Columbia’s nightly curfew will end Tuesday, unless City Council acts
For more than two months, Columbians have not been able to enjoy a late night out due to concerns about COVID-19.
By early next week, that curfew could come to an end. The 60-day curfew will expire on Tuesday, allowing residents to be out after 11 p.m. and giving late-night hot spots still reopening from the coronavirus shutdown a chance to get back to normal.
Columbia City Council declined to extend the nightly curfew in its regular Tuesday meeting this week, and council members who spoke to The State seemed ready to allow the coronavirus curfew to end.
There’s still time for the city to extend the curfew before Tuesday night, with the possibility of holding a special meeting on the issue if the situation warrants.
“There are two things that could change that,” said Mayor Steve Benjamin. “There could be a precipitous rise in COVID-19 cases, and we’re seeing a steady stream of cases now, but that’s partly because more testing is being conducted. And we need to keep an eye on public safety concerns.”
Columbia instituted a nightly curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. back in March, as an attempt to encourage social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. That curfew only lasted about two weeks before the city instituted a stricter stay-at-home order on March 29. When a statewide order was lifted in April, a new 60-day curfew was put in place April 9.
Since then, many businesses have slowly reopened, with some bumpy social distancing adjustments. But those in Columbia have still had to close up shop before 11, even as competitors outside the city limits have not faced the same restrictions.
“Several of us want to see it slowly expire and try to get businesses back to normal,” said Councilman Daniel Rickenmann. “If we have instances that could cause us to put it back, we could, but I don’t see it continuing.”
One of those instances could be if Columbia experiences another weekend like the last, when a peaceful march protesting the death of George Floyd descended into clashes with police, cars set on fire and several businesses in the Vista vandalized and looted.
Columbia instituted an emergency curfew starting at 6 p.m. Saturday until 6 a.m. Monday, which applied to the Vista district downtown and was later extended to the Five Points area. Benjamin later announced another selected curfew starting at 7:45 p.m. Monday as protests continued around the S.C. State House. Those curfews came into effect on top of the citywide curfew.
Many City Council members expressed apprehension about further unrest in the city but said the mayor’s emergency power to declare a curfew would be sufficient to respond to any incidents, as Benjamin did Saturday and Monday. Such a declaration requires City Council to approve the curfew within 24 hours. The council held a meeting on Sunday to keep the weekend curfew in place.
“I think the mayor’s power is sufficient,” said Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine. “I hate to enact a curfew and disrupt businesses downtown,” adding, “If it’s a curfew for the protest, it probably needs to be earlier than 11.”
Councilman Howard Duvall said he thinks a continued curfew could be justified due to the events of the weekend.
“Extending the 11 p.m. curfew relieves a lot of pressure on the Columbia Police Department,” Duvall said. “Our department has been severely stressed over the past week, so this may be one way to give them support. I don’t think it would be used for a full 60 days, probably for a few weeks.”
But others don’t expect another curfew will be necessary as long as protests remain as peaceful as they have been for the past few days.
“We talked about the balance, how we look at public safety and safe participation of protesters,” Councilman Will Brennan said. “Every day brings people out to have their voice heard. I don’t know if another issue will come up. We can just try to create the best platform for those conversations to happen.”
Benjamin said he would continue to monitor the situation in case the city does require any more emergency curfew measures.
“Protests are as American as apple pie,” Benjamin said. “We’ve seen here and more so in other places, when protests get out of hand and get violent at night time, it’s a much more challenging situation for law enforcement to control, and I don’t want Columbia to be in that position.
“If ever there’s a grave public safety threat, I will use that tool to help keep people safe,” he said.
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