Thousands of teenagers packed downtown Greenville this weekend causing a huge disturbance after an Upstate festival. Check out the video from Greenville surveillance cameras.
Greenville City Council will consider an ordinance Monday night to set a permanent curfew on some teenagers in the downtown area.
There is a temporary order in place that regulates the hours that teenagers - under 18 years of age -can be in the central business district on Friday and Saturday nights.
The temporary measure expires October 30.
The first reading on the ordinance calls for the curfew to be between the hours of 10:00pm on Friday nights and 6:00am Saturday morning. The curfew is the same from 1:00pm Saturday nights until 6:00am Sunday morning.
City leaders elected to install a curfew after what they say were hundreds of young people - including a number they claim climbed to 1,000 - on weekends in July and August.
The request from City Manager Jim Bourey says teenagers went into traffic on streets, pounded on cars, spilled into open resturants and fought among themselves.
Bourey writes that if the ordinance isn't approved, there will be safety threats downtown where Greenville Police "may not have the resources to control the conduct if the recent trend were to continue."
There are exceptions to allowing unaccompanied teenagers to be in the downtown area if they are attending church, are employed there or even under a written directive from parents to perform an errand.
Minors who don't obey a directive to leave the area and violate the ordinance would be subject to a fine, but no jail time.
Greenville Police arrested a man who protested the curfew in early September.
Daniel Edge, 30, of Greenville was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor as part of a protest over the weekend curfew in downtown Greenville.
An arrest warrant states Edge attached handbills to city statues and solicited people to protest the municipal curfew. Edge did comply with police and removed the signs according to the warrant, but was encouraging minors to stay and protest at 10:20pm on South Main Street.
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