Starkville aldermen approved a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew on Tuesday in response to the escalating COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
The curfew is effective immediately and makes an exception for essential travel. The Oktibbeha supervisors enacted a countywide curfew Monday with many of the same parameters, but City Attorney Chris Latimer said the order was not enforceable within the city limits without a separate order by the board of aldermen.
“I don’t think statutory authority existed for the county to act unilaterally to bind the city with a curfew,” Latimer said.
The Oktibbeha County Sheriff’s Office “had no intention of enforcing” the county curfew in the city limits, and the Starkville Police Department did not have the power to enforce a county order, so the city needed to pass its own, Latimer said.
Starkville Police Chief Mark Ballard said the city curfew should clear up any public confusion and make it easier for the police department to “manage public safety in balance with this pandemic.”
The 13-day city curfew only runs through 8 a.m. April 20, coinciding with Gov. Tate Reeves’ shelter-in-place order issued last week. The county curfew, by contrast, is 30 days and will last until May 6.
If Reeves extends his order, the city curfew will automatically extend with it regardless of the county curfew, Mayor Lynn Spruill said.
“When we have our meeting on the 21st, we will revisit (the order) and see what we want to do if the governor does not extend his,” she said.
Ward 6 Alderman and Vice Mayor Roy A. Perkins was the only dissenting vote on the curfew, not because he opposed having one but strictly because he said he saw no legal need for one after Gov. Tate Reeves’ statewide “shelter-in-place” order that went into effect Friday at 5 p.m. Latimer said the curfew does not “have any more legal teeth” than the statewide order.
Spruill said at Tuesday’s meeting that she has fielded phone calls, emails, tweets and Facebook messages from constituents asking for clarification about the shelter-in-place order and the county’s curfew.
“For whatever reason, it does not seem to penetrate that a curfew is exactly what we have now, but ‘curfew’ seems to be a word that everyone is comfortable with and understands as a strong measure,” Spruill said.
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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