Mayor Muriel E. Bowser is once again criticizing the D.C. Council after it did not immediately extend a youth curfew — a tool lawmakers are torn on despite her insistence that it is necessary to address large gatherings of teenagers in the city’s buzziest corridors.
“We’re seeing children gather in large groups, very destructive behavior,” Bowser (D) said at a news conference Wednesday. “And my concern is if we don’t send a strong message that children shouldn’t be gathering in large groups, something really bad is going to happen.”
The District has been turning to special youth “curfew zones” that police say allow them to prevent or disperse the mass gatherings, but that law expired this month. On Tuesday, lawmakers voted to advance a bill permanently granting the police chief the power to declare the curfew zones, with some new restrictions.
Yet they failed for the second time in recent weeks to reach consensus on an emergency curfew measure that would go into effect immediately — illustrating again how the so-called “teen takeovers” have emerged as one of D.C. officials’ most vexing issues this year.
Bowser said Wednesday the council “needed to act yesterday,” expressing concern that the permanent version of the legislation may not be active until the fall.
U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro also bashed the council while calling for tougher accountability measures for parents whose children cause trouble in the mass meetups.
“The D.C. Council doesn’t take this stuff seriously enough. They think teens and juveniles in this city, in this District, need to be coddled,” Pirro said. “I think the people of the District understand that is not the case, that there is too much harm going on.”
Over the summer, the city began imposing a daily 11 p.m. curfew for people under the age of 18 and authorized the police chief to set 8 p.m. “curfew zones” barring young people from gathering in groups of more than eight in designated areas. Yet after repeated extensions, and promises from city leaders and lawmakers to work toward a permanent solution, the policy expired last week.
Bowser last week imposed an emergency 15-day youth curfew to buy time before the council took up the issue again. That curfew expires May 1, and Bowser said Wednesday that she can’t simply repeatedly reissue emergency orders.
On Tuesday, in an 8-5 vote, lawmakers advanced a longer-term version of the curfew legislation after council members Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), the bill’s sponsor, and Doni Crawford (I-At Large) struck a compromise with Bowser. It sets guardrails around how police can enforce the curfew and would also require the mayor to offer alternative youth programming any time a curfew zone is in effect, which Crawford pushed for.
But the measure requires a second vote, is subject to congressional review and could take weeks or months to become effective.
An emergency bill would allow the city to fill in the gap for up to 90 days. It needs a supermajority to pass, however, and despite hours of backchanneling and public debate Tuesday, it became clear to D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) that lawmakers did not have the ninth vote required to get it past the finish line.
Rather than let the emergency fail, Mendelson successfully motioned to delay the vote again. He said he did not want to give political ammunition to critics of the District, a clear allusion to Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration.
“There are folks who are not friends to the District who are looking very intently at what we are doing and what we are not doing,” Mendelson said. “It’s not just how we deal with these gatherings, which is the paramount concern, but it’s also whether we are self-inflicting some wounds on ourselves.”
The frequent “teen takeovers,” at hot spots such as Navy Yard and the U Street corridor, are part of a national phenomenon often driven by social media. Some teens say that the gatherings are meant to give young people ways to socialize and that D.C. lacks late-night hangout spots. In some cases, though, the large gatherings have ended in violence — including robberies and, on some occasions, gunfire — fueling arguments from curfew supporters that the measure is intended to keep young people safe.
Opponents of the District’s curfew argue it has led to more confrontations between young people and National Guard members or police officers, who they say have in some cases blocked teens from accessing Metro stations and harassed them. Video published by Fox 5 showed a D.C. police officer grabbing a young woman and pulling her off a bike next to the Navy Yard Metro station in a curfew zone on Saturday night, an incident that a D.C. police spokesman said was under investigation.
The debate over how to respond to takeovers has also exposed fault lines between top candidates in the city’s marquee races for mayor and House delegate.
While Pinto led the effort to extend the youth curfew, her top opponent in the Democratic primary to replace Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), council member Robert C. White Jr. (At Large), opposed it. “I understand the political pressure to not be seen as soft on crime, but at some point we at least gotta be logical. This is not logical,” he said, pointing out that the mass gatherings have persisted despite the existence of the curfew tool.
Likewise, in the mayoral race to replace Bowser, former council member Kenyan R. McDuffie said at a candidate forum Monday that he saw the curfew as a tool to keep teens safe when hundreds gather. His top opponent, council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4), stood firm in her opposition on Tuesday, believing it has done the opposite.
“Utilizing this tool while this city is currently under federal occupation is dangerous,” Lewis George said, decrying increased interactions between teens and armed police and troops. “It is dangerous for our young people. It’s dangerous for our community as a whole, and the risk does not outweigh the perceived benefits.”
Bowser shot back against that rationale on Wednesday, saying that when hundreds of youths are gathered, the police chief must divert resources from other neighborhoods to “babysit” the large groups — potentially affecting public safety elsewhere.
“This is a tool we need,” Bowser said. “It’s time for people to put politics aside and listen to commonsense.”
Crawford, who is running in a special election to fill the council seat vacated by McDuffie, said she hoped several amendments she crafted would work as a compromise to satisfy concerns raised by her colleagues.
Under the permanent version that advanced Tuesday, the Bowser administration must host an event, or partner with a community organization to host one, that could function as an alternative supervised space for children to have fun any time a special youth curfew zone is declared. The city has recently hosted such events at recreation centers, which youth advocates say have been working well, even as some oppose the curfew.
“They deserve to have spaces where they’re safe, where they are having fun, where they can gather,” said Samantha Davis, a lead organizer with Free DC and Youth Power & Safety Collective.
The amended version would also add guardrails around police enforcement intended to minimize unnecessary interactions between officers and teens, such as restricting police from stopping individual teens or those in small groups for questioning, or dispersing them before the curfew begins. It also changes the citywide youth curfew from 11 p.m. to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays and in July and August.
Bowser initially expressed strong opposition to many of the changes, including the programming requirement, but ultimately agreed to absorb the costs of expanded programming this summer.
“I was not comfortable voting for the emergency three weeks ago without pairing juvenile curfew zones with some type of activity for youth, and I felt the same way today,” Crawford said in an interview. “I relayed that to the mayor, and I think she understood where I was coming from.”
Pinto told reporters she would be working with lawmakers and the mayor to rally support for an emergency curfew measure, inviting those in opposition to come to the table to be clear about what they want to see to reach agreement.
“This is really all about protecting our kids and making sure they can enjoy their city safely, and we as adults in the city need to be on the same page about that,” she said.
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