BALTIMORE — If you're walking in Fells Point at night on the weekends, you'll probably see barriers on South Broadway reading, "No unaccompanied minors after curfew hours."
The sign stating that kids under 14 years old can't be in the area from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and teens from 14 to 17 years old are restricted from the area between 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Emma Gebhard, a bartender at Todd Conner's, told WMAR-2 News that security guards accompany the barriers and she welcomes it.
Baltimore cracks down on teen meetups in Fells Point
“I feel a little relieved just as a bartender. I mean we have security already but knowing that there’s an extra step makes me feel a little bit more secure, but I also don’t fully trust the security because I know they’re not really the police and they - sometimes I’ve had encounters where they seem a little bit incompetent but anything’s better than nothing," Gebhard said.
Baltimore Police said that the department worked with city officials to establish restricted areas in Fells Point.
This comes following multiple large teen meetups in the area.
“They would use the bathrooms for free, throw up in the bathroom, we’d have to clean it up. They would try ordering drinks underage," Gebhard said, describing her experience working while the night teen meetups are happening.
A Fells Point resident, Michelle, said that she'd be completely fine if teens were just walking around at night, but that's not what she's seen.
“Then all of a sudden it was 20 of them, came in that man’s store, jumped on the counters, taking stuff and the man was in there by himself," she said, “You had kids in the streets stopping traffic doing their little dances and then you have them messing with people that walk through here.”
Gebhard thinks that the solution could lie in giving young people more things to do.
“If we had better free third spaces, they wouldn’t have to resort to trying to buy alcohol in the streets and drinking, you know, if we had malls and parks and invested in public transit.”
While Michelle's opinion is that fixing the problem starts at home.
“This is something you can’t put a band-aid on. So you gotta get to the root of the problem. You gotta sit these kids down even with a therapist and see what’s causing you to act out."
They hope to see the curfew in place through the rest of the summer.
