- Cities from LA, to New York, to Minneapolis have issued
curfew orders, ordering citizens to stay inside during evening hours amid sometimes chaotic protests surrounding the police death of 46-year-oldGeorge Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. - Experts were split on whether the tactic, which hasn't been used to this magnitude in decades, is ultimately effective, but agreed curfews help police differentiate peaceful protestors from looters and violent demonstrators.
- Opponents of the measure worry curfews give police too much discretion in arresting people for being out in the streets.
Tuesday marked one week since the beginning of nationwide protests over the police death of George Floyd, and as peaceful protests at times turned chaotic, particularly during late-night hours, leaders in cities across the US have enacted curfews to attempt to quash them.
Opponents of citywide curfews — the likes of which haven't been seen in the US in decades — say it gives law enforcement too much authority to perform arrests on citizens who are simply exercising their First Amendment right to protest.
"This is the wrong way to handle disruptions to what have been otherwise peaceful protests, and they are far broader than necessary to address any problems that have arisen or may arise," the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California said in a statement Monday.
It continued: "By making presence on public streets anywhere in these cities unlawful, these measures give police too much discretion over whom to arrest and will lead to selective and biased enforcement and risk harassment of people who are unhoused. In short, these measures will only repeat the very problems that our communities are protesting."
Curfews have been enacted across the US, from Minneapolis where protests first erupted, to Richmond, to Phoenix.
Wednesday evening will mark the fourth straight night of curfews for some cities in Los Angeles County, which instated a county-wide curfew beginning at 9.m., according to Deadline.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday extended New York City's curfew through Sunday. It begins at 8 p.m. and lasts until 5 a.m. the following morning.
—Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) June 2, 2020
Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said curfews can sometimes be useful in easing tensions because they reduce the number of demonstrators and allow law enforcement to focus their attention on individuals who are engaging in illegal activity, like looting or assault.
"The point is to keep people at home," Alpert told Insider. "Law-abiding citizens, for the most part, are going to stay at home when there is a curfew. A subset of law-abiding citizens will go out and protest because they don't believe in it — they want to protest the issue."
"Most departments aren't blanket arresting people," he added.
Arrests were down in New York City after it enacted a stricter curfew
The New York City Police Department said approximately 200 people were arrested at protests that on Tuesday night. About 700 were arrested the night before, according to The Wall Street Journal. De Blasio had enacted an 11 p.m. curfew on Monday, which was moved to 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
"Last night, after the curfew was imposed, we maybe only have a handful of businesses that were destroyed and looted. From this perspective, it's effective," Maria Haberfeld, a professor of police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said.
Historically, police curfews in the US began as a means to keep rowdy children off the street, Haberfeld told Insider.
"The idea was if you impose a curfew at 5 or 6 o'clock, the juveniles will have to go home and they will become the problem of their families and not law enforcement," she said.
The concept, however, has soured among many Americans, she added, due to its association with curfews placed on Japanese Americans during WWII, and on Black Americans during the time of Jim Crow.
Similar tactics were also employed during past times of unrest related to police brutality faced by African Americans. As CNN noted, the most recent time US cities enacted similar curfews was nearly three decades ago during protests and riots over the police beating of Rodney King. This many US cities haven't been under curfew since Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968.
Alpert said while they can be effective, curfews could prove counterproductive, as city officials are just "setting up another law" that protestors will want to challenge.
Curfews are typically enacted by local leaders — not by police
Haberfeld said curfews are not usually the choice of local law enforcement agencies and are certainly not their first option to quell chaotic gatherings.
"The curfew as a tactic is usually pushed by local politicians who control the police department and not necessarily by police chiefs and commissioners because they know the outcomes from the perspective of effectiveness."
She added: "No police commissioner or police chief wants a curfew. I mean it's truthfully very problematic in terms of enforcement, and all they can do primarily is block various venues. If people decide to move forward in large numbers, it's very very problematic from the standpoint of effective enforcement, so it's a really a last resort."
Bill Bratton, the former police commissioner of New York City, said during an interview on MSNBC on Monday — before a curfew was enacted in the city — that he didn't believe a citywide curfew in New York was the right move, citing difficulty in enforcement and the amount of effort it requires.
"At this particular time, I would not," Bratton said after MSNBC's Craig Melvin asked whether he would advise New York leaders to impose a curfew. "New York is a huge city like Los Angeles, but different in many respects in terms of density. The reality is the disturbances in New York have been relatively confined to a few areas of the city. There are huge portions of the city that have not been having disturbances."
Police are largely outnumbered by the members of the general public, Haberfeld added, so enforcement of a widespread curfew creates "tactical" problems.
Still, curfews have their purpose, Alpert said. While they don't entirely keep people home, curfews are more likely to encourage law-abiding protestors to stay home and will allow police to more easily single out looters, vandals, and other people using the demonstrations to commit crimes, he said.
"Without the curfew, police can't do anything against these very large groups of people because we all the First Amendment right to protest — and we should," he said. "The curfew at least gives the police the authority to deal with them.
"It's kinda the lesser of two evils," he added, though he said that current curfew orders haven't seemed to prove successful.
Haberfeld said curfews can also be utilized as a means to protect peaceful protestors from the actions of the more violent demonstrators.
"They're effective in preventing looting and rioting because it separates the ones who are there to express their pain and their feelings in a way that constitutes their rights for civil dissent as opposed to ones just taking advantage of civil dissent to loot, destroy, and burn," she said.