D.C. police said they arrested eight youths over the weekend after several juveniles began brawling outside of a city-run event for teens in Southwest.
Metropolitan Police took five girls and three boys into custody Saturday after fights broke out near the King Greenleaf Recreation Center, which was hosting a Teen Spring Jam.
The District’s Department of Parks and Recreation said the arrested teens were part of a “small number of individuals on the perimeter” who had “declined to follow our safety guidelines and were not admitted.”
“Any disturbances occurred outside the event and had no impact on those inside,” the department said. More than 1,000 youths attended the event.
The first arrests came around 8:30 p.m. Saturday, when police said a large fight flared up in the 1300 block of Canal Street SW. Authorities said they arrested three girls, ages 12, 15 and 17, on charges of disturbing the peace by fighting.
The next melee began roughly 10 minutes later next to the corner of First and N streets SW, police said.
Officers moved to clear the area, but a 15-year-old boy refused to leave and assaulted an officer, police said. The boy was arrested and charged.
Police said a trio of teens attacked officers as they tried to disperse the wayward youths around 9 p.m.
Officers charged a 15-year-old girl and a boy and girl, both 14, with disturbing the peace by fighting. The 14-year-olds were also accused of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.
Videos of the fights on social media showed a horde of teens running through the streets and swinging wildly at one another.
Police arrived moments later and forced the teens to leave, the videos show. But the youths reconvened just out of the sight of the officers and began fighting again.
The chaos could be a harbinger of things to come, as the D.C. Council allows the use of juvenile curfew zones to expire this month.
The zones, which let police to forbid minors from gathering in certain hotspots at night, will expire April 15 — right in the middle of the D.C. Public Schools’ spring break. The council voted to postpone its vote on keeping the curfew zones until its April 21 legislative meeting.
Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, skewered the council last week for ditching a crime-fighting tool that has been used by the city since last summer.
“It seems like the council is listening to a very narrow interest group and is very influenced by the election calendar, and not by what we need,” she said. “So the council will say they’ve driven crime down, so ’let’s start going back to soft-on-crime policies.’”
Ms. Bowser said she could issue another public safety emergency so police can set up the zones once more.
She did the same last fall after a Halloween weekend free-for-all in Navy Yard saw dozens of juveniles throwing haymakers at each other.
Shortly after she declared the emergency in November, the council renewed the juvenile curfew.
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, at-large Democrat, said he moved to postpone the vote because some lawmakers had concerns about the curfew’s role going forward.
If the council approves of the curfew again, it would last until Sept. 25. Ms. Bowser has urged the council to pass a law codifying the current curfew authority into law.
