Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has taken off the gloves in the escalating debate over the city’s new expanded youth curfew.

A discussion about the curfew on the Marc Steiner Show on WEAA 88.9 FM turned testy after the mayor phoned in to inveigh against her critics and lambast City Councilman Carl Stokes, one of two council members to vote against the curfew on Monday.

The exchange started with a caller who said the law is “criminalization” and that young people are more in need of jobs and services. In particular, the caller singled out Rawlings-Blake’s remarks, aired on Fox 45 Wednesday night, in which she lashed out at critics of the law.

“If you want to have your kid run amok 24 hours a day, go live out on a farm somewhere. This is a city and we are going to make sure that we keep our kids safe,” Rawlings-Blake had said, adding:

“I’m not going to sit by and allow our young people to be either perpetrators or victims of violence when everybody with any common sense knows they should be supervised by a responsible adult.”

Dealing with Unsupervised Children

“Her arrogance is appalling,” the man said. Just then, Steiner put the mayor on the air and asked her to respond.

“What I said was, it doesn’t matter what it is,” the mayor began. “Whether it’s letting your children run amok, whether it’s playing your music loud. When you decide that you want to live in the city – when you decide that you want to do things where your personal behavior has an impact on your community, if you don’t want that, then you can’t live in an urban community. You cannot put your children at risk or put them in a position where they are putting other people at risk.”

Those who say the curfew law criminalizes youth, she added, are talking about it “in principle.”

“In reality we have children 6, 7, 8 years-old that are out unsupervised 12 o’clock at night, 1 o’clock at night,” she continued. “This is not about criminalizing them, this is about getting them into a safe place. . . and if that’s arrogance, I’ll be arrogant.”

The law, passed on second reader by the Council, makes it a violation for a youth under 14 to be outside their home after 9 p.m. year-round. Those from 14 to 16 would be banned from being outside on school nights after 10 p.m. and on other nights after 11 p.m.

Violators could be taken by police to a curfew center (to be known as a “Youth Connection Center”) and their parents would be required to take city-approved counseling classes or face a $500 fine.

Civil liberties lawyers said such curfews are unenforceable, are likely to increase law enforcement contacts for young people and are likely to be applied in a racially discriminatory way.

The ACLU of Maryland, questioning the ordinance’s constitutionality, is calling on citizens to lobby their council members to vote the curfew down when it comes up for  a final vote next month.

Heated Exchange with Stokes

Today’s debate on Steiner’s show on WEAA-FM got into the weeds quickly.

Stokes, who was in the studio, was saying that city police already have the authority to round up young children found on the streets at late hours and bring them home.

“You don’t need to put them under house arrest,” Stokes said before adding, “I’m not fighting with the law. I’m saying lets get more proactive in what we’re try to do here, let’s give kids things to do not at 10 11 o’clock at night but if we give them good them good recreation, good schools good after-school they will be tired enough at 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, that they’ll go to bed on their own.”

Her voice rising, the mayor replied, “Some of these kids don’t have beds! That’s why they’re out there councilman. You are talking out of both sides of your mouth. You are fighting against it. Because you are not acknowledging the fact that we have families in need and this is how we identify them. It’s plain and simple.”

They went back and forth. Then Stokes stopped Rawlings-Blake by saying, “You just broke in. Let’s be civil. Can we be civil? Please!”

The mayor was still hot about it.

“And what do you suggest that we do with a child that is out after hours – a 6 year-old that is out at 1 o’clock in the morning?” the mayor asked Stokes.

The councilman replied, “Take them home.”

“That’s the End of It”

The clash continued when the mayor pressed Stokes about “what do we do with that child” that is out at night wandering the streets?

“You do the common sense thing,” Stokes answered before he was interrupted by the mayor, who scolded him again.

“And I’m waiting to hear what that is from you.”

Stokes said that the city should intervene and “take that child to his home first” and then send in a social worker to assess the family situation.

The mayor rejected that idea.

“You know where the social workers are? At the [curfew] center. Instead of having the social workers sit in one place . . . Let’s run the social workers around the city all night long,” she added sarcastically.

A minute later, after a caller labeled youth on the streets after hours a public health disaster in Baltimore, the mayor seemed to calm down. When asked by Steiner if she was still on the line, there was a pause and Rawlings-Blake began, it seemed, to read from a prepared statement:

“We all want the same thing for our young people these days,” she said. “This is about finding those resources in place to support families in need. When you have a child that is out late at night, unsupervised, that is a sign of a family in need. This is not about criminalization. This is about getting those supports in place so we can keep our children safe.

“That is the beginning of it and that is the end of it,” she concluded.