ELI5 Curfews
June 4, 2020 11:28 AM Subscribe
I've never lived anywhere with a curfew before, so there are parts of how it interacts with every other aspect of urban life that I don't get now that it's part of the society I'm in now. I know that in practice the answer is that enforcement is entirely discretionary, but how does some of this stuff work in theory?
My wife and I were out after curfew the other night (this is in Louisville, KY, but I'd venture things are similar elsewhere), and driving home I saw a lot of people on the roads. I was surprised, not because I expected people to necessarily abide by the curfew, but because it didn't occur to me there was a lot for people to do outside of the protests themselves: even if on the level of individual members of society there's a lot of disregard, surely any nonessential business that stayed open after curfew would be a target for enforcement? Or not? It occurs to me I have no idea how curfews are supposed to function, who is liable to them, etc. As a practical matter, a curfew of course ends up being targeted specifically at individual actors through that handwavy miracle of "discretionary enforcement", but when they say things like "everybody needs to be off the streets by 9PM", what does that mean in terms of who it could be enforced against? Again: I'm aware that actual enforcement is much more selective, but how does the curfew, as a blanket declaration, "work" with these things?
My wife and I were out after curfew the other night (this is in Louisville, KY, but I'd venture things are similar elsewhere), and driving home I saw a lot of people on the roads. I was surprised, not because I expected people to necessarily abide by the curfew, but because it didn't occur to me there was a lot for people to do outside of the protests themselves: even if on the level of individual members of society there's a lot of disregard, surely any nonessential business that stayed open after curfew would be a target for enforcement? Or not? It occurs to me I have no idea how curfews are supposed to function, who is liable to them, etc. As a practical matter, a curfew of course ends up being targeted specifically at individual actors through that handwavy miracle of "discretionary enforcement", but when they say things like "everybody needs to be off the streets by 9PM", what does that mean in terms of who it could be enforced against? Again: I'm aware that actual enforcement is much more selective, but how does the curfew, as a blanket declaration, "work" with these things?
- Travel through, to, or from the city: Two significant interstate highways pass through the city. Is every traveler after 9PM in violation of curfew, even if they don't stop in the city? What about if they do stop for gas/bathroom breaks/whatever? What if they're passing through the city (or a smaller city whose major throughways aren't highways) on surface roads? Can intercity transit (bus, airplane, train) arrive or depart after curfew, and are travelers granted some sort of legal safe-conduct to or from these transit mechanisms? (I did a quick FlightStats check, and five passenger flights did indeed arrive at SDF after curfew last night)
- Businesses: some are closing by 8 and sending employees home before 9. Some aren't. Are businesses responsible for establishing that their employees could abide by the curfew? What enforcement mechanism exists against those who don't?
- Enclaves: Louisville is riddled with little independent incorporated communities which are not technically part of the city of Louisville and where the mayor has incomplete jurisdiction. I live a block from this tiny, ostensibly independent community. Does the curfew have authority in those?
You say, "I know that in practice the answer is that enforcement is entirely discretionary," but you seem to not get that from the questions you're asking. The curfew is simply an excuse to arrest whoever the police want to arrest.
In addition, a curfew has the additional bonus of turning "regular folks" against the protesters -- when they are inconvenienced by a curfew and by stores closing early, they will think, those protesters need to go home/shut up so I can get on with my life.
posted by fiercecupcake at 12:00 PM on June 4, 2020 [27 favorites]
In addition, a curfew has the additional bonus of turning "regular folks" against the protesters -- when they are inconvenienced by a curfew and by stores closing early, they will think, those protesters need to go home/shut up so I can get on with my life.
posted by fiercecupcake at 12:00 PM on June 4, 2020 [27 favorites]
In addition to very much what fiercecupcake said, my area's curfew says:
As for jurisdiction: my area has lots of unincorporated areas that aren't part of any towns/cities but are part of the county. City-wide orders do not apply to them; county-wide orders do. I don't know about Louisville's ordinance in particular but if it's city-wide then my assumption is it would likely not apply to areas not officially in the city unless they were explicitly called out in the order.
I just looked up the Louisville order - you can read it here as well as the extension here. It's very similar to my area's except it also specifically excludes travel to and from "Places of Worship".
In practice, it will apply to black people, and not to not black people.
posted by brainmouse at 12:06 PM on June 4, 2020 [3 favorites]
So passing through for an unapproved reason is not OK. Getting gas as part of otherwise approved travel would be OK. Travel home from the airport because you came home from a vacation would not be OK.
No person; except as set forth in Section 4, below, shall be upon a public street, avenue, boulevard, place, walkway, alley, park or any public area or unimproved private property within the boundaries of the County between 8:00 p.m and 5:00 a.m of the following day.
Order shall not apply to: peace officers, firefighters, and National Guard deployed to the area; Individuals traveling to and from work; authorized representatives of any news service, newspaper, radio or television station or network, or other media organization; people experiencing homelessness and without access to a viable shelter; and individuals seeking medical treatment.
As for jurisdiction: my area has lots of unincorporated areas that aren't part of any towns/cities but are part of the county. City-wide orders do not apply to them; county-wide orders do. I don't know about Louisville's ordinance in particular but if it's city-wide then my assumption is it would likely not apply to areas not officially in the city unless they were explicitly called out in the order.
I just looked up the Louisville order - you can read it here as well as the extension here. It's very similar to my area's except it also specifically excludes travel to and from "Places of Worship".
In practice, it will apply to black people, and not to not black people.
posted by brainmouse at 12:06 PM on June 4, 2020 [3 favorites]
The curfew order will (should) spell out who it applies to and who's exempt. For example, the Columbus Division of Police posted on Facebook announcing the curfew, and that post also included a list of exemptions: law enforcement, journalists, people traveling to and from work, individuals seeking care or fleeing dangerous circumstances, homeless people. This doesn't cover all of the situations you came up with, but it gives you an idea of how they're written. The actual executive order implementing a curfew is a public record and should be available wherever a city publishes their public records.
Without looking up too many to confirm, it's my belief that most cities' curfew orders do include exemptions for workers, and so enforcement mechanisms for businesses who remain open are unnecessary. (If an enforcement mechanism were necessary, you would hope it would be spelled out in the order.)
As for the enclaves, from what I can tell, in Louisville they're all part of "Louisville Metro", which is served by the Louisville Police Department and subject to Louisville's mayor and city council. So it would seem that they're subject to the curfew. This is not the case in all cities; to cite Columbus again, it has a number of unincorporated areas not subject to the jurisdiction of the city. They're generally policed either by township police or by the county sheriff. The St. Louis metro area has a number of such small communities, and they generally have their own police forces (sometimes just two or three officers) and even mayor's courts. This was a big issue in the aftermath of the original BLM protests, as those communities generally use police action as their only means of fundraising.
Travelers are, technically, violating the curfew, but as you note, enforcement is discretionary. It's pretty unlikely that the police would post up at the airport to arrest people at baggage claim. That said, if I were a POC whose travels took me through a city with a curfew order, I would probably consider taking a different route to avoid the city.
posted by kevinbelt at 12:08 PM on June 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
Without looking up too many to confirm, it's my belief that most cities' curfew orders do include exemptions for workers, and so enforcement mechanisms for businesses who remain open are unnecessary. (If an enforcement mechanism were necessary, you would hope it would be spelled out in the order.)
As for the enclaves, from what I can tell, in Louisville they're all part of "Louisville Metro", which is served by the Louisville Police Department and subject to Louisville's mayor and city council. So it would seem that they're subject to the curfew. This is not the case in all cities; to cite Columbus again, it has a number of unincorporated areas not subject to the jurisdiction of the city. They're generally policed either by township police or by the county sheriff. The St. Louis metro area has a number of such small communities, and they generally have their own police forces (sometimes just two or three officers) and even mayor's courts. This was a big issue in the aftermath of the original BLM protests, as those communities generally use police action as their only means of fundraising.
Travelers are, technically, violating the curfew, but as you note, enforcement is discretionary. It's pretty unlikely that the police would post up at the airport to arrest people at baggage claim. That said, if I were a POC whose travels took me through a city with a curfew order, I would probably consider taking a different route to avoid the city.
posted by kevinbelt at 12:08 PM on June 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
The Louisville mayor's executive order establishes the curfew and exceptions. Notable for your question: "This restriction does not impede any business from engaging in their regular and typical shifts, schedule or manner of operations."
posted by JackBurden at 12:08 PM on June 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by JackBurden at 12:08 PM on June 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
All of these questions are great if this was a curfew being put in place by a legitimate authority for legitimate reasons. After a major earthquake that took out my city's power grid for a few days, we had a curfew, people would be given tickets for breaking it, businesses could be snitched on and ordered to close or be fined. That's not the case here. These curfews exist entirely at the whim of the cities and law enforcement to quell protest. The purpose of them is to have a legal excuse for the mass arrests of protesters, often accompanied by tear gas and beatings, and intense neighborhood sweeps to hunt them down. The point of these is to terrorize communities with a show of force and to reassert police power over the people who live there, to collectively punish the cities for the protests, and to make people afraid. Some helpful things to google about the way these curfews are being enforced and why are
--Rahul Dubey, the DC House Seige and #SaveJenny, an incident a few days ago where a DC homeowner opened his home to 60 protesters who had been kettled into his residential neighborhood by police. They assaulted him and pinned him to the wall when he came home from work (he is a medical professional), until he could prove he lived there before the protesters were herded onto his street. When he let the protesters in, the police threw tear gas through one of his windows, swarmed the house with about 100 police, pretended to be other protesters or delivery services, and did everything short of knocking down his door to try to get him to let them in and arrest the people he was hiding. Mr Dubey helped wash tear gas out of their eyes, ordered them pizza (snuck into his house through a back alley,) and kept them safe until the curfew was lifted in the morning. The white residents of his street had more or less free passage as they walked around the block concerned for him and the people he was sheltering.
-- Explosions in Philadelphia, twitter search "Philly explosions," which seem to be the result of Philly PD roaming the city with sound cannons to terrorize the population into staying indoors, and claiming that the noise is looters blowing up ATMs with dynamite at the rate of dozens per night
-- Downtown LA becomes an effective media blackout zone as the police chased protesters through parking lots, side streets, construction sites, and tunnels to arrest and detain them. White and prosperous neighborhoods had people outside with no police presence; black neighborhoods had police swarming out of cars at 6pm sharp to pull people out of their cars.
-- Seattle and NYC have been incredibly brutal when it comes to curfew as a tool for violence against protests and a cursory google should give you a quick sense of how it works
posted by moonlight on vermont at 12:20 PM on June 4, 2020 [9 favorites]
--Rahul Dubey, the DC House Seige and #SaveJenny, an incident a few days ago where a DC homeowner opened his home to 60 protesters who had been kettled into his residential neighborhood by police. They assaulted him and pinned him to the wall when he came home from work (he is a medical professional), until he could prove he lived there before the protesters were herded onto his street. When he let the protesters in, the police threw tear gas through one of his windows, swarmed the house with about 100 police, pretended to be other protesters or delivery services, and did everything short of knocking down his door to try to get him to let them in and arrest the people he was hiding. Mr Dubey helped wash tear gas out of their eyes, ordered them pizza (snuck into his house through a back alley,) and kept them safe until the curfew was lifted in the morning. The white residents of his street had more or less free passage as they walked around the block concerned for him and the people he was sheltering.
-- Explosions in Philadelphia, twitter search "Philly explosions," which seem to be the result of Philly PD roaming the city with sound cannons to terrorize the population into staying indoors, and claiming that the noise is looters blowing up ATMs with dynamite at the rate of dozens per night
-- Downtown LA becomes an effective media blackout zone as the police chased protesters through parking lots, side streets, construction sites, and tunnels to arrest and detain them. White and prosperous neighborhoods had people outside with no police presence; black neighborhoods had police swarming out of cars at 6pm sharp to pull people out of their cars.
-- Seattle and NYC have been incredibly brutal when it comes to curfew as a tool for violence against protests and a cursory google should give you a quick sense of how it works
posted by moonlight on vermont at 12:20 PM on June 4, 2020 [9 favorites]
The above is true. It's also about mass assembly under cover of darkness. It's much harder to manage situations when there's no visibility. Things get much dicier when neither side can at least see the other well. It's also when bad things happen and nobody sees it for the same reason. It still does bug me because I'm a night owl who sleeps during the day and couldn't come up with a good reason to break curfew to dash across the street to the gas station at 3am because I wanted a snack or needed some milk.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:07 PM on June 4, 2020
posted by zengargoyle at 1:07 PM on June 4, 2020
Curfew gives law enforcement a pretext to detain you without other probable cause you're up to something. If it were equally enforced (or equally ignored) it would not ipso facto be racist. Where it becomes racist is when law enforcement uses a curfew as a pretext to detain black people but lets all the white people go. That scenario is … not uncommon.
posted by fedward at 2:10 PM on June 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by fedward at 2:10 PM on June 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
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posted by phoenixy at 11:32 AM on June 4, 2020 [1 favorite]