City of Fayetteville begins issuing penalties for youth curfew violations

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WTVD) -- Fayetteville's youth curfew ordinance is fully in effect, and parents can face penalties if their children aged 16 and younger are found outside in the middle of the night.

Tony Haire, the director of the new Way2Real Community Center aimed at uplifting young people, says he supports the measure.

"It gives us the opportunity to come alongside the parent and assist them with rearing their youth," Haire said.

The city just wrapped up a 30-day grace period, holding off on penalizing parents if children 16 and younger broke the 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew.

"The police have undergone several trainings to make sure that they understand the ordinance," said Loren Bymer, the marketing and communications director for the city. "The grace period, if you will, has expired, but we'll continue to still engage and inform and educate people to make sure that they understand what the ordinance states and if there's any exceptions that apply to them."

Austin Kinlaw of ROOTS Mentoring said his team is committed to taking steps to better protect young people. But compared to Haire, he had a more measured response to the youth curfew.

"I think I'm partway to satisfaction. I think that the ongoing conversation is how do we mitigate some of the risks associated with what's going to happen, right? We don't want to negatively impact the youth by having their first engagement, especially with a law enforcement officer, be a negative one," he said.

Kinlaw said the ROOTS team has ideas for the city on how to improve young people's interactions with the police.

"I think where we grow from here is to start having key benchmarks like number of police officers that we're able to visit classrooms, milestones, right? Like number of community events, sessions that actually satisfied the community, like getting that qualitative feedback," Kinlaw said.

Haire shared another idea to help get teens off the street and make their home lives safer: pointing families to his center's mental and behavioral health services.

"If we can teach our parents and youth how to communicate with one another, teaching the youth how to confide in the parent more than their peers, then those relationships between the parent and the youth will become stronger," he said.