Curfew

Responding to a rash of shootings, Darby Borough officials declared a state of emergency and imposed an 8 p.m. curfew Friday night. Police Chief Bob Smythe said residents would notice more police on the streets immediately. Residents will also be under an 8 p.m. curfew for at least 10 days. Anyone outside after that time can be stopped and questioned by police, although authorities say they are mostly concerned with groups that are loitering or causing a disturbance. The borough of about 11,000 people has seen five shootings, none fatal, in three days.

Takeout eateries in Camden can stay open late for now while city officials try to get the businesses on board with their plan to shut them down early. Tuesday evening, Camden City Council tabled a business-curfew ordinance that would have forced certain businesses, mostly takeout establishments without a drive-through window or parking lot, to close by 11 weeknights and midnight on weekends. Iraida Afanador, the city code-enforcement director, said at last week's caucus meeting that the ordinance would be pulled so the administration could get its "ducks in a row. " The administration's concern is that many of the city's takeout restaurants attract an after-hours clientele interested in buying drugs and wreaking havoc in the neighborhoods.

Joining the ranks of South Jersey towns with curfews for teenagers, the Borough Commission last night unanimously passed an ordinance requiring juveniles to be off the streets in the late evening. Beginning as early as June 20, youths 17 and younger must be inside by 11 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays. On Fridays and Saturdays, young people can be out until midnight. Exceptions will be made for those attending school and religious events or returning from late-night jobs and in emergencies.

PARENTS would face steeper fines if their children are caught violating curfew under a bill to be introduced in City Council today in response to problems with groups of violent youths wreaking havoc around the city. Parents would be fined $75 if their child is caught violating curfew, up from $25, according to the bill to be introduced by Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown on behalf of the Nutter administration. The maximum penalty would be $500. Under the legislation, curfews would be the same seven days a week - there would no longer be later curfew on the weekends - and would be split into three age-group categories instead of two. The curfew would be 8 p.m. for children 13 and younger, 9 p.m. for those ages 14 and 15, and 10 p.m. for teens 16 and 17. The curfew lasts until 6 a.m. for all public places and establishments unless the child is accompanied by a parent, running an errand or working.

Holstering a yellow squirt gun in the waist of his sagging pants, the white-whiskered homeless man looked around warily as he pushed his shopping cart along the empty streets of downtown Los Angeles. "This place has gone crazy. You can't be too careful," he said as the sun set Sunday and he officially came into violation of the city-wide curfew imposed after last week's rioting. Lifted yesterday in Los Angeles, the dusk-to-dawn curfew had for four nights closed restaurants, theaters and nightclubs, leaving virtually nothing to do in the nation's entertainment capital.

On Halloween night 1985, about 300 young people packed Main Street in Maple Shade and, in the tradition of kids going a bit too far, chucked eggs at cars and jeered the outmanned police. No more, said the Township Council, which later imposed a curfew for future Halloweens. So town officials were waiting anxiously for the events of Halloween 1986. "It went very, very well," Mayor Joseph Dugan said Monday. "We had a few children, I know, were picked up by police . . . I've had many, many people call in to say how well it worked.

By Louis Lombardi Mayor Nutter has decided to take an ironfisted approach to the city's flash-mob problem. Although his motives and much of his response are commendable, his decision to institute a curfew for portions of the city is troubling. While last weekend's relative quiet was attributed to the curfew, its reported effectiveness does not necessarily make it right. Under the curfew, youths under 18 who are found out and about after 9 p.m. in Center City, the South Street area, and University City are subject to arrest.

It happens each evening at precisely 8:45: A blast of sound rips through the tiny borough of Eddystone when the town's fire siren revs up for a few seconds and then, just as suddenly, dies away. It's the nightly curfew warning, a reminder that in Eddystone you have to be 18 or older if you want to hang out on the corner past 9. Despite the ear-splitting blast, residents and officials say the curfew is loosely enforced. "If there's a kid going to the store, or something like that (after 9 p.m.)

The generation gap is alive and living in the township, where the Board of Commissioners took some heat Tuesday from a group of teens who say they do not want a curfew. The teens, most of them students at Springfield High School, told the board that a curfew was not the solution to a recent rise in vandalism of public property. The commissioners said that they were fed up with the vandalism and that they did not know how else to solve the problem. "Why should you penalize the whole town . . . for a certain group of kids who create problems?"

With the assistance of state troopers and a strictly enforced dusk-to-dawn curfew, city officials restored a sense of order to the riot-scarred streets of Cincinnati yesterday, but were bracing for more racial turmoil today as the African American community prepared to bury one of its own. Although police reported more than 200 arrests Thursday night into yesterday morning, the 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew appeared to have largely stemmed the violence,...