On a chaotic Friday night downtown, crowds of teenagers surged from Smale Riverfront Park up to Fountain Square, sparking fights, a big show of police force and a long night of crowd control. While officers hustled kids onto buses and tried to keep a lid on things, the city’s juvenile curfew centers, funded at roughly $380,000 in public money, sat unused, once again raising the question: what good is a plan if no one can actually use it when things go sideways?
Crowds, fights and a bus response
Just after 8 p.m., computer-aided dispatch records show fights and large crowds breaking out at Smale Park. Officers then spent hours pushing the groups north toward Fountain Square and Government Square and loading teenagers onto buses. No one was arrested during the incident, according to FOX19.
Union: staffing and transport problems
Cincinnati Police Fraternal Order of Police President Ken Kober said the curfew centers were never a realistic option that night because of staffing and transportation issues. Pulling officers off the street just to shuttle kids to a center where they would likely walk right back out did not make sense, he argued.
“It doesn’t make sense to take officers off the street to get them somewhere where they are just going to leave the curfew center,” Kober said, warning that roughly 25 officers trying to manage 200 to 300 teenagers is a logistical problem for any plan, FOX19 reports.
What the centers cost and how often they’re used
The curfew centers were created as part of a $5.42 million downtown public-safety package and include contract line items of about $195,000 for Lighthouse Youth & Family Services and $185,000 for Seven Hills Neighborhood House, according to the city’s legislation. Independent reporting suggests the sites are seeing almost no action: Signal Cincinnati found that just four youth had been taken to curfew centers as of mid November 2025, and other coverage has questioned whether the program is getting used at all, according to city legislation, Signal Cincinnati.
Council and manager response
Some city council members have pushed back on the spending and pressed for a clearer explanation of how the curfew centers are supposed to function when a real incident unfolds. City Manager Sheryl Long has defended keeping the option available, telling council the centers are meant to serve as a contingency tool rather than a first resort. WCPO reported Long saying the curfew centers “have not been in use as of yet” while framing them as part of broader readiness planning.
What council can do next
The legislation that funded the program requires the council to be notified if money remains unspent, which gives elected officials a formal route to redirect any leftover public-safety funds. Council members have said they will revisit the logistics and costs as part of that process and could look at moving some of the money into outreach or other youth-focused programs if the curfew centers keep proving unwieldy, as per Legistar.
For now, the curfew centers remain an underused piece of Cincinnati’s downtown safety strategy, existing more on paper than in the heat of a Friday night crowd. Upcoming council hearings and budget reviews will reveal whether the city doubles down on the current setup or reshapes the program into something that lines up better with what actually happens on the streets.
