Nights Out : Crime: Atlanta’s streets are quieter since a curfew was imposed. While many teens and the ACLU object to it, others are applauding the results.

Bill and Keith are buddies.

Like many 16-year-olds, they like to wear black leather, Army green and rebellious hairstyles. They also like to hang out late at night.

In Atlanta, that’s the latest countercultural act.

A curfew that went into effect Nov. 19 allows police to pick up anyone younger than 17 who is caught out after 11 p.m. weeknights or midnight Fridays and Saturdays. Offenders can be taken home or sent there, or they can be placed in protective custody.

The new law, aiming to curb crime and enforce good parenting, allows parents or guardians of repeat offenders to be jailed up to 60 days and fined up to $1,000.

As of Tuesday, police officials said 17 juveniles had been stopped and sent home or had parents pick them up. Warnings had been given 11 parents, and one had been cited and may be fined.

Bill and Keith are unimpressed.

Chatting on a street corner in the Little Five Points section of Atlanta, a warren of ‘60s-style funky shops, restaurants and bars, the two young men railed against the new law, even as the clock headed toward 1 a.m.

“I think it’s a bunch of bogus bull. . .,” said Keith. Then, affecting an accent that conjured the sound of jackboots on cobblestones, he said, “Pretty soon, they’re going to be saying, ‘PA-PERS, please.’ ”

These are Bill’s sentiments exactly. “All they’re trying to do is control,” he declared.

Disdain and anger are just two of the emotions generated by the ordinance as it heads toward its third week. There is hope, too, as many parents see the statute as a way to save their young sons and daughters from certain trouble. And community activists are intrigued by the prospect that a law could make parents spend more time with their children.

Some say the law already has made streets quieter, maybe even safer. But others argue that the good children already stay home--and nothing will keep hoodlums off the streets if they’re bent on doing evil.

Besides, charge some, including the American Civil Liberties Union, this law’s unconstitutional because it violates the right to free assembly.

There is no argument, however, that the law changes life in Atlanta, in ways ranging from whether youngsters should have identification cards to the newly found quiet in previously noisy neighborhoods. As in the early 1980s, when a curfew was initiated in the wake of a wave of child murders--although that curfew did not penalize parents--Atlantans again try to discover whether tightening restrictions means more freedom from crime.

Other cities beset by crime also are starting or thinking of starting curfews. At least six small towns in the Mississippi Delta have curfews, as does Quantico, Va. And officials in cities including Boston, Birmingham, Ala., and Charlotte, N.C., are considering them.

Crime is the driving force. When Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson signed the ordinance, he said the curfew “will help us to fight drugs and to protect our children,” asserting that the law limits children’s unsupervised time and reduces their “availability . . . to dealers who use and manipulate them in the drug trade.”

Drugs, weapons and fear are much on the minds of many residents in the city’s public housing complexes, for example. In one, Perry Homes--a sprawling complex of sand-colored, two-story buildings, many abandoned and boarded up--several parents said they welcomed the curfew and praised the changes in their lives.

In a sad irony, the curfew on teens in effect lifted self-imposed curfews on many adults, particularly in high-crime areas like Perry Homes. Several grown-ups said they rarely went out after dark before the new statute was in place. Now, they say, they have begun to gingerly test the night again.

At the home of Maude Pye, about a half dozen family members, including several of her nine children, gathered in the dimly lit living room last weekend and talked about the law.

“I like it,” said Pye, a soft-spoken woman, wry of wit. “Now, I don’t have other people’s kids hanging around my door making noise and attracting my kids.”

While the law targets the 16-and-under crowd and their parents, its fallout is far-reaching.

For example, Pye noted, “My 17-year-old daughter used to really hang out. Now she doesn’t because she doesn’t have any ID.” Her daughter, Quincella Harden, said, “I’m going to get some ID made, but they don’t have any right to lock me up.”

Several other teen-agers said the need to prove they are over 16 and on the street legally would force them to apply for something they have no need for: driver’s licenses or some other official-looking identification card.

The curfew makes several exemptions, including allowing for youngsters who are leaving work, on “an emergency errand” or “returning directly home” from a school activity, dance or other recreational activity. But those out legally, such as fast-food restaurant workers, also could be stopped if they have no identification, so many are planning to get it.

Some creative teens who resent the law and believe it should be flouted now threaten to become forgers.

“People at my school are making a joke about it,” said Saleria Thomas, Pye’s 15-year-old granddaughter. “They’re saying they’re going to write a note (that authorizes them to be out) and say their parents wrote it.”

The prospect of Atlanta police laboriously checking with parents on whether they actually wrote the notes drew general chuckles around Pye’s apartment.

But there was no laughter when Saleria pointed out the most graphic change she’s noticed since the curfew began. “Used to be a lot of killing and shooting and stuff” around her neighborhood, several miles from Perry Homes, she said. “It shocked me; little kids used to be out at 3 and 4 o’clock in the morning. They don’t do that any more.”

Whatever its long-term effects, the curfew has, for now, heightened attention to crime and safety. Diane Jones, who lives in Perry Homes, said that although she thinks the curfew is a good idea, it should reach beyond 16-year-olds, noting that her 17-year-old daughter, Samantha, “likes to stay out late.”

The curfew was enacted in the wake of some embarrassing crime statistics. The FBI said that last year Atlanta had the highest rate of reported serious crimes--murder, robbery, assaults, rapes, auto thefts--among U.S. cities with more than 300,000 residents.

But through October of this year, the overall serious crimes reported dropped 14%, according to Roy Hanson, deputy director of the Metropolitan Atlanta Crime Commission, a privately funded group that advocates crime prevention.

As for the curfew, Hanson said, “I don’t think it will have any effect” on crime because 95% of those arrested are adults.

Police official W.J. Taylor, deputy chief of field operations, said the new law gives authorities “one more tool to use” against a “small influx of gang members” who had recruited Atlanta youngsters to sell drugs.

“We’re not finding them on the street anymore,” Taylor said.

Taylor said it was unclear why youths have left the street--whether because of a sudden blast of wintry weather, because they are waiting to see how diligently the law is enforced or because parents are beginning to accept “parental responsibility.”

Indeed, Janice Sikes, a community activist who lives with her husband, Dann, and their two children, ages 13 and 11, in a historic Atlanta neighborhood, called the curfew “a wonderful opportunity to restructure” relationships within families.

“Some middle-class parents are working two and three jobs,” she said. “They can cut back on some things and spend more time with their children.”

Ron Osborne, president of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metropolitan Atlanta, agreed that such a development would be “a positive. Like the TV commercial says, ‘Do you know where your kids are?’ ”

Atlanta’s population is 437,300, 69% minority. Although the curfew applies to the entire city, some people here believe it will be selectively enforced, a charge police reject.

For example, Bert Skellie, a white father of two teen-age boys, said his 16-year-old, who is more likely than his 13-year-old to be out late, “isn’t worried because he’s white. I suspect it will be black kids in certain areas that they will crack down on.”

Whether black or white, the youngsters who defy the curfew or threaten to defy it do so with brio. It is a law that invites verbal--and physical--swaggering, not a small consequence or irony for a law designed to do just the opposite. For many, it’s just another way to challenge authority.

Even those who are older than 16 enjoy the sport of curfew-bashing. In Perry Homes, Arthur White, 18, said if he were stopped after curfew, “I’d take out running.” Warned of the possible danger, he said, “That wouldn’t be dangerous. That’d be smart.”

And over at Little Five Points, Bill and Keith, along with a Greek chorus of middle-aged hippies who seemed to be mentors, had big fun putting down the new law.

“If they arrest me, I’ll take ‘em to the ACLU,” Keith said.

And as a reporter pulled a notebook out of his shoulder bag, one of the mentors said, “If you pull a badge outta there, I’m gonna be mad.”

Everybody hooted.

Researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.