The sun has barely set in Alice Springs, and already there’s a police car out the front of Harpinder Singh’s CBD business.
Officers crowd the store, interviewing customers as Mr Singh shows them CCTV footage on his phone.
It’s the first night since the nearly three-week youth curfew in Alice Springs lifted, but there’s already a defeated look in Mr Singh’s eyes.
“The curfew was really good,” he says.
“But it’s not the permanent solution.
“They need to do something about [crime in Alice Springs].
“Otherwise, this tourism industry is going to die slowly.”
Over the past few months, Mr Singh says his restaurant has been the target of crime — including an incident involving rocks hurled at windows and another where a child allegedly threatened to stab his sibling.
‘I’m not going out anymore’
Residents trickle through the CBD, arms full of takeaway pizza boxes and plastic containers of food.
In stark contrast to the rest of the town, the pubs are heaving with customers queuing out the door.
Many residents say Tuesday night feels like the calm before the storm.
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Alice Springs resident Lorina Sui wants the curfew — banning kids from entering the CBD without a lawful reason — to remain in place.
“I’m not going to go out anymore,” she says.
“It’s been really good to walk around and not have to worry about anything.”
Warlpiri woman Julie Wilson says the curfew stopped kids “running amok” in the town.
“Not safe anymore. It’ll be unsafe now,” she says.
Strong police presence in Alice Springs
Small groups of young people weave through the CBD – an unusual sight after the nearly three-week ban.
Police swarm the streets in high-vis, many of them officers from South Australia and the Top End, flown in to help the outback town transition out of the youth curfew.
Officers are continuing to work side-by-side with youth engagement staff from the Territory Families department, under its co-responder model.
Brenden Boyce, acting general manager for the central region, says Territory Families will maintain a surge workforce in Alice Springs until the end of June, while they plan next steps.
“We don’t expect to see anything significantly different tonight,” he says on Tuesday.
During the curfew, police and social workers engaged with almost 370 young people, taking most of them to a “safe place” with a responsible adult or parent.
In recent weeks, there’s been community concern that many young people are on the streets because they don’t have a safe place to go, due to homelessness, domestic violence or alcohol abuse.
Mr Boyce claims this isn’t the case, saying “almost all of the young people, if not all of the young people” on the street have a safe place to go.
In Alice Springs, many residents who spoke to the ABC say the curfew has been a “band-aid solution” and more needs to be done to address the complex drivers behind crime in the region.
Artist Yvonne Kunoth, who lives in the Charles Creek town camp in Alice Springs, believes young people and families need more support.
“We used to have a lot of things for us young people to do,” she said.
“Our parents took us out on holidays and on weekends, and stuff like that, it was good.
“A lot of kids haven’t got that nowadays.”
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Ms Yunoth wants elders in the community to play a bigger role in young people’s lives.
“We always had our elders to help us, even if we didn’t know them they still helped us in town when we were young, and everybody knew whose kids we were,” she says.
“We’d listen to all our elders no matter who they were.
“But nowadays the respect is gone.
“For a lot of young people, if their respect came back, it will be good.”
As for Mr Singh, he is at a loss as to what should happen next.
“I have no idea what [authorities] should do,” he says.
“But they really have to do something.”