When a Chicago Park District lifeguard was accused of shooting and killing a teenager at Douglass Park in late June, Ald. Monique Scott (24th) and her brother, former Ald. Michael Scott, weren’t surprised.
Both had served as Douglass Park supervisors and feared something like this would happen, they contend, because the park district has too few lifeguards, too little staff training and inadequate park security.
And, they say, part of the problem lies in assigning white and Latino lifeguards to pools in African American neighborhoods.
Lifeguard Charles Leto is accused of fatally shooting 15-year-old Marjay Dotson and seriously injuring 14-year-old Jeremy Herred near the park pool June 26. Leto faces a murder charge and other criminal charges.
Leto’s lawyers say he acted in self-defense after an altercation outside the pool and predicted he would be exonerated. Prosecutors say that a surveillance video and witness statements contradict Leto’s claims.
A Cook County judge ordered Leto held pending trial, calling him a threat to the public and saying that he “overreacted” at Douglass Park. Leto’s next court date is scheduled for July 16.
Authoritative presence
“There’s a certain way you have to deal with these kids,” Monique Scott said. “They’re going to give you a hard time. You need to have an authoritative presence without disrespect. You’ve got to know how to talk to these kids and not demean them.”
Scott said she got a call recently from a South Side park supervisor who reported that a Latino lifeguard had walked off the job after declaring that he “can’t work with these kinds of people.”
“Just like you put Black supervisors in Black parks so you can deal with the residents, you should do the same with pools and invest in training,” she said.
Lifeguards were trained June 18-19. Park district day camps started June 23. That’s a recipe for disaster, the alderperson said.
“You have 16- and 17-year-olds monitoring 6-, 7- and 8-year-old children. They’re children monitoring children with a two-day training,” she said.
During a Douglass Park meeting the day after the shooting, Monique Scott said she pleaded with Mayor Brandon Johnson to provide more security for park district patrons and staffers.
No metal detectors
“I said the same kids that pass through metal detectors on their way into the public schools are the same kids being monitored by park district staff with no metal detectors or security,” Monique Scott said.
She said Johnson’s answer infuriated her.
“He told me if his [2026] budget is passed, he could ensure that we’ll have more security or safety in the parks,” she said.
“I don’t know what his budget is, but I know we’re not going to trade lives for security. That shouldn’t even be a thought. It should be, ‘Let me try to save lives now,’ not talking about his budget.”
Monique Scott said Jeremy’s spinal injuries are likely to deprive him of “any quality of life.”
Michael Scott spent five years as Douglass Park supervisor before becoming area manager of 11 West Side parks. He said that if the Douglass Park shooting is treated as an isolated incident, it will happen again because tensions between lifeguards and patrons have been brewing for years.
“If you don’t have a strong lifeguard, and the guard doesn’t look like the community they’re serving, there’s a problem,” said Michael Scott, who is now a Cook County commissioner.
“It causes security officers to have to come in and intervene, and it causes pools to get shut down where nobody is able to enjoy it. That has happened. It’s been years and years and years in the making. This is a new [fatal] outcome. But this kind of thing has happened in the parks for years.”
Seasoned lifeguards with tenure inevitably choose the “easier” assignments at North Avenue Beach and in more “affluent” neighborhoods, he said. That leaves the younger, more inexperienced lifeguards at “tougher” pools in African American neighborhoods.
“More likely than not, they’re not of color. Then, all hell breaks loose. I’ve had young people bullied. I’ve had young people I’ve had to transfer to other parks. I’ve had to shut down the pools at times. This is something the parks have been grappling with for quite some time,” Michael Scott said.
The situation got so tense during Michael Scott’s tenure at the Douglass Park pool that he would hold separate free swims for teen boys, teen girls, toddlers, adults and day campers to “keep the problems out.”
Newly appointed Chicago Park District CEO Carlos Ramirez-Rosa said he has nothing but respect for the Scotts and plans to act on their recommendations.
Diversifying the lifeguard staff
“They have a wealth of experience and knowledge. I’m seeking to lean on that. As it relates to the push to diversify our lifeguard staffing, the park district is committed to that goal,” Ramirez-Rosa said.
Noting that his predecessor launched a lifeguard explorers program that sought to diversify the ranks, Ramirez-Rosa said he is committed to expanding that program.
“We know that the more young people from communities that we can recruit to get on the path to becoming a lifeguard, the more individuals from the community we’ll have working in the community,” he said.
“I want to make sure that something like this never happens again. I want to make sure that we’re doing everything in our power to protect our young people and to make sure that our lifeguards are saving lives — not taking them,” he said.
Leto, 55 years old, joined the park district as a lifeguard a little more than two years ago, with a starting wage of $16.19 an hour, records show. Officials say he had been promoted to the rank of lifeguard captain and was being paid $25 an hour by the time of the fatal incident at Douglass Park.
On Thursday, the park district said Leto had moved between pools repeatedly this year — but officials said they had “not identified any complaints from patrons involving Charles Leto.”
However, patrons at Gill Park pool and Douglass Park — and a former co-worker — have told reporters they have had altercations with Leto.
Leto was working at Gill Park’s indoor pool earlier this year until, officials say, he transferred to Welles Park “to increase his hours.” He returned to Douglass Park pool, where he worked in the summer of 2024, for this season.
Park district spokeswoman Michele Lemons said officials will share the findings of an internal probe “in the coming days.”
Ramirez-Rosa said the park district has off-duty and retired police officers working as security guards across Chicago. In response to the fatal shooting, he said “a permanent post” was set up at Douglass Park, and he promised increased security at other pools for the rest of the summer.
Shortly before the shooting at Douglass Park, park patrons and activists in another Chicago neighborhood accused a park district security guard of pointing his firearm at a woman who was walking her dog in Kosciuszko Park.
That incident prompted park activists there to call for officials to enact reforms related to how the security guards operate.
Records show a security guard for the park district confronted a woman in April because her dog was not on a leash and they were on a turf field. The woman said in a written account of the incident that she was left “shaken.”
A park district spokeswoman confirmed that the security officer “unholstered his firearm” in fear of an unleashed dog that “growled and swiftly advanced” at him, but she said the officer had pointed his gun “downward.”
The advisory council for Kosciuszko Park on June 10 sent a letter to Ramirez-Rosa and other park district officials saying, “We are concerned that an unarmed citizen and her pet were threatened with deadly force after committing a minor infraction of park rules.”
Citing alleged discrepancies between the officer’s account and witness statements, the advisory council passed a resolution that security officers there should no longer carry firearms “unless those officers are also equipped with body-worn cameras.”