The Mobile City Council this morning voted down both a teen-curfew ordinance and an ordinance banning sagging pants.
The curfew vote failed 4-3, with councilmen John Williams, Jermaine Burrell and Fred Richardson voting against it.
The sagging pants ordinance, which was an amendment to the city’s indecent exposure law, also failed 4-3. Council members John Williams, Bess Rich and Gina Gregory voted no.
Council rules require a super majority of 5 votes in order to pass an ordinance.
The curfew dominated the majority of the city’s discussion, which went on for several hours.
The measure failed because Williams would not support a curfew of any kind and Burrell and Richardson would not support an amended version when the original, put forth by the Police Department and Mayor Sam Jones, appeared to lack enough support to pass.
The original curfew would have prohibited minors from roaming the streets or any other public place, including businesses and other places of commerce, after 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, or midnight Friday and Saturday.
The same prohibition would have generally applied for school-age children from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekdays, when public school is in session.
That measure, however, never came to a straight up or down vote vote. Before it could, Councilman Reggie Copeland offered an amendment that, among other things, would have done away with the daytime portion of the curfew and limited the rest of it to a six-month probationary period.
The amendment would have required a Jones to report on the curfew’s efficacy to justify its renewal and the possibility of extending it to daytime hours.
That provoked a sharp response from Jones who said that the daytime curfew was vital to a “comprehensive” curfew ordinance. Furthermore, six months would not be long enough to gather meaningful statistics.
Passing a stripped-down curfew would be setting it up to fail, Jones said.
Richardson and Burrell both voted against adding the amendment to Jones’ ordinance, but the amendment succeeded with the support of the other council members, including Williams.
Asked why he voted in favor of the amendment if he had no intention of voting for any curfew, Williams said that he knew the original didn’t have enough votes to pass and he wanted to allow those in favor of an amended version to see if it would succeed.
It did not.
Richardson and Burrell refused to support the stripped down version, saying only the police department had the expertise to craft a curfew. With Williams, the three votes were enough to sink it altogether.
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