With Chicago’s curfew rules still very much a matter of political debate in the city, eight young people were arrested late Wednesday and two dozen violations were issued after another chaotic “teen takeover” popped up downtown, the first of the year.
Videos posted to social media showed large groups of young people running on sidewalks and streets through the Loop starting around 9:30 p.m. Police said seven teens — ranging in age from 13 to 16 — were charged with one misdemeanor count of reckless conduct.
A 16-year-old boy, meanwhile, was charged with three felony counts of aggravated assault of peace officers, one misdemeanor count of reckless conduct and one citation for riding a bicycle on a sidewalk, police said.
It’s not immediately clear whether anyone was hurt. A Chicago police spokesperson said “we’re still gathering information” in response to a question about potential injuries.
The Wednesday night gathering prompted City Council backers of expanded police curfew powers to once again call for new laws, even as Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration argued current laws are sufficient.
Hundreds of young adults have attended what are now commonly called “teen takeovers” over the past few years in the city’s downtown neighborhoods. The meetups, organized on social media days in advance, have led to several shootings downtown in recent years.
Last November, a 14-year-old boy was killed and eight other teenagers were injured in a pair of shootings after the city’s annual Christmas Tree lighting ceremony in Millennium Park.
Eight months earlier, in separate incidents, a 15-year-old boy sustained a graze wound and a tourist was shot as she walked back to a hotel with her son. In summer 2022, a fight near The Bean in Millennium Park ended in a shooting that left a 16-year-old dead.
The so-called “takeovers” have led to spirited debates in City Council and neighborhood groups alike about instituting an earlier teen curfew, and Wednesday night’s actions seemed to be no different.
Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, who has led the push in City Council to enact earlier teen curfews, arrived at the corner of State Street and Randolph Street at 10 p.m. — the time the city’s long-established teen curfew goes into effect.
What he saw, he argued, was proof that police need more curfew power.
“The order was given to begin making curfew apprehensions, and the patrol units moved in right away,” he said. “The teens immediately noticed this was happening. Most of them just headed for the Red Line stations at that point.”
During the gathering, scattered fights had “broken out everywhere,” he said. But within 45 minutes of police action, the chaos had ended, he added. If the curfew works at 10 p.m., he argued that it would work at 8 p.m. too.
“The pattern repeats itself over and over again,” he said. “The trend goes on until curfews start being enforced, and then the trends end.”
Hopkins said Wednesday’s “takeover” started outside the Wrigley Building, in his ward, before moving across the river into the Loop. He believes it will spark more support among aldermen for the pre-planned curfews he hopes to give police the power to create.
“We’re getting to the point where opposing an enhanced curfew ordinance is synonymous with supporting the continuation of violent team trends,” he said. “There’s no more middle ground.”
An ordinance advanced in January that would give Police Superintendent Larry Snelling and his successors the power to declare a teen curfew anytime, anywhere across the city with at least 12 hours notice. However, its fate remains uncertain. Mayor Brandon Johnson said at the time that he’s opposed to one person having “unilateral control” over a curfew, but didn’t indicate whether he would issue a veto if the measure passed.
Johnson had blocked a similar ordinance that featured just a 30-minute minimum notice which passed the council in June, decrying it as “lazy governance” and unnecessary. The violence after the Christmas tree lighting reinvigorated the push for the earlier curfew.
Hopkins said he is in discussions with Johnson’s administration about potential compromise language.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office and community violence intervention workers joined police downtown to disperse the crowd, Johnson spokesperson Griffin Krueger said in a statement. They also dispersed a separate gathering on the South Side earlier Wednesday night, “dispersing a crowd of more than 100 individuals using long-standing enforcement strategies and existing laws,” Krueger wrote.
The statement urged parents to keep track of their kids location and social media use.
“We are confident that the City’s public safety infrastructure and current laws equip CPD with the tools needed to effectively mitigate these incidents when they cannot be prevented in advance,” Krueger wrote.
Aldermen have also discussed the possibility of creating penalties for social media companies operating platforms where posts advertising the meet ups have repeatedly gone viral.
Ahead of the city’s New Years’ Eve celebration, Johnson, Snelling and other city leaders pleaded with parents to keep tabs on their children’s whereabouts and warned that anyone under 17 would need to be with an adult after 10 p.m.
CPD instituted 12-hour shifts and canceled days off for New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day, per communications shared with the Tribune, and announced that its officers, along with outreach workers, would be highly visible around the Loop for the celebration. That celebration unfolded largely without incident.
