Like Chicago and many other American cities, Baltimore has been grappling with teen takeovers becoming violent.
In the summer of 2023, city leaders faced mounting pressure after repeated teen gatherings downtown led to fights, assaults and other disorder around the Inner Harbor, while a mass shooting at Baltimore’s annual Brooklyn Day celebration that left two people dead and 28 others wounded intensified concerns about keeping young people safe during the summer.
City officials brainstormed, and came up with a plan that included relying on violence interruption teams comprising school staffers and volunteers from community groups to patrol downtown, and limiting police interaction with teens. The result?
“We saw a notable decrease in violence and crime in and around our downtown and inner harbor in the months that we have staff out there,” says Stefanie Mavronis, director of the Baltimore mayor’s office of neighborhood safety and engagement.
By the end of summer of 2023, youth-involved homicides dropped by 83% compared to the prior summer, according to Baltimore city data.
As Chicago struggles to find ways to rein in teen gatherings that become chaotic and violent, it can look to places like Baltimore for innovative approaches. Experts say a strategy that broadens summer activity choices and job opportunities can be far more effective than an over-reliance on law enforcement and punitive action.
At the heart of the challenge that teen takeovers pose is the balance between creating for teens living in crime-ravaged neighborhoods safe spaces to get together, while ensuring so-called “teen trends” that become violent don’t cast a pall on downtown commerce and tourism.
“Socially disadvantaged kids live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty. I’ve interviewed them,” says Sara Thomas, a research assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University. “They have to stay home to avoid violence. They don’t have opportunities. That gets pretty frustrating.
“We are seeing a concerning lack of spaces where kids on the South and West Sides can gather,” Thomas adds. “My guess is that some of these kids — if they don’t think they’re going to grow up — [figure], `Why not try this risky thing?’ A bad idea that gets thrown out on TikTok suddenly becomes a good idea.”
The Sun-Times reached out to officials in several cities coping with teen trends. Here’s a look at those cities’ experiences:
In Baltimore, keeping teens ‘safe, keeping them engaged’
Baltimore has steered clear of expanded youth curfew in favor of its “two-fold strategy” that pairs a neighborhood safety and engagement office and more late-night activities for teens.
The city’s 25-week safety strategy over the summer includes violence interrupters who go out on weekends to patrol downtown. The teams are made up of some school staff, volunteers and community organizations “who work with our young people,” Mavronis said. Baltimore has prioritized limiting police interactions with teens.
“Our number one priority is keeping them safe, keeping them engaged and making sure at the end of the night everyone’s getting home safely,” Mavronis said.
The strategy, launched in 2023 and expanded last year, has so far worked, according to Mavronis.
Earlier this spring, Baltimore officials learned through social media that a “teen takeover” was planned at the Inner Harbor. Before the advertised start time, outreach workers were already on the ground talking with arriving teens.
Those interactions are designed to go beyond crowd control. Outreach workers ask young people whether they have a safe way home, whether they need help finding jobs, mental health services or other support at home.
“Sometimes they’re surprised to see us,” Mavronis said of teens who encounter outreach workers during gatherings. “But we’re also not just engaging them. We’re connecting them with resources.”
Detroit’s tack — parental responsibility, safe spaces
Detroit uses a carrot-and-stick approach. They’ve added youth programming and ramped up curfew enforcement. The stick also applies to parents. Unlike Chicago, Detroit recently enacted a parental responsibility ordinance that fines parents $250 if their children are out after curfew and being disruptive or violent.
The “carrot” comes in the form of Mayor Mary Sheffield’s “Occupy the Summer” initiative, which offers free recreation, sports, arts programming and other organized activities aimed at giving teenagers safe places to spend their evenings and weekends. City officials say the goal is to make structured opportunities readily available before young people turn to social media-organized gatherings.
At the same time, Detroit has paired that investment with a renewed emphasis on curfew enforcement and parental responsibility. Police detain juveniles found violating the city’s curfew and issue citations to parents under the city’s longstanding parental responsibility ordinance if their children are out after curfew and involved in disruptive or violent behavior.
The curfew change, enacted last summer, now carries a $250 fine, with subsequent violations subject to higher penalties. That’s an increase from the previous $75 first-time fine.
DC’s get-tough approach draws blowback
Newly appointed U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, a former judge, prosecutor and Fox News commentator, has increased enforcement of the district’s curfew law to prosecute parents who “facilitate, enable, or knowingly permit” their children to engage in “delinquent acts.”
Washington D.C. recently expanded the district’s curfew to apply to 17 year olds and weekend nights. It also now allows the district’s police chief to declare extended curfew zones in public areas where young people are gathered.
District leaders said the changes were prompted by repeated large youth gatherings that disrupted downtown neighborhoods, transit stations and commercial corridors, arguing police needed greater flexibility to intervene before crowds became violent.
Juvenile justice advocates, including the ACLU of DC, have criticized the tougher approach, arguing that curfews and prosecutions disproportionately affect Black teenagers. The group has argued that curfews do little to address the reasons young people gather and that the city should invest more heavily in youth programs, mental health services and other community-based supports.
In Philly, a community center to prevent curfew violations
In April 2023, a so-called flash mob in Philadelphia wreaked havoc that resulted in requiring teens under 18 to be accompanied by an adult after 2 p.m. at major shopping malls. Like Chicago, Philadelphia has a curfew of 10 p.m. for kids under 18. But the turn-in time for kids 13 and under is 9:30 p.m.
A non-profit in Philadelphia also offers an evening community resource center between 6 to 9 p.m. for teens to avoid curfew violations. The center stays open until 2 a.m. for “police curfew handoffs.”
Philadelphia’s mass transit system, SEPTA, restricts the use of student discounted fare cards to school days between 5:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. In May, they launched a crackdown on student-involved fare evasion that cost the system $11 million a year, which came with a side benefit of making it more difficult for teens to congregate in large downtown groups.
Chicago’s experience with teen takeovers
Chicago’s struggles with large gatherings of teens began in the 1990s along North Michigan Avenue. Then-Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy moved quickly to safeguard the Magnificent Mile, Chicago’s marquee shopping district, from groups he called “flash mobs.”
The hard-nosed approach got political support from then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel — and it worked.
The pandemic denied teens access to the social interactions that young people crave. Today, they have fewer public places to gather safely without getting in trouble. Media coverage of disruptive teen gatherings that intimidate older adults has prompted more restrictions at the public places where young people love to gather.
Memorial Day weekend in Chicago was marred by a pair of teen takeovers turned violent. On the Near West Side, a car veered into five Chicago police officers and injured them as they tried to disperse an unruly crowd of youths. Those arrests did not prevent an even bigger crowd from overtaking the 57th Street Beach in Hyde Park and spilling onto Lake Shore Drive.
Afterward, Mayor Brandon Johnson argued again that throwing the book at young people and their parents is not the answer to the problem of unruly teen gatherings.
Former Philadelphia Police Chief Charles Ramsey believes the “permissiveness” of politicians like Johnson is at least part of the reason why the problems of destructive and potentially violent teen trends appear to be getting worse.
“People are afraid to do anything. They want to complain about it. But they don’t want to do anything. That includes some elected officials,” Ramsey says. “They’re afraid they’re going to piss off the base. We get too hung up on that stuff. We want to give everybody a break and be too soft on everything, and we’re losing it as a society.”
Ramsey said he is not saying “send people to Alcatraz.” But he was adamant that “there needs to be some consequences” for kids and parents who look the other way — “even if it’s probation where a kid is not able to go out after a certain hour or associate with other kids known to be involved” in causing trouble.
“The parent needs to take some action against their own child. Don’t let them go on the internet for a period of time. Take away the cell phone,” adds Ramsey, who once worked as a Chicago deputy police superintendent. “
Thomas says she believes the pandemic and school closings it triggered had a profound effect on young people whose still-developing brains she likened to a “car with a sensitive gas pedal and faulty brakes.” That means they’re “inclined to take big risks when there are apparent social rewards” like approval of friends, even if those friends are “endorsing a bad idea.”
Young people are hungry for safe alternatives in their own neighborhoods so they don’t have to go downtown to meet people, Thomas says. They need jobs that give them skills, a sense of accomplishment and a chance to earn money, she said.
Media coverage of teen gatherings has made adults wary whenever they see large groups of young people in a public place. But Thomas warns, “The more we treat kids as scary, the scarier they’re going to get. These are human beings. These are kids. I’ve spoken to them about gun violence and their motivations to carry guns. Every one of them didn’t want to carry guns. They only carry them because they’re scared.”
Chicago takes a cue from Baltimore
Vaughn Bryant, vice president and executive director of Metropolitan Peace Initiatives, said his community violence intervention network has formed a crisis prevention unit that includes a 20-member team on call to assist the Chicago Police Department.
Their biggest concern is teens and young adults who “come to trends to settle disputes and instigate conflicts,” some of them gang-related. All it takes is “two-to-four people in conflict” for things to “go awry,” Bryant said.
“CPD started calling us to send CVI workers to large downtown gatherings. That’s why we formed a team to do that. It’s unique to Chicago to have a non-police response — a community response to teen trends,” said Bryant, whose network of organizations has $9 million in annual contracts with the city.
“Often there are multiple trends on the same weekend. We go to ones that are potentially larger and at risk of violence. We engage with youth [that] we get to know and de-escalate any conflicts we see. We figure out where they’re from and what their interests are. If there are fights and we see they have a weapon, we make sure they leave the scene.”
Bryant says there are dozens of success stories as police get better at monitoring social media and knowing who the organizers are. A recent example was a teen gathering at Foster Avenue Beach. City Hall found out about it in advance and pre-emptively closed several exit and entrance ramps on North Lake Shore Drive. It worked. Teens assembled without incident.
Emmanuel Andre, Johnson’s deputy mayor for community safety, says to ensure teens have access to Chicago beaches, city and police officials meet twice a week to discuss teen trends.
Johnson has resisted get-tough efforts in favor of providing more summer jobs and recreational opportunities for young people.
He recently convinced the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago to offer free summer memberships to young people between the ages of 12 and 18.
“We do not reject young people. We do not turn them away… We can hold young people accountable. They want to be held accountable. But if you do not provide opportunity for young people, then you are rejecting young people,” on the day the YMCA made its summer offer.
The ongoing financial crisis at the city and Chicago Public Schools limits the city’s ability to bankroll constructive alternatives for young people. Business and philanthropic organizations have been generous. But those groups have their limits.
That’s why Andre believes that Chicago will continue to struggle with teen gatherings in a way that previous generations never did.
“Young people have a way of making noise and wanting to be seen and heard now in different ways,” Andre says. “We have to do all we can to listen and respond accordingly while making sure we take a layered approach to keeping people safe.”