Alice Springs will be a ghost town after 10pm tonight, as a three-day curfew has begun. It comes less than three months after the red centre town emerged from a three week youth curfew, which threw the town's problems with antisocial behaviour into the national spotlight.
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00:00The NT's top cop taking a major step.
00:04It is a curfew and it applies to all classes of people.
00:07It will apply to adults, it will apply to youth, it will apply to everyone.
00:11Less than three months after a youth curfew saw Alice Springs in the national spotlight,
00:16a new declaration will bar all people from the centre of town between 10pm and 6am over
00:22the next three nights.
00:23If we apply some measures now to interdict and use the community to help us, we should
00:27see a turnaround.
00:29Police pulling the trigger on their new curfew powers after a string of violent incidents
00:33over the weekend, including one that saw four off-duty officers assaulted and robbed around
00:392am on Sunday morning as they were walking home after a night out.
00:43It was disgusting, it's unacceptable and it's simply criminal.
00:46But not everyone supports the move.
00:48We just haven't seen the evidence that what has occurred constitutes an emergency that
00:54requires this sort of intervention.
00:57The streets of the Alice Springs CBD will be completely empty after 10pm tonight.
01:01After these three nights of curfew are over, the police can apply to extend it, they just
01:06need the permission of the NT's police minister.
01:09Out here on the streets of Alice Springs, many people are unaware that the curfew is
01:13about to be imposed.
01:14For those that have heard of it, they have mixed feelings.
01:17What I see happening all the time is not right, but the curfew is good.
01:25I support addressing the root causes out in remote communities.
01:30As a circuit breaker, I support it on this occasion and I think something needs to be
01:34done, but it doesn't really offer a long-term solution.
01:38The NT's leading Aboriginal justice agency concerned the curfew will lead to more people
01:43getting in trouble with the law.
01:45We are talking about some of the most marginalised and disadvantaged people in Australia who
01:49will be sleeping rough.
01:50We're talking about young people who don't have, a lot of young people who don't have
01:54safe places to go at night.
01:56We're talking about people with mental health issues, people who won't be following the
02:00news of the day, who will be just going about their daily lives and suddenly will be having
02:05interactions with police.
02:06A controversial lockdown after a violent weekend.