A Charlotte City Council committee voted Tuesday to move the city toward a single 9 p.m. curfew for everyone under 18, replacing a set of rules that now vary by age. The vote was unanimous. By the account of the members who cast it, the curfew is also only part of what the problem requires.
The council's Safety Committee, chaired by Council Member Danté Anderson of District 1, took up the proposal at a special meeting called after a summer of large, unsupervised youth gatherings that police and residents have taken to calling "teen takeovers." One at Romare Bearden Park last month ended in 24 arrests and a confiscated firearm; another broke up over the weekend at the University City Boardwalk. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Estella Patterson and the city attorney's office brought the committee a recommendation to replace the current tiered curfew with a flat one. The committee's job Tuesday was to decide whether the idea moves to the full council. It does.
What the proposal changes
Under the ordinance now on the books, the curfew depends on age: 11 p.m. for children 13 to 15, and 10 p.m. for those 12 and under. The recommendation collapses that into one line: 9 p.m., every day of the week, for everyone 17 and under. The existing exceptions survive. A minor accompanied by a parent or a guardian older than 21 is exempt, as is one traveling to or from work.
Patterson told the committee she did not want a tiered approach, and her reasoning was practical rather than philosophical. "When we talk about different ages, it's hard to determine what the age of an individual is if they don't have an ID with them," she said. A single, lower cutoff is easier for an officer to enforce on a sidewalk at night than a sliding scale that turns on a birthdate the officer cannot check.
Patterson was careful about the goal. "We're not trying to penalize, if you will, these young people," she said. "That is our goal, to make sure that our young people are in safe environments." Council Member Dimple Ajmera put it more bluntly later: "This conversation is not about criminalizing our youth." The ordinance the committee is amending is already called the Youth Protection Ordinance, a name Anderson returned to more than once.
The vote, and what comes next
Ajmera, who serves at-large, made the motion to approve the recommendations. Council Member Malcolm Graham of District 2 seconded it. Anderson called for a show of hands, asked whether anyone opposed, and recorded the result as unanimous.
That does not make the curfew law. The vote advances the recommendation to the full City Council, which is expected to take it up in August. Until the full council acts, the current tiered curfew stands.
The enforcement question
The members who voted yes spent most of the meeting pressing on how the ordinance would actually work, and whether the city could show that it does.
Council Member Ed Driggs of District 7 returned to that point repeatedly. "My specific question is, is there data around this?" he asked. Patterson said she had spoken with counterparts in Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Nashville but did not have hard numbers in hand. Driggs also questioned the enforcement itself: "Are you going to end up arresting a lot of people who are up to 18 years old?"
Police described a progressive approach: education and warnings first, citations and arrests only when necessary. Deputy Chief Jacquelyn Bryley said officers start with a warning before moving to tickets or arrests. A curfew citation, unlike the civil fines the city has struggled to collect from street vendors, goes on the ticket book and carries a district-court date.
The numbers CMPD brought to the meeting complicated the picture. A department presentation counted 456 overnight juvenile incidents this year against only 33 recorded curfew violations. An officer attributed the gap to how charges are tracked: a juvenile stopped at a gathering is often booked on a more serious charge or routed through a diversion program, and the curfew violation drops off the report. CMPD said it would begin counting curfew violations on its own going forward. Ajmera asked for a follow-up report in 60 to 80 days on whether the change is working.
The city attorney's office laid out what the law already allows. Jessica Battle, of the city attorney's office, said Charlotte can hold parents accountable through the existing charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and that a section of the current curfew ordinance already makes it a violation for anyone 16 or older to encourage juveniles to attend such gatherings. The city could also attach a fine, which Battle said some peer cities set around $500, collected through criminal court rather than the civil process.
The other half
The members who spoke kept returning to the same point: the curfew is not a plan by itself.
"Our youth are really crying out for safe third spaces," Anderson said, "outside of home and outside of school. There's really no place for them to go." CMPD has been running its own programs to give kids somewhere to go, a summer jam series and pool events that have drawn a few hundred children at a time. Dr. Raquishela Stewart, who directs the department that oversees the city's Office of Youth Opportunities, described the city's side: an Envision program that grew from 50 participants to 100, 250 county recreation-center passes with 50 more under discussion, and a newly hired coordinator to line up more partners.
The demand outstrips what the city has built. Graham, whose district includes Johnson C. Smith University, said a single free camp there drew close to 700 applicants it could not all serve. Council Member Kimberly Owens of District 6 pressed Battle on whether the city could reach the adults who organize the gatherings. Battle said the tools exist, but that identifying the organizers is the hard part.
Patterson addressed her presentation to Mayor Rob Harrington and the committee, and noted that roughly 50 or 60 people from churches and community groups had come to the meeting to offer programs of their own. The committee's recommendation now waits for the full council. Writing the 9 p.m. line will be the simple part. The members who voted for it spent the meeting on the harder one.