city council all said yesterday that targeting selected neighborhoods could be unconstitutional and would discriminate against people based on their socioeconomic status.
"The people who are committing the crimes are not only living in public housing," said Alderwoman Classie Hoyle. "The drive-by shooters don't live where they committed the crimes. So to say only `public housing,' that would be unfair."
The debate was prompted by the killing of a 17-year-old boy Sunday night in a troubled public housing development and a shooting two days later in another high-crime neighborhood. Now council members are considering a range of times for a curfew, including one from 10 p.m. to 3 p.m. the next day that would also be designed to address truancy. Another component would offer curfew offenders access to social services.
All would be measures that could be put into place quickly in the city, which has four homicides this year, half of last year's record total. The perceived increase in crime in the state capital has drawn the attention of federal and state law enforcement, which last month launched the far-reaching "Safe Streets" initiative, perhaps to be used as a model across Maryland.
Hundreds of cities, including Baltimore, Washington and Hagerstown, have enacted juvenile curfews in the past three decades. In 2006, the National League of Cities found that more than half of the U.S. cities surveyed had implemented a daytime or nighttime curfew to deter youth violence, crime and gang activity. Most were optimistic about the results: 96 percent viewed their laws as very or somewhat effective for combating juvenile crime in their communities, with 93 percent saying curfew enforcement was a good use of police officers' time.
Leon T. Andrews, the league's director of youth development, said curfews have been established as an effective short-term solution, but they do not address the broader issue of juvenile crime.
"Cities understand that you need to stop surges of violence that you may see from time to time. But you can't arrest your way out of this problem," Andrews said. "They need to balance that immediate approach by getting key stakeholders to sit down and say, `We need to change our social norm.'"
