Despite a Memorial Day weekend marred by teen takeovers turned violent, Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday that stricter curfew and parental responsibility laws are not the answer to the perennial problem plaguing Chicago.
Johnson said 15 arrests were made early Sunday after a car veered into five Chicago police officers and injured them as they tried to disperse an unruly crowd of youths gathered on the Near West Side. But those arrests, he added, did not prevent an even bigger crowd from overtaking the 57th Street Beach in Hyde Park and spilling onto Lake Shore Drive on Memorial Day.
That tells the mayor throwing the book at young people and their parents is not the answer to the problem of unruly gatherings summoned by social media.
“I’ve said multiple times that they should be held accountable, and that happened,” Johnson said. “What I also said was, if you look at other cities where they’ve had more aggressive responses to it, has it stopped it from happening? The answer is no.“
“That’s why you can’t have just a one-sided, imbalanced approach,” he added. “If we believe that incarceration is the best way to keep people safe, America would be the safest place on the planet. We have more people locked up in America than anywhere in the planet, and we are by far not the safest place on the globe.”
Johnson said the “safest cities in America have one thing in common: They invest in people.” To underscore the point, he put up a chart that showed dramatic declines in shootings and homicides in neighborhoods where the city hired the greatest number of young people.
“We hold people accountable. But if we give them opportunity, we can create safer communities,” the mayor said. “My investments drive violence down… If it works, let’s do more of that.”
Hyde Park Ald. Desmon Yancy (5th) said the Memorial Day gathering that swarmed his ward was the “third event in less than a month,” adding that police confiscated knives, guns, bear spray and tasers.
“With that sort of weaponry, it’s clear that this is not about having a good time,” Yancy said. “While many of the young people who are participating in these mass gatherings are not the ones who are creating mayhem and mischief, there are those that are specifically there for that.”
Yancy said frustrated constituents and the police officers who serve them want more tools from the City Council to curb teen takeovers.
“We have a pretty wide net for kids with pretty big holes in it,” he said. “I’m not usually a fan of punitive measures, but I don’t know that we have any other things at our disposal now.”
Public Safety Committee Chair Brian Hopkins (2nd) said there is increasing support for a revised curfew ordinance, additional parental responsibility measures and for an attempt to hold social media companies accountable.
“The mayor needs to understand that the city is losing patience with our inability to prevent these teen takeovers from happening,” Hopkins said. “For him to rule out effective tools when we need them is shortsighted and counter-productive.”
Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara argued that Johnson’s “permissive” message is inviting more unruly groups of teenagers to “infringe on the rights” of law-abiding Chicagoans.
“If 15 arrests didn’t solve it the first time, then the next time, you arrest 30. And the next time, you arrest 60. Mob action is mob action,” Catanzara said.
“Kids just don’t seem to give a damn,” Catanzara added. “It’s all about just taking over whatever spot they want, doing their little stupid TikTok to get more likes to be sensational and stupid, and to hell with the rest of society. The only way it’s going to stop is if you start locking them all up and making their parents come and pick them up on the other side of the damned city.”
Former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy’s hard-nosed approach to unruly groups of young people largely succeeded in controlling the flash mobs that plagued Michigan Avenue during then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s tenure.
“I didn’t have a mayor like Brandon Johnson who made excuses,” McCarthy said.
“Let’s stop calling them teen takeovers. That is sending the wrong message. That sounds cute. These are mob actions. … There needs to be some sort of accountability for not just the kids but the parents and elected officials. Permissiveness is not working. It’s never worked. All it does is cause bad behavior.”