It's about 3:20 a.m. when a mother in a smiley-face do-rag, sweats and pink bedroom slippers steps into the bright lights of the elementary school gymnasium, anything but happy as she scans a semicircle of kids in folding chairs for her teenage daughter. Close behind is a woman in all black, clutching a pack of Newport cigarettes. She shakes her head in disgust when her 16-year-old boy spots her and smiles broadly.
These sleepy mothers have come to retrieve their children from Baltimore's new curfew center at Dallas F. Nicholas Sr. Elementary School in Barclay, open from midnight to 4 a.m. each Friday, Saturday and Sunday until school resumes this fall.
Overnight yesterday, 64 boys and girls - a mix of older teens with records of assault and drug possession, and little kids who'd been playing baseball behind their apartment building - were swept up by patrol officers throughout the city and deposited at the curfew center to wait for their parents.
City curfew for kids under 17 - midnight Saturday and Sunday morning and 11 p.m. other nights of the week - has been on the books since 1978. But this is the first time that curfew enforcement has moved beyond being what Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III recently described as "a de facto cab service."
Now, the city corrals the young violators in a building full of workers who want to do more. The youths are photographed and interviewed and checked in a computer database of open warrants or probation records. They're fed a boxed lunch. Then comes the call to their parents, who arrive sometimes hours later, almost always disgruntled, with identification in hand. The parents are given a primer on curfew law and the penalties they face if their children get picked up again: up to $300 and 60 days in jail.
The past two summers, the city had a similar but less inclusive curfew center at Dunbar High School. That curfew center processed 2,300 violators last year, city officials said, but it didn't offer any services or check their backgrounds. This summer and next, a $120,000 federal grant will pay for the curfew center.
Juvenile curfews have always been controversial. Police say it helps them keep crime down, but civil libertarians say it takes away a parent's discretion. In an urban setting like Baltimore, there's an extra complication: Families without air conditioning often use the outdoors as an extension of their living space. Some parents at the curfew center overnight yesterday complained that it was unfair to pick up youngsters who might be sitting outside on a hot summer night, even in the wee hours.
