Marquis Clyburn Jr., a 14-year-old from Southeast D.C., summed up his thoughts on the youth curfew in two words: “It’s trash.”
He delivered his scathing opinion from the Kennedy Recreation Center in Shaw as younger children played on inflatable bounce houses and older teens filmed trending TikTok dances off to the side. As he spoke, another boy around his age entered the building sporting a hood and ski mask. A woman at the front desk asked him to remove the face coverings.
“It’s 90 degrees,” she said. “You not hot?”
Pump It Up Palace was one of more than a dozen youth events hosted by the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation last week. Clyburn attended Wednesday night with his mother, but said the event was “for babies.” He much preferred the teen jams – late-night parties the District has historically held in the summer, but began hosting earlier this year in an effort to curb large teen gatherings in neighborhoods such as Navy Yard and U Street. A nationwide phenomena, the chaotic meetups have at times erupted in violence.
The “teen takeovers” – and what to do with them – have become a fixation of Trump administration officials, D.C. leaders and local residents alike. Officials can't seem to decide whether to impose curfews on youth in designated zones or if such measures would lead to young people being overpoliced – a particular concern in D.C., where National Guard troops and federal agents patrol the streets. The council has twice this month postponed a vote on emergency curfews, with Mayor Muriel E. Bowser publicly castigating the group as “soft on crime” after the first delay.
But for Clyburn, things are quite simple: he just wants to hang out with friends at night. Clyburn went to a teen takeover after he was bored one weekend and saw an Instagram post. He said he would have gone to a city teen jam if there had been one – the disorganized takeovers don’t have music, basketball courts or free slushies – but he went to Navy Yard because “there’s nothing to do” and he wanted to scooter with friends. He found the gathering too chaotic though, and said he doesn’t plan on attending another.
A basketball, football and track athlete enrolled in the Mayor Marion S. Barry Summer Youth Employment Program, Clyburn had a message for those who seemed to consider all D.C. youth delinquents: “Think of everybody, not just a certain group.”
What teens have to say
I spoke with 10 D.C. teens at DPR events during D.C. public schools' spring break last week. They disagreed on whether the curfew made sense and whether there was enough for teens to do in D.C. But all of them said teens in D.C. were being judged and stereotyped based on the bad behavior of a few.
“I feel like it’s the D.C. government against teenagers,” said Ty’shaunn Chase, 17, who disagreed with the curfew. “It’s not all of us that’s like that. It makes me uncomfortable because you don’t know me.”
But her friend La’Kendra Wheeler, 16, defended D.C. officials. “I feel like … we can’t be mad because the teenagers are the ones who put us through this. They doing dumb stuff.”
The stakes for D.C. are high, as President Donald Trump has used public safety in the District as justification for his unprecedented federal inventions, including his 30-day takeover of the D.C. police department and deployment of the National Guard. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, a Trump appointee, has pointed to teen takeovers as a reason she should be able to change D.C. law so that her office can prosecute “young punks” under 16.
Young people cannot be arrested for curfew violations, but are sometimes taken to the city’s youth detention facility until a parent picks them up. Police have arrested youth at teen takeovers for other offenses. D.C. police have at times devoted more than half of the department’s on-duty officers to dispelling teens from curfew zones, an official said, a resource strain on a department already facing historically low staffing levels.
Hosting events for youth also costs the city. The D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation hosted four late-night teen events for its Teen Spring Jam Series during the first two weekends of April, with each event costing an average of $148,000, according to DPR director Thennie Freeman.
Staffing accounted for the majority of the costs. But that figure does not include the cost of having D.C. police officers, janitors, traffic control officers or city personnel from other departments on site. Plus, last week DPR hosted life guard training, horseback riding, ice skating, talent shows and a financial seminar for teens.
D.C. officials have touted the events as a way to help teens stay safe and have fun. The Spring Jam events offered food, games, music and a safe environment for teens until 10 p.m. and nearly 6,000 teens attended – though fights erupted outside the recreation center during one of the jams earlier this month, leading to the arrests of eight youths ages 12 to 17.
“We will always prioritize programming that gives DC youth somewhere to be, something to do, and people who care about them. That is priceless,” Freeman told me.
So why do people continue to claim there’s nothing for D.C. teens to do?
“People probably just need to get involved in their local rec centers and not read headlines or watch social media clips because they don’t show the whole story,” said Marcus Coates, DPR’s deputy director of recreation services. “We are fully engaged and fully invested in our young people, keeping them safe and having fun while doing it.”
Council member Christina Henderson, who voted in favor of both the permanent and emergency curfew Tuesday, told City Cast DC that DPR excels at events for younger children but has historically struggled to engage teens who may think they are “too cool” for city-sanctioned events.
But it’s not on the city to entertain teens every night or every weekend, Henderson said. Some of this work falls on the shoulders of parents.
“Why do I have to incentivize you to ask where your children are at 10 p.m. at night?” she said.
Some teens – like 15-year-old Asja Wilson and 13-year-old Kamiyahray Nichols – agreed. Wilson said the curfew doesn’t “bother her at all.”
“To me, curfew doesn’t matter,” she said. “Because I have a curfew from my parents.”
Nichols said she would never attend a takeover because of the fighting she’s seen in social media videos. She said she thought there was plenty for teens to do in D.C., and said many of her classmates attended both DPR events and the takeovers. (Her mother, who was with her at a DPR event, calls the curfew “a wonderful thing.”)
Tamika Jackson, Clyburn’s mother, has signed her son up for many extracurricular programs to encourage a structured and safe social environment, and said she especially appreciates the DPR events.
Jackson said she doesn’t want her son to depend exclusively on TV, social media and video games for socialization. She wants him to go outside and hang out with his friends, but she also fears that as a Black boy from Southeast D.C., her son will be criminalized.
“It’s kind of infuriating because I know I don’t have a bad kid,” she said. “I do have to worry about him because of the chaos outside with the older teens, but I also worry about police because he is a young Black male and some people think they are all the same. Every time he leaves the house, it gives me anxiety.”
Delayed decisions
Concerns around overpolicing surged this week after a social media video taken in Navy Yard showed a D.C. police officer grabbing two Black girls and pulling them off a moving bike this weekend. The teens appeared to be in a group of two, and therefore not in violation of the curfew.
The same officer is captured on video standing at the top of the Navy Yard Metro station, yelling down the escalator, “Come up and see what happens.” D.C. Police Spokesperson Tom Lynch said the matter has been referred to the Office of Police Complaints.
On Tuesday, the D.C. Council voted 8-5 to preliminarily approve a permanent bill allowing the special curfew zones. The bill requires Congressional approval and wouldn’t go into effect until fall.
It passed after new at-large council member Doni Crawford negotiated an amendment with pro-curfew leaders such as council member Brooke Pinto and Bowser, limiting who could request a curfew zone and establishing a 30-minute warning period for teens before a curfew zone could take effect.
But the council voted 7-6 to again delay a decision on the emergency legislation it’s been using to extend the stricter curfew policy since July. Emergency legislation requires nine votes to pass and the council took a “five minute” recess (that lasted 34 minutes) before D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson moved to table the vote, seemingly signaling that efforts to secure enough council members’ support had failed.
Mendelson hinted at the watchful eye of the Trump administration as he urged his colleagues to delay the vote once more, telling them the last thing D.C. needs is a “self-inflicted wound” when the city is already fighting many battles for its autonomy.
“There are folks who are not friends to the District who are looking very closely at what we are doing and what we are not doing,” he said.
Others on the council, like Anita Bonds, fiercely opposed postponing the vote.
“Sometimes I feel like we kick the can and the can doesn’t move very far,” Bonds, who voted in favor of the permanent bill, said. “We continue to put off what we cannot put off.”
