Summer nights in Fells Point offer gorgeous harbor views, meals by the water, and historic cobblestone streets. Lately, these warm weekend nights also include infringements on your constitutional rights, attorneys say.
Baltimore’s new effort to transform the Fells Point entertainment district into a permitted event space with ID checkpoints on weekends is “obviously unconstitutional,” according to two attorneys who reviewed the policy for Baltimore Beat. The checkpoints, operated by “independently hired private security personnel” that are contracted by the Baltimore Development Corporation, are the city’s latest effort to crack down on the presence of young people in Fells by enforcing a curfew.
“This is a cute attempt to sidestep the Constitution,” said Cary Hansel, a Baltimore civil rights attorney. “The government cannot collude with private actors to deny people rights that the government couldn’t deny in the first place.”
“This is a cute attempt to sidestep the Constitution.”
Cary Hansel, a Baltimore civil rights attorney
Todd Pugh, who co-chairs the Fourth Amendment Committee for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, agreed that the checkpoints are an unconstitutional effort to exclude “a certain type of young person” from the neighborhood.
“Calling a neighborhood a ‘permitted space’ does not turn a public sidewalk into a nightclub door,” he said. “You do not need a ticket to walk down a public street in America.”
In response to written questions from the Beat, Mayor Brandon Scott’s office at first argued that the policy is “narrowly tailored to control foot traffic in a specific permitted event footprint.” The permit holder, Baltimore Development Corporation, pays for private security to police the “events” on Friday and Saturday nights through Labor Day, Scott’s office said. (The restrictions will also be in place the Sunday before Labor Day, the office said.)
The Baltimore Development Corporation is a quasipublic nonprofit that has served as the city’s economic development agency since 1991. The mayor’s office nominates members of the BDC’s board of directors, which includes several members of Scott’s administration. The board’s chair is Calvin Young, Scott’s longtime political ally and former campaign treasurer.
After the Beat sent followup questions, the city appeared to acknowledge that it, not the BDC, is behind the policy and offered a more thorough explanation of the rules, which were announced with little fanfare on the Instagram page for the Mayor’s Office of Arts, Culture & Entertainment on July 24.
“The city has been made aware of numerous instances of underage drinking and other illegal activity within the specific nightlife area in Fells Point along Thames St. from S. Bond St. to S. Ann St. and S. Broadway St. below Aliceanna St.,” Tracy King, the director of Scott’s Office of Communications, said in an email.
“As a result, the permit footprint was established to narrowly focus around the central nightlife corridor, supporting businesses by addressing those concerns, and improving the safety of residents, patrons, and the broader public,” King said. “To be clear, this is not the entire Fells Point neighborhood and is designed to provide added security to the small portion of the nightlife corridor where concerns are most prevalent.”
The relevant area covers multiple city blocks. Some restrictions were also expanded to the Federal Hill neighborhood on August 7, though there are no ID checkpoints there.
“This isn’t about limiting access to public areas for residents and the broader public or limiting freedom of movement,” King said. “Neighborhood residents and visitors who are staying within the permit footprint are allowed through the checkpoints regardless of age, unrestricted.”
King did not explain how neighborhood residents would know that they are allowed to walk into their own neighborhood unimpeded. The policy posted on Instagram did not state that there were exceptions for “residents or the broader public,” and security personnel told visitors on Saturday that they had to ID “everyone.”
BDC did not immediately respond to emailed questions.
Black teenagers who gather in Fells Point and other affluent waterfront neighborhoods on summer nights have long been a fixation of the city’s conservative media outlets, which have reported on the new checkpoints without raising questions about their impact on residents’ constitutional rights. Sensationalizing crime that happens in predominantly white areas of the city and highlighting offenses committed by young people — regardless of data showing declining youth crime — is part of a well-worn playbook designed to stoke fear and push for harsh punitive responses from city and state officials.
Sensationalizing crime that happens in predominantly white areas of the city and highlighting offenses committed by young people — regardless of data showing declining youth crime — is part of a well-worn playbook designed to stoke fear and push for harsh punitive responses from city and state officials.
The checkpoints in Fells Point are just the latest attempt to restrict where young people can exist in public. Area malls and grocery stores have initiated curfews in recent years, and Baltimore responded to concerns about young people and violence in Fells Point with an expanded curfew and heightened police presence. After 9 p.m., children 13 and under must be accompanied by an adult, and after 11 p.m., the curfew includes anyone 17 and under.
Hansel said the city’s explanation for the checkpoints makes no difference from a constitutional perspective. Private security personnel acting with the government’s approval aren’t allowed to violate the public’s constitutional rights just because they’re not police officers.
Stopping anyone who walks into Fells and requiring them to show ID is considered a “Terry stop,” or a brief investigative detention, Pugh said. Terry stops must be based on a “particularized, reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity, he said, and stopping everyone who tries to enter Fells Point does not meet that bar. A mandatory ID checkpoint — and in some cases, bag searches — treats everyone as suspicious and inserts government intrusion into a casual night out.
There are exceptions to these Fourth Amendment protections. The government can require ID checks and bag searches at some locations, like airports and sports stadiums, where the heightened need for safety outweighs privacy interests. Police can also set up DUI checkpoints and stop vehicles as long as they meet certain requirements.
But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 26 years ago that the government can’t use checkpoints for general crime control, which is similar to what Baltimore is doing in Fells Point, the attorneys said. A federal court in Washington, D.C., also said in 2009 that a “neighborhood safety zone” and checkpoints that the district set up following a triple homicide in the Trinidad neighborhood violated residents’ constitutional rights.
“There are lots of examples where police can stop people, but this is not one of them,” Hansel said. “Simply cordoning off an area because police suspect people traveling through it might, in the future, cause some problem in that area is not sufficient.”
This isn’t the first time the city has tested the limits of the Fourth Amendment. Baltimore paid $96,000 in 2021 to four Harlem Park residents whose neighborhood was locked down for six days following Detective Sean Suiter’s death there in 2017. Residents were required to show ID to enter their own neighborhood during that time. The police commissioner at the time, Michael Harrison, issued a rare public apology for the way residents were treated, and the Baltimore Police Department agreed to policy changes following a lawsuit from the ACLU of Maryland.
The city’s new argument that “residents and the broader public” can enter Fells Point without showing ID appears designed to undercut the possibility of a similar legal claim.
Even for nonresidents, the policy could pose problems, said Spencer Jeffrey, a 23-year-old who lives in Hunt Valley. While he didn’t mind showing his ID to get into Fells Point Saturday night, he thought of his mother, who often doesn’t carry her driver’s license, and other people like her.
“Why can they not enjoy public roads?” Jeffrey asked. “This is paid for by the taxpayers,” he said, gesturing at the cobblestone streets.
In Fells Point this past Saturday night, many people were surprised that they had to show identification at the new checkpoints, where unarmed personnel in black “SECURITY” t-shirts said they needed to ID everyone, regardless of how old or young they appeared. People of all ages were turned away if they did not have ID with them.
Two young visitors to the neighborhood remarked that there was a noticeable drop-off in the number of people of color beyond the checkpoints, which included using city vehicles to block off roads to traffic.
While several visitors interviewed by the Beat said they believed the checkpoints were necessary to keep teenagers from drinking and causing trouble in a bar-centric neighborhood, others noted that requiring identification was onerous. One woman in her 30s said she’d had to remember to bring ID, which she was carrying in her bra, on her evening walk through the neighborhood with her dog.
“I don’t really see a problem with it because people mess the community up,” said Darrian Williams, 27. “I can see why they did it. But it’s like, come on now, it’s an open vicinity. They try to lock down everything.”
Madeleine O’Neill is a freelance reporter in Baltimore.