Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling will have to wait a little longer for the power to declare three-hour-long curfews anywhere in the city with just 30 minutes’ notice.
Budget Committee Chair Jason Ervin (28th), one of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s most powerful allies, used a parliamentary maneuver at Wednesday’s City Council meeting to delay consideration of the snap curfew ordinance for one meeting.
It only takes two alderpersons to do that, and they don’t need to give a reason. But Ervin was joined by Latino Caucus Chair Andre Vasquez (40th) and 15 of their colleagues, who made their feelings known by a show of hands.
The 17-member coalition is still nine votes short of the 26 votes needed to defeat the controversial ordinance.
Earlier this week, Ervin withdrew as one of two co-sponsors after a last-minute change that stripped Deputy Mayor of Community Safety Garien Gatewood of the power to veto snap curfews.
Public Safety Committee Chair Brian Hopkins (2nd) made no apologies for the change in the ordinance he championed in an attempt to discourage the rowdy and sometimes intimidating teen takeovers that have already triggered two shootings in recent months in the Streeterville community he represents.
He likened the situation to the debate between Bears coaches before a play is called.
“Sure, the offensive coordinator is going to present all of these options. But if there’s a disagreement, the head coach has to be the one to break the tie,” Hopkins told the Sun-Times hours before Wednesday’s setback.
“This is a law enforcement decision. Period. It does not exist within the realm of civilians. Garien Gatewood … simply cannot have equal law enforcement decision-making to the superintendent.”
Hopkins vowed to try again at the next regularly scheduled Council meeting on June 18.
Earlier Wednesday, Hopkins warned that anyone who dared to delay his ordinance was taking a gigantic political chance.
“If we [delay] this thing and there’s another warm weekend and a bad teen trend where a shooting happens in the meantime, how does that look? That’s pretty bad politically if you’re the one who caused the delay for no purpose,” Hopkins said.
The stalled ordinance would have given Snelling alone the power to impose three-hour-long curfews anywhere in the city with 30 minutes’ notice to disperse “mass gatherings” — groups of 20 or more people gathered in a public place in a way that is “likely to result in substantial harm” to persons or property.
If the ordinance is eventually approved, it would face an almost certain legal challenge, according to ACLU of Illinois spokesman Ed Yohnka.
“If it’s not by us, it will be someone else in the civil rights community in Chicago. Given what we see as the deficiencies in this ordinance, it’s more likely to be immediate than later,” Yohnka said Wednesday.
Chicago already has a 10 p.m. curfew for minors that was rolled back an hour under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who also implemented an 8 p.m. curfew for unaccompanied minors at Millennium Park.
But Yohnka said the snap curfew ordinance is different and more problematic because it “doesn’t allow people to know with reliability where and when a curfew” is being implemented.
“If a curfew can be put on in 30 minutes without clarity about how people are to be [given notice], anyone wandering into that area — anyone, say, inside a store while the curfew is being put on outside — can be subject to the curfew and not know,” Yohnka said.
Hopkins countered that the revised ordinance has been fully vetted by constitutional experts, and he’s confident it will survive a legal challenge, albeit a potentially costly one. He also predicted that the ordinance would be implemented by Chicago police “less than a dozen times per season” during spring, summer and fall.
“They’re going to get smarter as they go along in terms of finding ways to really persuade people to not show up to a teen trend,” he said.
Johnson has argued repeatedly that curfew crackdowns are not the way to discourage minors summoned by social media from assembling downtown in gatherings that sometimes turn unruly and violent.
During a news conference that followed Wednesday’s meeting, the mayor said he shares Ervin’s concerns about the 11th-hour change giving Snelling alone the authority to declare snap curfews.
“To give unilateral authority to one entity — I don’t see that as an effective, democratic tool. …That particular … version of the ordinance was incredibly shortsighted,” Johnson said. “What we don’t want is a situation where all of the efforts that Supt. Snelling has put forth to renew and build trust within communities — that we don’t lose that.”