Council OKs curfew law

PARENTS, DO YOU know where your children are? If not, it may cost you.

City Council passed a stricter curfew measure yesterday that would impose a $75 fine - despite strong opposition and concerns about its effectiveness, overly aggressive policing and racial profiling.

The bill, introduced by Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown on behalf of the Nutter administration, passed 15-1.

Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell voted against it and Councilwoman Joan Krajewski was absent.

"It's a bad bill," Blackwell said. "It won't work."

Nearly two dozen people, including some Occupy Philly protesters, testified against the bill while Council members huddled around Reynolds Brown during yesterday's session to discuss additional concerns.

"I learned early on if I had a problem with one student, I didn't punish the whole class," said retired teacher Ken Devstine.

"This curfew is a collective punishment for all of the youth of Philadelphia."

Everett Gillison, deputy mayor for public safety and Nutter's chief of staff, testified mostly to set the record straight about misunderstandings surrounding the bill, adding that it is citywide and would not target African-Americans, Hispanics or males.

"This is not a bill to criminalize young people," said Reynolds Brown.

"Regretfully we have too many parents who don't step up and do their job."

The bill, which establishes three curfew classifications for children 17 and under, follows a temporary curfew implemented to address acts of violence committed by groups of youths over the summer.

Parents would have 30 days to pay the $75 fine after receiving a notice that their child violated curfew.

The maximum penalty would be $500. The curfew would expire in December 2013 so that the administration could measure its effectiveness.

In other news:

* A bill requiring the city and employers that receive city contracts, funding or leases after July 1, 2012, to provide earned paid sick days will become law without Nutter's signature.

The bill, introduced by Councilman Wilson Goode Jr., passed two weeks ago, 15-2.

* Reynolds Brown introduced a resolution requesting Council's Committee on the Disabled and Handicapped to hold hearings on the Tacony house where several mentally disabled adults were held captive in an alleged social-security fraud scheme.