A year after the city closed its youth curfew center, neighborhood groups led by Lawrenceville United are lobbying for its return.
It has been a hot, restive summer, and some neighborhood leaders claim noise, vandalism and more serious crime are increasing in alleys, parks and other gathering places for children, some as young as 10.
Tony Ceoffe, executive director of Lawrenceville United, sent a letter to neighborhood groups throughout the city Tuesday, asking for their support in urging the city to establish a holding facility, even if only seasonally. "Our quality of life and our right to the peaceful enjoyment of our properties is at serious risk," he wrote.
Ceoffe said the first favorable responses to his letter came yesterday from community groups in Lincoln, Larimer, East Liberty, Spring Hill and Beechview.
District 3 Councilman Gene Ricciardi said he is committed to having $250,000 allocated for a new center, a figure that would include salaries for professional counselors. "I have to convince the mayor, the Act 47 coordinators and [at least] five councilmen.
"Neighborhoods are crying out," he said.
The city opened a curfew center in 1996 in the Public Safety Building, Downtown, but stopped funding it during budget cuts last summer. At that point, it had been moved to the former police station in the West End because the Public Safety Building on Grant Street was sold. It has since been razed.
The center was never teeming with youths. In fact, it was under-used. In the first five months of last year, 22 children were taken there, according to police reports.
Police did not respond to inquiries on why the facility was not used more often. Ceoffe said its existence might have been a deterrent.
A center staffed by trained social service professionals could intervene and possibly help families solve the problems that led to the curfew violations, he said. "If the parents can't be found, we have a real problem to deal with. I can't think of a better collaboration the city and the county could have."
"How many kids could we save?"
With no place to take violators now, police can only order them to go home, said Tammy Ewin, a police spokesman. A child cannot be taken to jail for violating a city ordinance. Those caught committing a crime can be taken to the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center, which is not intended to house curfew violators.
Jerry Cafardi, of the Beechview Block Watch, said youthful unruliness has "increased exponentially, which is why we started a block watch a year ago. We have gang activities, drug sales, intimidation of people who have lived here for many years."
Aisha White, of the year-old nonprofit Rights and Responsibilities, said she responded to Ceoffe's letter to suggest "a regionwide discussion about a multitude of community problems."
"Where I live [in East Liberty]," she said, "there isn't a problem so much with youth as with drugs and prostitution." She added, "The problem with youth is part of the larger problem."
The goal of her organization is to teach people, through film, what their rights are and "that they are supposed to be responsible for their community," she said.
The curfew ordinance, if it could be enforced, would affect children under 17 who do not meet exceptions, such as being en route to or from a job, attending a school or church-related function with adult guardians or if they are on the sidewalk abutting their family's property.
Otherwise, from Sept. 1 to June 30, they are not to be on the streets between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and after midnight on weekend nights. During the summer, the Sunday to Thursday curfew is 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., said Ewin. In 2002, stronger wording was approved by City Council to give police the right to take children to the curfew center without having to give a warning first.
The challenge of resurrecting the center would be to find an adequate building in a neighborhood that would accept having it, said Ceoffe, adding: "It would have to be secure and retrofitted. If it has to be in Lawrenceville, so be it. I'm not going to say we need it and then say, 'not in my neighborhood.' We need it that much.
"We cannot let kids dictate how we live. This is a big deal. Something has to be done."
Rick Swartz, executive director of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp., agreed, saying, "Bad behavior pulls the roots out of everything that's been planted, and if we don't acknowledge and address it, we're just spinning our wheels." He added that the aggravation of noisy, late-night youth is no worse than ever in Bloomfield and Garfield.
"There are a lot of kids growing up without compunctions," he said. "It's very much business as usual. We had a brick thrown through our storefront door a few months ago," shattering the glass, he said. "It's been a long time since anything like that happened, but it doesn't knock us off stride anymore."
Police have been more visible in Garfield lately, he said, "but given their shrunken manpower, I don't see them being able to spend the night taking kids to a curfew center" even if there were one.
First Published: August 11, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
