TULSA, Okla. — The Tulsa Police Department shared an update following the first weekend of the City of Tulsa’s new curfew policy requiring everyone under 18 to leave downtown by 9 p.m. on weekends.

Tulsa City Councilors passed the new ordinance in response to a recent series of shootings, many of which involved large groups of teenagers. The City said they hope this new rule will help keep kids safe.

“We spoke with numerous juveniles, and they were compliant,” said TPD Captain Richard Meulenberg. “We pushed them out of downtown, and they were just fine with it. We did issue one citation. I don’t have the circumstances of that one citation, but usually that’s a last resort.”

Meulenberg said it isn’t just police who are working on curfew enforcement.

He said business owners in the downtown area are keeping an eye on the foot traffic near their stores.

“So for us, a lot of it will be anecdotal. We don’t track with counters who’s coming out of town. I mean, people are there. We don’t need a precise number, but the officers, the shop owners, we kind of can see how much traffic we have. So I couldn’t tell you if there’s a correlation or causation. This last weekend we did see a pretty sharp decline in the amount of people in the downtown area, particularly between the 9 o’clock, midnight hour.”

While these early numbers are promising, Captain Meulenberg did acknowledge that this upcoming weekend is set to be big for them.

“This weekend is going to be the first real test because we have 4th of July coming up. It happens to land on a Friday, so if we see the same decline in numbers, we can kind of start saying this is effective.”

Meulenberg also said the effectiveness of the curfew can’t be determined by just data and numbers, but rather sometimes it will be the stuff people don’t see.

For example, he said if a child isn’t at the wrong place at the wrong time and there’s no crime to speak about, that’s the success they want to see.

To learn more about the new curfew and its exceptions, you can view the City’s information page on it here.