Charleston City Public Safety Committee approves juvenile curfew
CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – The City of Charleston Public Safety Committee discussed a juvenile curfew ordinance during their meeting.
Officials approved the ordinance amid a joint effort from the city and the Charleston Police Department to curb underaged crime. The curfew applies to juveniles who are 17 years old and under. There have been large groups of teens involved or causing crimes, specifically in the Central Business District.
'There are clips all over the internet about it. It's pretty obvious these are not folks going to and from work, going from one house to another. These are gangs of kids congregating and given locations – parking lots, hanging out on street corners, and it's not one or two of them. It's 20, 30, 40 teenagers,' said William Cogswell, mayor of the City of Charleston.
The curfew would be in effect from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. on Thursdays through Sundays. However, in the summer months it would enforced everyday.
'We picked 9 o'clock which to some may seem a little bit early, but that's when the bars switch from carding everybody that comes in because the dinner crowd is gone. So, they've asked to put that timeframe in place and then going until 6 in the morning,' Cogswell said. 'Again, we've been having incidents. I think we've had well over 40 between narcotics, aggravated assault, robbery, car thefts.'
There are exceptions for those who are working, have an emergency, a sponsored event, or using their First Amendment Rights. The mayor stressed this is an urgent matter as kids are getting out of school soon. Officials said this is also in light of the recent trends and are proactively trying to prevent crime.
'Summer is really when you see these things spike. They've also had some curfews put in place, apparently, outside of the area – not inside the City of Charleston – that has resulted in more and more of these teens coming to King Street in particular. So, it's something that we want to try to be proactive on and address,' said Cogswell.
Committee members added a couple amendments including expansion of the map towards East Bay Street, and adding June to the enforcement schedule. It will go to full city council for first reading in May.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Live: San Francisco police arrest 60 during anti-ICE demonstrations
The Brief SFPD arrested at least 60 anti-ICE protesters after property was vandalized, officers injured and people failed to disperse. The San Francisco protest was in response to immigration enforcement actions and protests in Los Angeles. President Trump sent in the National Guard to LA over Gov. Newsom's objections. SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco police said they arrested 60 people on Sunday night during protests in support of anti-ICE demonstrations down south in Los Angeles that was marred by vandalized buildings, damaged cars and Muni buses, and officers suffering injuries. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and California Attorney General Rob Bonta were set to address the matter in separate news conferences on Monday. The arrests follow an active scene on Sansome and Jackson streets near the ICE building in San Francisco's financial district. Police said three officers were hurt and one was taken to the hospital. Police also recovered one gun at the scene. The protest started peacefully, but at 7 p.m., police said some protesters got aggressive and shattered office building windows and vandalized Muni buses. A Waymo and San Francisco police car parked near Union Square were damaged as well. Grafitti marred the ICE building. Glass was shattered at Chase bank. At one point, BART service at the Embarcadero was closed, as a small group of remaining demonstrators marched through downtown. As a result, police declared an unlawful assembly to break up the crowd. Police said they began to arrest people after some protesters refused to leave. "Individuals are always free to exercise their First Amendment rights in San Francisco but violence — especially against SFPD officers — will never be tolerated," SFPD posted on X. Protesters who spoke to KTVU said they wanted this to be a peaceful demonstration."I was just so outraged to see the scenes from the last couple of days in Los Angeles," Nick Weininger of San Francisco said. "I feel like we have to do something. That is not OK, not OK to treat immigrants like that." Jesse MacKinnon said he came out from Pleasant Hill to protect people's Fourth and Fourteenth amendment rights. "These rights are getting trampled on," he said, referring to undocumented people who are getting deported without getting their due process in court. People in San Francisco were reacting to what's been happening in Los Angeles. On Sunday, thousands took to the streets to President Donald Trump's deployment of the National Guard – against Gov. Gavin Newsom's wishes and advice – where they blocked off a major freeway and set self-driving Waymo cars on fire as law enforcement used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bangs to control the crowd. Sunday marked the third and most intense day of demonstrations against Trump's immigration crackdown in the region. The Guard was deployed specifically to protect federal buildings, including the downtown detention center where protesters concentrated. Several dozen people in Los Angeles were arrested throughout the weekend, including one person for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at police and another for ramming a motorcycle into a line of officers. The arrival of the National Guard followed two days of protests that began Friday in downtown Los Angeles before spreading on Saturday to Paramount, a heavily Latino city south of the city, and neighboring Compton. Federal agents arrested immigrants in LA's fashion district, in a Home Depot parking lot and at several other locations on Friday. The next day, they were staging at a Department of Homeland Security office near another Home Depot in Paramount, which drew out protesters who suspected another raid. Federal authorities later said there was no enforcement activity at that Home Depot. Newsom asked that Trump remove the guard members in a letter Sunday afternoon, calling their deployment a "serious breach of state sovereignty." He was in Los Angeles meeting with local law enforcement and officials. The deployment appeared to be the first time in decades that a state's national guard was activated without a request from its governor, a significant escalation against those who have sought to hinder the administration's mass deportation efforts. Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass blamed the increasingly aggressive protests on Trump's decision to deploy the Guard, calling it a move designed to inflame tensions. "What we're seeing in Los Angeles is chaos that is provoked by the administration," Bass said in an afternoon press conference. "This is about another agenda, this isn't about public safety." He pushed back against claims by the Trump administration that the LAPD had failed to help federal authorities when protests broke out Friday after a series of immigration raids. Newsom maintained that California authorities had the situation under control. He mocked Trump for posting a congratulatory message to the Guard on social media before troops had even arrived in Los Angeles, and said on MSNBC that Trump never floated deploying the Guard during a Friday phone call. He called Trump a "stone cold liar." The admonishments did not deter the administration. "It's a bald-faced lie for Newsom to claim there was no problem in Los Angeles before President Trump got involved," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. More protests are expected Monday across the Bay Area, according to Bay Resistance, calling for the immigration raids by the Trump administration to stop. In San Francisco, activists will gather at noon at the California state building on Golden Gate Avenue, and then again at 6 p.m., a protest will be held at the 24th and Mission BART plaza. In Oakland, a protest is planned for 6 p.m. at the Fruitvale plaza. And in San Jose, a protest is called for 4:30 p.m. on Santa Clara Street.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Today in History: June 21, US Constitution becomes law
Today is Saturday, June 21, the 172nd day of 2025. There are 193 days left in the year. Today in history: On June 21, 1788, the United States Constitution went into effect as New Hampshire became the required ninth state to ratify it. Also on this date: In 1834, Cyrus Hall McCormick received a patent for his mechanical reaper. In 1893, the first Ferris wheel opened to the public as part of the Chicago World's Fair. In 1942, an Imperial Japanese submarine fired shells at Fort Stevens on the Oregon coast, but caused little damage. In 1954, scientists of the American Cancer Society presented a study to a meeting of the American Medical Association in San Francisco which found that men who regularly smoked cigarettes died, particularly from lung cancer, at a considerably higher rate than non-smokers. In 1964, civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi; their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam six weeks later. (Forty-one years later, on this date in 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman, was found guilty of manslaughter in their deaths; he was sentenced to 60 years in prison, where he died in January 2018.) In 1982, a jury in Washington, D.C. found John Hinckley Jr. not guilty by reason of insanity in the shootings of President Ronald Reagan, Press Secretary James Brady, Washington D.C. police office Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy. In 1989, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled, in Texas v. Johnson, that burning the American flag as a form of political protest was protected by the First Amendment. In 1997, the WNBA made its debut as the New York Liberty defeated the host Los Angeles Sparks 67-57. In 2004, the aircraft SpaceShipOne made the first privately funded human spaceflight. In 2010, Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty to charges of plotting a failed car bombing in New York's Times Square. (Shahzad was later sentenced to life in prison.) Today's Birthdays: Composer Lalo Schifrin is 93. Musician Ray Davies (The Kinks) is 81. Actor Meredith Baxter is 78. Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi is 78. Actor Michael Gross is 78. Author Ian McEwan is 77. Musician Nils Lofgren is 74. Cartoonist Berkeley Breathed is 68. Country musician Kathy Mattea is 66. Filmmaker Lana Wachowski is 60. Rapper-DJ-producer Pete Rock is 55. Actor Juliette Lewis is 52. Actor Chris Pratt is 46. Rock singer Brandon Flowers (The Killers) is 44. Britain's Prince William is 43. Singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey is 40. Golfer Scottie Scheffler is 29.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
S.F. ICE protests: Two demonstrations planned for today as tensions rise over immigration arrests
Immigrant-rights activists plan to descend on San Francisco City Hall and a highly trafficked BART station Monday afternoon to protest a spate of recent federal immigration arrests and the Trump administration's most recent travel ban. The protests Monday would come on the heels of a chaotic altercation in San Francisco Sunday that resulted in the arrest of around 60 protesters. Protests on Monday were scheduled for 4 p.m. outside of San Francisco City Hall and at 6 p.m. at the 24th and Mission BART plaza, according to organizers of the respective demonstrations. They were organized in response to the immigration arrests in Los Angeles over the weekend and in the Bay Area in the last two weeks. Supervisors Shamann Walton and Bilal Mahmood were scheduled to attend the protest outside of City Hall on Monday, the event's organizers said. The arrests and the travel ban 'are connected by a shared goal: to criminalize, isolate, and silence our communities,' organizers of the City Hall news conference said Sunday in a social media post. Demonstrations over immigration raids erupted over the weekend in Los Angeles, with some protesters clashing with local law enforcement. Buildings were vandalized and vehicles set on fire, and local law enforcement deployed tear gas and flash-bang grenades on protesters. The Trump administration deployed National Guard troops, without the request of the governor, in an effort to quell the protests, but Gov. Gavin Newsom said local law enforcement did not need the help and sent them to escalate tensions. Protesters on Sunday gathered near the San Francisco U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office downtown in solidarity with the protesters in Southern California. But the demonstration soon turned into a chaotic standoff between protesters and police and an unlawful assembly was declared. Police said 60 people were arrested and that three officers were injured, one of whom was hospitalized. There was no immediate indication that federal officials also planned to send National Guard troops to San Francisco. 'Everyone in this country has a right to make their voice heard peacefully, and local law enforcement will always protect that right and the rights of everyone in our city to be safe. But we will never tolerate violent and destructive behavior,' Lurie said, referring to some protesters allegedly vandalizing Muni vehicles and shattering windows of local businesses. San Francisco police said Sunday they were working with the San Francisco Sheriff's Office to monitor the protests in Los Angeles County and that their priority is to keep San Francisco residents safe if protests occurred in the city. Police spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the planned protests on Monday. 'As always, individuals are free to peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights here, and we have developed an interagency plan to protect public safety in that scenario. Violence, property destruction, and other criminal activity will never be tolerated,' the police department said. Outside City Hall Monday, San Francisco Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who represents the city's largest Latino neighborhood, told a crowd President Donald Trump has 'railroaded due process' and has 'tested the boundaries of the Constitution.' 'The people Trump is disappearing are not criminals,' Fielder said. 'They are mothers, fathers, toddlers. ICE is not promoting public safety. It's promoting violence and racism.' Fielder said San Francisco must 'defend people's rights to due protest' and said demonstrations are happening because 'our neighbors are under attack.' 'When the government turns on its own people, it's up to the people to put the government in check,' Fielder said.
