The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Curfews

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Darien Smith, a 17-year-old youth, went on trial in Detroit today charged with violating the city's curfew for teenagers. The case has attracted national attention because the curfew is being challenged on two grounds: that it is unconstitutional, and that it's not an effective way to keep idle teenagers out of trouble. Detroit's curfew law had been dormant for a long time when the city ordered police to start enforcing it this summer to deal with a rising youth crime rate and high unemployment. All those under 18 have to be off the streets by 10 p.m. on week nights and 11 on weekends. If not, they face arrest, fines or jail. The American Civil Liberties Union claims the law is unconstitutional, and is defending Darien Smith today. But the Detroit police union also objects. It says the curfew effort is only for show and doesn't work. Detroit officials say it is fair and it is working. With the official youth unemployment rate running at 24% across the nation, and more than double that in some cities, Detroit isn't alone with a problem of what to do with teenagers. Tonight, with views from Detroit and three other large cities, we look at the curfew approach and other solutions. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the order to enforce the curfew in Detroit came from the city's long-time mayor, Coleman Young. In a speech to law enforcement officials earlier this summer he defended the action this way.

COLEMAN YOUNG, Mayor of Detroit [June 29, 1983]: As you all know, there have been some alarming signs out there for the last several weeks involving young people, youth, young adults -- incidents of promiscuous shooting, widespread muggings, rapings and too much killing of innocent bystanders. All these problems have one common characteristic -- uncontrolled numbers of young people roaming at will and gathering together in great numbers and perhaps encouraging each other to do things that they would not do as individuals or in small groups. I believe there's a direct relationship between lack of an opportunity to find a job, lack of an opportunity to achieve human dignity and crime in the streets. But unfortunately there are those of us who have the problem of maintaining tranquility and peace in our streets whether there are jobs or not.

LEHRER: Mayor Young's chief executive assistant Fred Martin is with us from Detroit from the studios of public station WTVS. Mr. Martin, is it just for show as the Detroit police union has charged, this curfew business?

FRED MARTIN: Well, we think the complaints that may have come from some of the police officers probably is posturing with respect to the fact we're now in negotiations. But we have not received, either generally from the police department nor from the community at large, any sustained criticism of that curfew.

LEHRER: Is it your position and the position of the Mayor that it has been effective, the curfew?

Mr. MARTIN: We think it has. We're approaching the end of August; there have been some 240 youngsters detained. I think the key element in the effectiveness has been what is the support of parents who initially apparently went along with the curfew. There was no large outcry from parents. We consider that they're a key group in any measure similar to this.

LEHRER: Well, having --

Mr. MARTIN: We do think it's been effective.

LEHRER: Having listened to what the Mayor said in June, Mr. Martin, 240 arrests doesn't sound like that many people. Can you put that in some frame of reference so we can understand that better?

Mr. MARTIN: Well, we've had some experience in Detroit, and I think we've profited by that experience. What we did this time was, rather than wait for the situation to get practically out of hand, the Mayor took steps before any events became seriously critical. The curfew was one of them; increasing some police presence was another. Now, the curfew and its enforcement is obviously based to a large degree on the judgment of police officers. If young people are on their way from events, clearly on their way home, and not apparently planning to get into any disruptive behavior, then obviously in the situation like that the officers who might observe these youngsters were not making arrests. So we think -- and the judgment of those officers obviously is based on what we think and are very proud of in Detroit, the development of a positive relationship between the police and the community. So with the police and the community having that base of cooperation and understanding, trained officers using their judgment, the number doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, we should have had hundreds and hundreds more and it hasn't been effective.

LEHRER: Has there been any direct relationship between the curfew and any significant drops in the incidence of crime being committed by young people in Detroit?

Mr. MARTIN: No, obviously it's too early to make any analysis with respect to the initiation of the curfew, and crime rates, particulary those that may have been committed by young people who have been affected by the curfew limitations. We do not have the data to make that analysis at this date.

LEHRER: So how do you measure the effectiveness then?

Mr. MARTIN: Of general incidence of disruption. Prior to the curfew there were a couple of situations where congregations of young people tended, during or after certain events, to move off and to create some difficulties in certain parts of the city. We have seen a reduction in those kinds of incidents.

LEHRER: Finally, Mr. Martin, let me ask you this. Are you convinced that a curfew like that is fair to young people, to treat all young people in the same category based solely on their age, regardless of what their backgrounds, regardless of what their records and other things may be?

Mr. MARTIN: Well, obviously, since we as individuals do not walk up and down the streets with any magic card where a police officer or anybody else can make an assessment of all those characteristics, and when there is the potential threat of disruption that might get out of hand, the Mayor has to take steps and he did. We think that the curfew is in the best interests of the young people that it affects. The parents seem to think so, and we think it's been well accepted in the Detroit community at large.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Now a view from another big city with problems of youth crime and high unemployment -- Newark, New Jersey. Hubert Williams is Newark's director of police. Director, what do you think of the curfew idea?

HUBERT WILLIAMS: Well, without making any judgments on the situation in Detroit --

MacNEIL: For Newark, I mean.

Dir. WILLIAMS: -- factual circumstances, I don't know. But to enforce curfew in Newark would require a significant commitment of personnel to deal with people that are not in the process of commiting any of the kind of crimes that the public is concerned about. People are concerned in Newark about violent crime, about attacks on themselves or their property. If you tie your manpower up in dealing with teenagers that may be frolicking on the street corners, then you will not have the resources available to deal with the major problems, unless you have unlimited resources, which we do not have in the city of Newark.

MacNEIL: Do you in fact have a curfew law on the books in Newark?

Dir. WILLIAMS: We have a curfew law.

MacNEIL: Have you talked about trying to enforce it?

Dir. WILLIAMS: We've thought about enforcing the curfew law, but we came across some interesting barriers. One was if you enforce the curfew law, you're going to -- and you're effective, you're going to force these youngsters back into their homes. In many instances in poor communities, you have a number of families living together in one apartment. When the temperature is 90 degrees outside, what are you really saying to those kids? What is the alternative for the streets? It seems to me that the enforcement of laws designed to effectuate removal of our youth from the streets should have a concomitant purpose, and that is to put them in a more positive environment where you can engage them in constructive activity, and hopefully you can shape their value systems where they'll affect their behavior in a positive way.

MacNEIL: Is removing young people from the streets a deterrent -- a way of reducing youth crime? I mean, is it a crime threat to have a bunch of young kids hanging around in the streets with nothing to do?

Dir. WILLIAMS: Well, quite frankly, I think that youth clustered on street corners constitutes a symbol of fear and may as well constitute a symbol of crime. People see these kids on the street corners and they become afraid. And also in instances they're attacked -- they're mugged, they're robbed, things like that. So I think that it's an important police strategy to effectuate removal of these clusters from off corners. That does not mean that you throw the net so broadly that kids that are on the street for legitimate purpose will be taken off the street. And it also implies what I've said before, that you should have a program that will do something positive for the kids.

Now, in Newark we have worked out a program with our board of education called the SEE program, Self Esteem Enhancement. This program is designed to take kids and put them into a constructive atmosphere, into an atmosphere where they can achieve something. We've learned things based on our past experiences in the city that an awful lot of kids have had failures in everything they've tried in their life, and in many, many instances they do not have the role models or the direction to put them into a positive track so that they can get out of where they are into something that's more constructive. So we've embarked on a sort of bold venture, I think, where we're going to have police officers working with teachers in the school system to teach arts, to teach craft, to bring back the days when we used to have the canteens in the schools where kids could engage in healthy dance or in theatre, in arts. To open up the schools in the evenings so that if a kid is not on the street corner, the kid will have a place to go and do something constructive.

MacNEIL: Well, okay. We'll come back and discuss those kinds of possibilities in a moment. Jim?

LEHRER: Our third city is Miami, Florida, which has been hit also with high youth unemployment, particularly in the Overtown section of the city, but the police approach is different than Detroit's. Instead of sending the kids home, the police department invites them out to a park for boxing, softball and other sports. The athletic program is run by Sergeant Patrick Burns, an 11-year Miami police veteran. Sergeant, how would a curfew work in Miami?

PATRICK BURNS: Well, we have a curfew that's on the books for emergency use only, and in the case of civil unrest or something like that, which we really think about it before we enact it. My personal feelings are that a curfew would not work. I think that there's just such a small number of youths in comparison to the large number of youths that are really good young people and can accept the responsibility of perhaps staying out past 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock, and can come home without getting themselves into trouble. We do have laws on the books. We have a loitering and prowling charge where, if we see juveniles and, for that matter, adults that are loitering perhaps late at night in a place that they shouldn't be, or a large group gathering, that we can take and effect arrests if we feel it necessary. Again, it's up to the discretion of the police officer. In the city of Miami, as you know, we've had our troubles and we have introduced new programs. Chief Kenneth Harms has worked very, very hard in the Overtown area. He has implemented a new police station in the Overtown area. This is a substation to our police station. And he is currently building -- which I am coordinating and running -- an athletic program in the Overtown area.

LEHRER: I want to ask you about your program in a moment, but back to the curfew. You heard what Mr. Martin said, that the curfew was accepted by the young people, accepted by the parents, accepted by the community at large and that's the key to its success in his opinion. How would such a thing be accepted in Miami?

Sgt. BURNS: Again, I am not real sure because we haven't been faced with the same situation as Detroit has. We stay on the groups pretty much. If we have a group of youths out after 11 or 12 o'clock, we're going to move in and we're going to break them up, whether the law --

LEHRER: Without a curfew law?

Sgt. BURNS: Without a curfew -- without the books on the -- without the law on the books itself, we will go in there and we'll break them right up and we'll make them move on. Now, if the -- we -- of course, again, it's judgment. If we think -- we know who most of the bad guys are, and we know who most of the good kids are. And in a matter of a minute or so you can quickly determine whether this person is a troublemaker or not, and we have a way of suggesting that they move on for their own good, and if not, if they put us in the situation where they leave us no alternaive, then we will take them down to the station and have their parents come down and pick them up.

LEHRER: What are they charged with? They're not charged with violation of a curfew. What in fact would they -- loitering or something like that?

Sgt. BURNS: It'd either be -- a loitering and prowling charge.

LEHRER: All right, tell me about your program, your athletic program.

Sgt. BURNS: It's called the Miami police department Overtown athletic program and Chief Harms is a strong advocate of sports. He's been involved in high school sports for a number of years, and I've been coaching high school wrestling now for 11 years. And he came and he -- he talked to me about developing a program in Overtown. In Overtown they have absolutely no athletic programs at all. They have a little pick up basketball game and a little pick up softball game. So Chief Harms was thinking out loud one day, talked to me about it, and we thought that we'd give it a shot.

LEHRER: Is it working?

Sgt. BURNS: It's fantastic. Right now we have over 60 to 70 young men in our boxing program.

LEHRER: How old are they?

Sgt. BURNS: Well, American Boxing Federation makes them be 10 years old, and then it's unlimited. So we have from 10 years old right up to 25 years old. We have a lot of good young kids. We have kids that were troublemakers, that had been arrested before, in the program that we're trying to turn around. We have some --

LEHRER: How do you turn them around by teaching them how to box?

Sgt. BURNS: Well, that's -- it takes a little bit of time. You have to -- first of all, you gotta show an interest in an individual. You gotta show that you care. You try to steer him in the right direction. You try to talk with him. You try to sometimes break through the wall. It takes a lot of work, but we're doing quite well with it. We're reaching a lot of them. Now, I'm using the same approach that I did in my high school wrestling program. I've taken a number of young men that have been arrested, got them involved in the wrestling program and they've done very well and gone on to college on college scholarships.

LEHRER: In a word, Sergeant, do you believe what you're doing could be expanded -- I mean, would have application anywhere -- in Newark, in Detroit, in New York City and Dallas, any place in this country? Is it that universal?

Sgt. BURNS: Yes, it would, but you'd need the backing of, one, your chief of police because you're using police officers and your city council, commissioners and mayor. And if you get the backing of those individuals, the program -- it's unlimited what it can do.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Finally, New York City, where marauding teenagers attacked and robbed people leaving the recent open-air concert by Diana Ross. William Davis was one of the judges who handled some of the youths who were charged that night. Judge Davis, what's your view of curfews, first of all?

Judge WILLIAM DAVIS: Well, good evening. I would not want to criticize, of course, anyone who wants to impose a curfew. I'd just like to briefly trace historically the curfew law in Detroit. It is my understanding that it's been on the books for quite some time, I think since the '20s, early '20s, and that is was more recently enforced I think last time in 1957 with the riots in Detroit. Prior to that time it has not really been enforced, and I think no one has been imprisoned for the last 20 years. It basically has been used to try to clean up the downtown area because they're trying to make it viable as an economic development to encourage people to come out. I think I would encourage the Mayor of that city, if he feels that that is the proper response, to do so. Getting back to New York, I think that that might become a nightmare in this city. First of all, we have 30,000 policemen who are around the clock on three tours. Given the fact that we have one third of them active on a tour, given the administrative requirements for the work in the courts and for sick leave and whatever, I would think it's estimated that about 67% are really on the job at any given time. In addition, I would have problems in this community with the equal protection clauses -- the 14th Amendment. I think we cannot enforce unequally this law against this particular segment --

MacNEIL: What would be unequal about this?

Judge DAVIS: Well, you pick out a particular sex or particular age group and enforce the law against them. Also, whether you would enforce it on an equal basis. We have five boroughs here. Each borough has a central area that they consider a downtown area. People congregate there. Are you going to enforce this in the high-income level communities, in the low-income level communities and the middle-income level communities. In addition, you must realize that if we would enforce this and make the arrests that is envisioned here, we at present in the state of New York are at 117% capacity in the prisons. We have capacity for 26,000, yet we have 30,000 in prison now. We have no room. In the city of New York, pursuant to Judge Lasker's mandate, we are at a cap of 100%. Even if we enforce the laws, there's no place to put them. There has to be a viable alternative --

MacNEIL: What is the viable alternative in your opinion?

Judge DAVIS: The viable alternative is to not necessarily to react to problems as they occur and not feel that the state can step in and do things that have to be done by the family. I know that I had a curfew growing up as a kid and I had to be home at a certain time. I think we should go to the family and we should insist upon this or get some kind of assistance if there is a difficulty in doing this in one-family homes. But I don't see the state getting involved in this. I think it would be a nightmare.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Mr. Martin, It's three against one. These other folks don't particularly care for the curfew idea. What do you think -- first of all, Director Williams' point that there's got to be an alternative just to making these kids go home; that's not good enough.

Mr. MARTIN: Well, first of all, let me make it clear. Out curfew is enforced after 10 and 11 o'clock in the evening. We think with the age youngsters that are involved that's not the time of the day that they're going to be engaged in a lot of other kind of activities anyway. If there's a reason that a parent wants young people to be out, they can escort them. Now, Detroit has a long history and a very good one in terms of offering programs for its young people. Specifically I mentioned the relationships between the police and the community. One program that sort of signals that relationship is our PAL program, the police athletic league, where thousands of youngsters are involved in sports activities with the police as helpers and sponsors throughout the year. So we obviously know that there have to be some long-range programs to offer young people something to do and to engage them in positive activities. What we're talking about is a situation where, based on our prior experience, we began to see evidences that groups of youngsters were getting together and becoming disruptive. Before that thing got out of hand in relationship to some other problems we're observing, we decided to enforce a curfew that already was on the books, and it was placed on in 1976. So I think the Mayor, and I heard the Judge's comments about parental responsibility -- we understand that. But the Mayor acted on behalf of the entire community to control a situation which might have led to real trouble. So it was really a preventive kind of measure, and we think that it's been effective.

LEHRER: Judge, you don't question that, do you?

Judge DAVIS: No, not at all.

LEHRER: Yeah. Do you, Director Williams?

Dir. WILLIAMS: No.

LEHRER: That an emergency situation existed and as you said, also, Sergeant Burns, that if an emergency existed that the Miami, police or the city of Miami wouldn't hesitate to do a similar thing, correct?

Sgt. BURNS: Yes, sir. You're absolutely correct. I think there's another point here, too, that a large number of the boys that hang out late at night -- the troublemakers as we know them, picking them up for a curfew violation or for a loitering and prowling violation, nine times out of 10 it's not going to be their first violation. Based on my experience as a police officer, the guys that I come in contact with that late have, most of the time, an extensive past. One of the things we need to deal with is, when we go out and arrest someone that's young for, say, perhaps robbery or strong-arm mugging, and he's been arrested three, four, five, six times -- that come before the system three and four, five, six times -- is that we need to get a conviction. We need -- if this individual is sentenced to a year in jail or a year in reform school is that he does that time. The problem is that --

LEHRER: That's not happening now?

Sgt. BURNS: Not happening at all. These guys get in there and they get probation and they get back out and they get probation on top of probation, and many times they beat the police officer back out on the street before the police officer has finished his paper work.

LEHRER: Is that happening in Newark, Mr. Williams?

Dir. WILLIAMS: I think that the Sergeant's point would probably be reiterated by most police officers today, but I do believe that the point is rather myopic since it characterizes a view regarding the police perspective and does not look at the system as a whole. The fact of the matter is that this country imprisons more of its citizens than any country in the free world. If the arrest as a strategy to reduce crime alone, singularly, was an effective strategy, then we should have one of the lowest crime rates amongst the free Western cultures, which we do not have. Therefore I think that we've got to do things other than effectuate arrests. The penal system is busting apart at the seams. The reason that we have that type of difficulty with containment is simply because we do not have effective strategies operating within our system to reduce and alleviate the problems of crime.

LEHRER: Robin?

MacNEIL: We heard, Judge Davis, we heard Mayor Young say at the begining of this program he believed there was a direct relationship between unemployment, lack of jobs, lack of opportunity and youth crime. Do you believe that? Can you prove it? Can you demonstrate it?

Judge DAVIS: Yes, I believe that there's a causal factor relationship between unemployment and crime, but I don't think that's a sole factor. I think there are a number of factors. For example, the police stats, the indices of crime, was recently published and it showed that between the ages of seven and 15 the major six crimes that were committed of arson, murder, rape, felonious assault, burglary, was committed by kids during those age groups, and they found that the majority of the crimes -- robbery and burglary; about 3,300 for robbery and about 2,300 for burglary for this year -- were basically crimes for economics. And I think it can also show, having looked at the sheets that come before me of the prisoners, that the kids basically are unemployed to undereducated. The average educational level is 9th or 10th grade. They come from a one-family -- one-parent home, head of household female. They sometimes are functional illiterate; the schools are producing this because the kids, while they may be able to read, cannot express themselves in writing. And I think that based upon that and based upon some studies that I've reviewed from the Vera Institute, it definitely shows there is a causal link between unemployment and crime, together with other factors.

MacNEIL: Sergeant Burns in Miami, is high youth unemployment connected in your view with teenage crime?

Sgt. BURNS: Oh, there's no doubt about that. If you have a youth that's out there working, has a job, the chances of him going out on the street and committing a crime, I think, have decreased greatly. However, there is a lot of these young people out there that are quite capable of going out and finding a job and --

MacNEIL: And are there jobs for them to find?

Sgt. BURNS: There are jobs around. I think that -- I think that a lot of the young people today want it now. They want everything given to them, they want everything handed to them right now. And I think there's a breakdown in the family unit, as we know, that it's not teaching these young people that it takes time: they have to work and eventually they'll get there. And to go out and work for $2.65 or $3.65 an hour when they can go out and pull a robbery and perhaps get $60 or $70 out of someone's purse, sometimes seems a little more inviting to them.

MacNEIL: Director Williams, what correlation do you see between the present high youth and particularly minority unemployment and crime in Newark?

Dir. WILLIAMS: Well, in some areas the absence of economic wherewithal creates a degree of desperation. People have to have a means of survival, and I think that we in this country created a generation of youth that are incapable of competing within the economic marketplace. And they seek employment within criminal enterprise. That's not unusual. I think that that is the reality. What we've got to do is we've got to try to find alternatives for that. In addition to that, I think we need to recognize that employment or unemployment singularly is really not the issue.

MacNEIL: I'm afraid -- I think what you're going to go on to say, something like what Judge Davis said, but we must leave it there, I'm afraid. Mr. Martin In Detroit, thank you very much for joining us; Sergeant Burns in Washington; Judge Davis, Director Williams, in New York. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That's all for tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.