The kids from Fabula's police van filed into the curfew center one by one, passing through a metal detector. Some of the girls wore tiny summer outfits and chatted on cell phones. Some boys arrived shirtless.
Half a dozen school police officers processed the youths, asking them for their names, phone numbers and addresses. The officers snapped photographs of the kids and directed them to a ring of blue metal folding chairs, where they waited while workers researched their history and contacted their parents. Some snacked on sandwiches and sipped juice donated by Aramark Food Services, which has promised to deliver food to the school each weekend to feed the curfew violators.
Malik Lomax, 10, and his friend Marcell Rush, 8, sat quietly as their mothers looked on from across the room. The boys had been playing catch outside Gilmore Homes on Mount Street when Fabula's van pulled up about 11:30 p.m. Rhona Lomax, Malik's mother, said she had been outside with them but briefly stepped inside to put an 11-month-old to bed.
Malik said he was scared when a female officer approached them.
"She just came up to me and grabbed me like I was her own child," he said. "I thought I was going to jail."
Neither of the boys had been in trouble before, their mothers said, and they were worried about how the experience would affect them.
"My child's not a bad kid," Lomax said. "He was probably scared to death."
Neither Lomax nor Marcell's mother, Aurinthia Lassiter, thought the curfew center was a bad idea in and of itself. But both said they wished officers would be more discerning in which children they detained.
Just outside the school a mother and father - the father wearing a hairnet and factory uniform - were waiting for their teenager to arrive. "I think this is a great idea," said the mother, who did not want to give her name or her son's. "I tell him a time to come in, and if he's not in, I come looking for him. Maybe this will help."
As the early morning hours ticked on, parents took longer and longer to arrive. As it neared 4 a.m., about two dozen kids remained, barely awake, in their folding chairs. A small television was set to the Hallmark Channel without sound, but nobody paid attention to it.
Some of the last few boys there were on probation and under the supervision of the Department of Juvenile Services. In all, 11 of the 64 kids yesterday had active criminal or probation cases. DJS processor Ginger Myers sat at a laptop, plugging in names and calling over kids.
Goldstein said that on earlier nights, a majority of the youths were on probation for juvenile offenses, including one who was a registered sex offender and one who was a convicted armed robber.
Tammy Brown, a DJS spokeswoman, said the caseworkers follow up with the curfew violators and sometimes increase their supervision levels. If a youth has been identified by the department's violence prevention initiative as a particular risk, he or she can be taken directly to the Juvenile Justice Center for an immediate meeting with a caseworker and a parent.
"It gives us the opportunity to have meaningful contact with them," Brown said of the curfew center. "We're reaching them immediately and finding out why they are on the streets at night."
julie.bykowicz@baltsun.com
