The Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen will be asked Friday to establish a 60-day 11 p.m. curfew for juveniles.

Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said Monday afternoon he will recommend the board establish a curfew for juveniles under the age of 18. The lone exceptions are juveniles traveling home from work, with a health care provider or accompanied by a parent or guardian.

He is recommending the curfew “so that we can have more law and order among juveniles in this city. We’ve got to have these juveniles more supervised.”

Flaggs’ comments came after Monday’s meeting of the board, during which he discussed the city’s problems with juvenile crime and hinted he might consider imposing a juvenile curfew.

“Young people, if you’re going to walk the streets and you’re going to terrorize our neighborhoods, I’m going to slap a recommendation of a curfew in this city for 11 o’clock so you can be home with your mamas and daddies and granddaddies and grandmamas,” he said.

Flaggs said city officials were not going to tolerate “young people walking the streets under age.” Being out on the street after 11 p.m., he said, was no place for a child under the age of 18 to be.

“We’re going to slap a curfew at 11 o’clock, seven days a week if you (parents) can’t keep your children supervised,” Flaggs said. “That’s less people we have to patrol at night.

“It’s unacceptable to have parents dropping your children off at the mall; it’s unacceptable having children walking the streets; it’s unacceptable kids riding the streets on bicycles,” he added.

The curfew is the city’s latest move to reduce juvenile crime. City officials on June 10 imposed restrictions prohibiting parents from dropping off their children at Uptown Vicksburg mall, formerly Pemberton Square Mall.

“People were just dropping their children off a the mall unsupervised and they terrorized the mall,” Flaggs said, adding if juveniles are found unsupervised at the mall “we’re going to take them and you can come get them. We’re going to put them where they’re safe because they’re not safe at the mall if they’re fighting.”