Tampa City Council sets first reading of citywide juvenile curfew for December 21

Last week, Tampa City Council voted 5-2 to give a juvenile curfew ordinance its public first reading on Dec. 21.

Councilmembers Bill Carlson and Lynn Hurtak voted against the motion, citing concerns over who might be targeted and a lack of data to support the curfew’s effectiveness.

“I do not want to disincentivize people of age from going down to Ybor with the fear that they’re going to be carded by the police,” Hurtak said at the meeting. “There are minority communities that are very fearful, and they’re concerned about being approached by a law enforcement officer.”

The discussion came in the wake of a deadly Ybor City shooting on Oct. 29. During last week’s meeting, Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw updated council on the shooting, and said that TPD has charged 14-year-old Kadyn Abney with second-degree murder with a firearm in the death of Harrison Boonstoppel. Abney, said Bercaw, is being charged as an adult. The chief also said the reward for information on the shooting leading to an arrest has gone from $5,000 to $31,500.

Two days after the shooting, Councilmember Gwen Henderson saw her proposed 1 a.m. curfew for Ybor City resoundingly rejected. The city’s legal department suggested a juvenile curfew instead.

At last week’s meeting, Tampa City Attorney Andrea Zelman told council there are no criminal penalties imposed by the new ordinance alone.

The curfew would apply citywide for people under 16 years old after 11 p.m. on Sunday-Thursday, and after midnight on Fridays, Saturdays, and legal holidays. First-time offenders get a warning, and for the second time, a $50 penalty is imposed.

“It doesn’t affect the hours of business of any operations in Ybor City,” Zelman said at the meeting.“It just gives the police department an additional tool in their tool belt to stop a juvenile that is, in their eyes, out on the streets much later than they should be.”

Zelman added the statute has “never been challenged.”

While it’s true Florida’s state statute hasn’t been challenged, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) unsuccessfully challenged a Dade County ordinance shortly after it was established. Other successful local challenges happened in Pinellas Park and Tampa.

Zelman also noted that the ordinance her team drafted would shore up city code with the state’s own juvenile curfew statute from 1994.

Florida’s 1994 juvenile curfew statute came in the wake of Democratic President Bill Clinton’s 1994 Crime Bill. The state statute relies on a Dallas curfew upheld by a Federal appellate court in November 1993 and allows local governments to create their own based on that language. In 1996, Clinton publicly advocated for juvenile curfews, and as of 2023, more than 400 towns, cities, and counties have ordinances.

In 2018, The Marshall Project reported on the origins of the “curfew myth,” citing Princeton professor John Dilulio’s flawed and now-debunked “super-predator” theory that alleged “juveniles are doing homicidal violence in wolf packs.”

Dilulio later said, “The super-predator idea was wrong. Once it was out there, though, it was out there. There was no reeling it in.”

And Tampa has tried juvenile curfews in the past.

From 1994-2015, Tampa had a juvenile curfew on the books, but it wasn’t implemented for 11 of those 21 years due to legal challenges that the ordinance was unconstitutional. Ultimately, the city’s curfew was officially removed in November 2015.

The potential return of a youth curfew is cause for concern for some in the community.

“You cannot chastise our children, control our children,” community activist Connie Burton said at the meeting. “You did the ‘Biking While Black,’ then ‘Housing While Black,’ and now this ‘Roundup while Black.’ Do something different.”

Councilwoman Henderson, whose district includes Ybor City, said, “This is a different type of situation when it comes to targeting.”

But Hurtak echoed concerns about the city’s controversial “crime-free housing” and “biking while Black” programs, both of which are under investigation by the Department of Justice.

“I’m concerned because we still have two Department of Justice inquiries about targeting minorities,” Hurtak said. “I’m very concerned that this will be a minority targeting issue.”

There’s data to support Hurtak’s concerns, too. A 2016 review of 12 studies on juvenile curfews found, “The evidence suggests that juvenile curfews do not reduce crime or victimization.”

Last September, Kristin Henning, director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic at George University’s Law School, told NPR she thinks juvenile curfews are “ineffective, more harmful than helpful and really a reactive response instead of a thoughtful, careful strategy for managing crime in our city.”

Last June, even far-right Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a statewide ban on juvenile curfews.

Tampeños like Luis Salazar, with the Hillsborough County LGBTQ Democratic Caucus, told city council that Ybor City is being targeted in this approach, while other parts of the city with gun violence go untouched.

“The only thing this is going to do is create more development and gentrification,” Salazar said at the meeting, “And build towers of houses that people like us will never see the inside of unless we’re cleaning them.”

Salazar added that he grew up in a town with strict curfew laws.

“The last thing it made me do was respect the police,” Salazar said at the meeting. “In fact, the only thing it really taught me was to run and run real fast.”

Victor DiMaio of DiMaio and Associates—a Ybor City and West Tampa native—raised concerns about how the proposed juvenile curfew will be implemented.

“The question is not so much about the curfew,” DiMaio said at the meeting. “The question really is about enforcement…What are you going to do with those kids? How are you going to treat them?”

According to chief Bercaw, when it comes to implementing the juvenile curfew, “the key is discretion.”

Bercaw also reiterated his focus on the “Orlando model” for policing late night crowds, adding that he’s “sent commanders to Orlando to look at how it works.”

Not everyone agreed that’s Orlando approach would work in Tampa.

Luke Lirot, a Clearwater First Amendment attorney who famously defended strip club owner Joe Redner in the 1990s, cautioned against using Orlando as a model for Tampa’s historic entertainment district. He also noted Ybor is already implementing many measures Orlando now requires, like security cameras, ID scanners, and metal detectors.

“Ybor City is entirely different than the area in Orlando that was the subject of their regulations,” Lirot said at the meeting.

He instead advocated using a carefully worded juvenile curfew instead of further restrictions on businesses in Ybor (even if it worked in Orlando), many of which Lirot’s firm represents.

Bercaw told the council that the Ybor City public safety plan is in the works, noting that “any plan going forward is not a police plan. It’s a community plan.”

Most in attendance and on council agreed that implementing the city’s parking ordinance is part of the solution for deterring youth from loitering in Ybor’s adjacent parking lots. An ordinance already in the city’s codes requires parking lots to have attendants, but it’s rarely enforced.

“It’s clear that’s where the people are hanging out and getting drinks illegally, the coming up to Seventh Avenue,” Hurtak said.

Developers like Casey Ellison of Ellison Development chimed in to support the curfew last week. His company, Ellison Construction (formerly EWI Construction), built out the Oxford Exchange, Stovall House, and Armature Works, and Sparkman Wharf. Ellison also built Hotel Haya, which is owned, in part, by Tampa developer Darryl Shaw who has been a vocal proponent of implementing a curfew. (Shaw also published an op-ed supporting a 1 a.m. curfew in the Tampa Bay Times, a paper he has previously loaned money to).

Other Ybor City business owners voiced support for a juvenile curfew ordinance, too.

Andrea Gonzmart Williams, whose father, Richard Gonzmart, owns the Columbia Restaurant and 1905 Family of Restaurants, said, “My father always told me nothing good happens after midnight… It would help children be home where they belong. And not on the streets.”

But as Burton pointed out, it’s not that simple for some families. And a juvenile curfew could target those who need community support the most.

“Do you understand that there are many children in our community that is homeless?” Burton said at the meeting. “Do you understand that many families in our community is living from pillar to post because they cannot afford, as this community continued to gentrify the poor and impoverished, to outset and outfit those of affluence?”

Councilman Carlson called the proposed juvenile curfew a knee-jerk solution, adding that, “I’ve talked to police officers on the street, and they said this didn’t work before, it’s not going to work again.”

Bercaw told Carlson those officers were probably referring to the old ordinance, “Clearly, that didn’t work, and that’s why it was unconstitutional. That’s why the state adopted this.”

“I don’t think we’ve thoroughly investigated this,” Carlson responded.

Others on council offered other ways to address the idea of local youth being out late.

Hurtak and Henderson both contended that more youth programming was needed or what is commonly called “stay and plays.”

“We used to have dances and things that we could participate in that were all teenagers,” Henderson said. “We’re going to have to work really hard to give students an opportunity to hang out in safe spaces in crowds that are of the appropriate age.”

But that’s not as simple as implementing a citywide juvenile curfew. Youth programming, as Hurtak pointed out, is “expensive and takes time, but that’s the stuff that’s gonna keep kids off the streets.”

The first of two readings for the juvenile curfew ordinance is scheduled for Dec. 21.

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This article appears in Dec 14-20, 2023.