A compromise plan in the works to impose snap curfews on the fly averted a City Council showdown Wednesday on a stricter 8 p.m. downtown area curfew for unaccompanied minors.
After eleventh-hour negotiations with Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling, 2nd Ward Ald. Brian Hopkins told colleagues he would withdraw his parliamentary maneuver at Wednesday’s City Council meeting that would have forced a vote on his stalled curfew proposal.
Under Hopkins’ new proposal, Chicago police could impose a curfew anywhere in the city as needed. Thirty minutes before the imposition of a curfew, police would issue a warning to disperse.
“I’ve been working with the superintendent’s office … to come up with a substitute, and we now have a good one,” Hopkins texted to his colleagues in the group that calls itself the “Common Sense Caucus.”
“It gives the superintendent and the district commanders the authority to declare and enforce a curfew when needed. The superintendent can do it in advance, while district commanders can do it in response to spontaneous teen takeovers that occur without warning.”
ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka said the proposal for snap curfews anywhere in the city “sounds like something that’ll invite lots of challenges,” and would require the city to spend time and money defending.
“To enforce a law, an individual needs to know what law they’re being subjected to and when and where. And simply declaring a curfew in a particular area where somebody has already been, maybe for the whole day when they didn’t go there knowing there would be a curfew — that’s one of the things that due process requires,” Yohnka said. “That’s something that I know could happen if I’m in this particular place or out after a particular hour.”
Yohnka said Chicago police officers already have broad power to disperse crowds — and used those powers to deftly handle crowds without interfering with First Amendment rights during the Democratic National Convention last summer.
“That all seems to have gone by the wayside in this rush to impose a curfew that, candidly, is a failed strategy that hasn’t really worked anytime that we’ve tried it before,” Yohnka said.
Hopkins noted in the text message that Finance Committee Chair Pat Dowell (3rd) and Budget Chair Jason Ervin (28th) had agreed to co-sponsor the substitute ordinance. That measure was introduced Wednesday, setting the stage for a hearing before next month’s meeting.
Hopkins said he thought he had the votes to pass the downtown-only 8 p.m. curfew, but “didn’t have much of a margin or cushion.” So he opted for the snap curfew compromise that delivered the votes of the entire Black Caucus.
Hopkins pointed to what happened last week, when a heavy police presence succeeded in stopping a teen takeover planned for Millennium Park, but another mass gathering broke out in Hyde Park a few hours later. Even if his original ordinance had been in place, police in Hyde Park “wouldn’t have had that tool when we needed it. We need a citywide curfew that will be in effect, only at times when we need it.”
As for the ACLU’s legality concerns, Hopkins said, “Show me where in the Constitution that it says we should allow 14-year-olds to shoot 15-year-olds on the streets of downtown after hours.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s press secretary, Cassio Mendoza, said the mayor is working with Hopkins, the Chicago Police Department and community organizations to “find solutions” to the problem of teen takeovers that traditionally surge during warm weather months.
The averted showdown is a win for Johnson, who opposes a stricter curfew and could have suffered another political defeat if it had passed.
Johnson welcomed movement toward a compromise that represents a “holistic approach” and doesn’t “shift the problem” to another neighborhood. But he argued that a deeper vetting is needed before he can sign on to the snap curfew measure.
Earlier this week, Johnson defended efforts to safeguard downtown Chicago from unsupervised young people summoned by social media and said his administration successfully fended off two of three teen takeovers last weekend.
Earlier this week, Johnson argued against a stricter downtown curfew that would only “push the challenges elsewhere.”
Johnson added that there were “three promotional flyers of teen trends set to take place” last weekend — in Millennium Park, at the corner of Ogden and Damen, and in Hyde Park — but only one of those takeovers actually happened.
‘’Through the hard work of community-based organizations, street outreach workers and our Chicago police officers, we were able to prevent two of them from occurring,” Johnson said earlier this week. “The Hyde Park gathering did [happen]. So we deployed our crisis prevention response unit to the location and ensured that CPD had significant resources to handle that situation.”
Sun-Times and WBEZ reporting on proposals to implement or expand a curfew for minors in downtown Chicago.
