Dozens of teenagers were arrested in the City of Brotherly Love this weekend for violating a new curfew policy aimed at keeping bands of marauding thugs off the streets.
Mayor Michael Nutter earlier this week called for kids younger than 18 to be off the streets by 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays in response to a recent string of violent attacks by teenage mobs.
Some 50 teens in the neighborhoods of Center City and Universal City were rounded up on Friday, police said. On Saturday, 12 teens were arrested.
"We're going to take this very seriously," police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "We're setting a tone, and that's important."
Philly teens sought to test the new rules by staying out on the streets past the cutoff on the first night of the policy.
"They shouldn't be able to violate my rights," Ryan Stanton, 16, told the paper, as he hung out with friends on South Street shortly before 9 p.m. on Friday.
"If the cops ask me, I'm going to explain why I have the right to assemble peacefully."
Fifteen minutes later, Stanton was in a police van, headed to a station house so his parents could pick him up, the Inquirer said.
First offenders can be fined between $100 and $300, and parents can be fined up to $500 if their kids violate the rule repeatedly.
In other parts of the city, children under 13 must be off the streets by 10 p.m., and those under 18 must be home by midnight.
Swarms of teens have been using Facebook and Twitter to coordinate violent sprees across downtown Philadelphia for months.
In one rampage last month, a man ended up in the hospital with broken teeth and a shattered jaw after a group of teens jumped him. Hours later, a crowd of young people, including an 11-year-old boy, attacked four men.
In another incident, a woman was punched in the face and broke her leg.
Nutter blamed the violence on a small number of "complete knuckleheads."
Nutter's words also harkened back to a 2008 Father's Day speech by then-presidential candidate Barack Obama.
"If we are honest with ourselves, we'll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing — missing from too many lives and too many homes," Obama told a church in Chicago. "They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men."
Now, it's Nutter taking up the mantra.
Some feel his message was needed. Others say he's airing private community matters now that crime is sprouting downtown, near businesses and popular tourist attractions in a sprawling city with many other sections already plagued by persistent gun violence.
Bill Anderson, a talk show host on the black radio station WURD-AM, estimated that about 60 percent of callers commenting on Nutter's address supported him. But quite a few, Anderson said, believe Nutter simply doesn't have the community standing to make such strong remarks.
"The perception is that he is not necessarily a 'community guy. ... He has been perceived as more of a business guy," Anderson said, noting that he didn't have a problem with the comments himself.
Anderson cited concerns among the black community, such as Nutter's perceived focus on the city's downtown over other neighborhoods, a newly enforced curfew for teens and Nutter's endorsement of "stop-and-frisk" searches, a tactic police credit with reducing crime but that some feel unfairly targets minorities.
Annette John-Hall, a black columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote this week that the mayor crossed a line when he said, "You've damaged your own race."
"We can deal with the public tongue-lashing, even if his intended targets were nowhere to be found among the law-abiding churchgoers in their Sunday best," John-Hall wrote. She went on to say, "But what really bothered me was when Nutter fired the age-old salvo that has historically evoked head-hanging shame among black folks."
Nutter said things that needed to be said, according to J. Whyatt Mondesire, president of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP.
"It's like Cosby did. It's like the president did when he was running for office," Mondesire said. "Something is wrong in many African-American homes, and we've got to come to grips with it."
Some have questioned Nutter's support among blacks at the polls, where he has fared better in white wards. Black politicians have taken shots as well.
At a mayoral debate in 2007, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, who is black, challenged his fellow candidate Nutter on the issue of race, suggesting Nutter has to "remind himself he's an African-American." Last year, former Mayor John F. Street, Nutter's predecessor and longtime political adversary, told a newspaper that Nutter was "not a black mayor ... just a mayor with dark skin." Nutter called Street's remarks "ignorant."
Race has again risen to the foreground for Nutter in the wake of the mob assaults.
In one attack last month, a man ended up in the hospital with broken teeth and a wired jaw after a group of teenagers attacked him downtown. Hours later, a crowd of young people assaulted four other men. The city plans to increase legal sanctions for parents whose children participate in the attacks. Nutter has also said strict enforcement of a curfew will continue and more programs at youth centers will be offered.
For his part, the mayor said he felt he had no choice but to go to the pulpit Sunday, regardless of the reaction.
"This is about personal responsibility. "We have to be very straightforward."
Philadelphia's first black district attorney, Seth Williams, also lauded the mayor for using his position as one of the city's most visible leaders to confront a public problem.
