By Chicago’s standards, the winter was relatively mild.
Still, with temperatures near 80 degrees — the warmest weekend in months — hundreds of city youths headed to 31st Street Beach in the twilight hours of Friday, April 14, where a young teen was shot in the leg.
It might have served as a warning to some, as another “teen takeover” unfolded in the heart of downtown the following night, and two teen boys were shot and wounded near Millennium Park.
More than a dozen police reports obtained by the Tribune show how the chaos unfolded as Chicago police for hours struggled to control hundreds of teens and young adults as they darted through traffic, smashed windows and carried out acts of violence.
Large outdoor gatherings of young people aren’t new in Chicago, and the “teen takeover” events — organized on social media, usually a few days in advance — have sometimes turned violent. The gatherings have largely vexed the last two mayors and three Chicago Police Department superintendents. Strategies to handle the youth meet-ups are among the criteria being used to grade candidates for the CPD superintendent job.
Viral cellphone video and news footage of the chaos from April 15 once again renewed criticism of the city’s efforts to tamp down violent crime.
Meanwhile, the police department has opened an internal investigation to probe allegations that officers failed to intervene after they saw a couple being attacked by a mob of teens.
Sources have said the unruly gathering was exacerbated by a slow response from CPD leadership, which itself is in a transition period before Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson chooses a new police superintendent to replace outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s hand-picked leader, David Brown.
The disturbances came less than a year after the fatal shooting of another teen boy near The Bean‘ prompted a curfew order and promises from officials that such disorder wouldn’t happen again.
CPD officers arrested more than a dozen people in the downtown area two weekends ago. A review of those reports showed police were often faced with unruly suspects — sometimes juveniles armed with guns.
Police reports show at 8:45 p.m., a 19-year-old and another unidentified person were among a large crowd in the first block of North Michigan Avenue that was slowly making its way south from Millennium Park when “multiple physical altercations” erupted.
The teen and another person began fighting, the reports show, and both were taken into custody.
Less than 45 minutes later, officers monitoring the crowd at 50 E. Madison St. suddenly heard a call of shots fired in the area. A “10-1″ emergency was called over police dispatch radios, prompting a large response from nearby cops, and a description of the shooter was also provided, a police report said.
Police tried to stop an 18-year-old who ran into the street, “entering into oncoming traffic,” and caused several cars to swerve in and out of the way in a reckless manner that endangered the safety of multiple citizens, the report said.
He was brought into custody at 9:43 p.m., taken to a police station and charged with reckless conduct.
Large-scale youth gatherings downtown have been a regular occurrence during warm-weather months for the last decade. CPD has responded to and monitored countless organized protests and marches through the Loop, especially in the years since the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video was release, sparking outrage across the city.
Fred Waller retired from CPD as chief of patrol nearly three years ago. The disorganized, random nature of the “teen takeover” events, Waller said, makes them especially challenging for police.
“The difference, really, is that most of the time these guys don’t have any real leaders that you can talk to,” Waller said. “When you have a planned protest, you’ve got people that you can talk to who’s the organizer or whatever and they’ll tell you, ‘We want to go here, we want to go there,’ and you block the streets off or you have enough bike officers to go that route and walk the route with them.”
“The ones that are ‘pop-up’ kind of protests or just kids running wild, so to speak, there’s no real person that you can talk to,” he added. “They’re just all over the place. … you’re just taking them back and forth.”
Just before 9:30 p.m., shots were fired in the 200 block of East Randolph. CPD officers were stationed nearby to monitor for “large crowds of teens” who were obstructing traffic, according to a department arrest report.
Soon after, the situation escalated when a 16-year-old boy from Austin climbed onto an awning above a staircase at the Washington/Wabash CTA train station, refusing to come down, according to police records. Meanwhile, another round of gunfire erupted at 205 E. Randolph St. as CPD officers worked to disperse the crowd.
The teen then allegedly jumped down from the awning and was swarmed by CPD officers. While being taken into custody, police allegedly found a loaded gun on him, according to an arrest report.
The teen told detectives he doesn’t talk to his parents, who live in Alabama, and his uncle agreed to pick him up from the police station, where he was charged with reckless conduct and unlawful possession of a handgun, the report said.
The 16-year-old’s arrest was apparently unrelated to the shooting that occurred nearby just minutes earlier.
There, a 16-year-old boy and a 17-year-old boy from the city’s West Side were standing between two crowds near the Chicago Cultural Center when an assailant wearing all black with a mask fired multiple times and hit them in the legs and arms, police said.
No one has been arrested in that attack.
Scroll the map to see where each incident occurred. Click on the markers for more information.
Around the corner from the Chicago Cultural Center, a 15-year-old girl was charged with mob action after she attempted to break a police line twice, according to a police report.
It happened about 9:25 p.m. at 25 E. Washington St., where “officers formed a line with other officers and began to give verbal commands to disperse the large crowd.”
At 10 p.m., 28-year-old Marvin Benites, of Plano, was seen “jumping up and down” on CTA property at 100 N. Wabash Ave., where police were handling “disorderly” crowds. When officers told him to leave he allegedly refused and was booked and taken into custody.
At 11:20 p.m., police arrested three people — a 16-year-old, along with an 18-year-old and a 19-year-old — who were in the first block of South State Street as officers monitored a “mass gathering and unruly crowds,” according to a police report.
The teens were allegedly seen kicking the head of a person who was on the ground, the report said. As officers tried to arrest them, they each allegedly resisted and were later charged with reckless conduct and interference with officers.
Shortly after midnight on April 16, officers were in the 100 block of North Garland Court monitoring a “large, unruly mob that had been running amok throughout the downtown area for several hours, attacking police officers, terrorizing pedestrians, damaging property and firing shots from a gun,” according to a report.
Four teens, including a 19-year old, two 18-year-olds and a 17-year-old were seen around a marked police car. After they appeared to look inside it, officers worried the car might be burglarized, approached the four, who ran south on Garland to Washington and Madison causing motorists to take “evasive action” to avoid hitting them, a report said.
All four were charged with reckless conduct.
Around 1 a.m. a 14-year-old boy from the Jefferson Park neighborhood was among hundreds of teens causing a disturbance in the 300 block of West Monroe Street.
Once officers dropped the boy off at the Wentworth District station to be booked, he was still angry and “continually threatened officers,” the report said. He was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital when he complained his wrists were injured because the handcuffs were too tight.
Officers tried three times to reach his guardian but were unsuccessful, according to the report, which said the boy was charged with aggravated assault of a police officer and interference with a public officer and resisting an officer.
A curfew imposed after the shooting at The Bean last year appeared to slow the momentum of the gatherings, but the unusually warm weekend weather brought more young people to the center of Chicago apparently looking to challenge police.
The officers who responded focused on containing the crowd of hundreds instead of moving into the fray, Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, previously said. The strategy allowed the gathering to continue, he said.
A Walgreens was looted, a break-in was attempted at the Art Institute, two Chicago Transit Authority buses were attacked, the windows and windshields of a number of vehicles were broken, a couple was beaten and robbed, a police officer suffered a broken bone, another officer was mobbed and had his radio stolen and two teens were shot, Hopkins said.
In response to the violence, the CPD assigned extra officers to monitor the downtown area last weekend. No disturbances or arrests were reported. Several hundred people marched throughout the downtown area to demonstrate to wayward youth that community elders are there to support them.
Several high-ranking CPD officials who are typically responsible for the downtown area were unavailable to respond, according to police sources. Two leaders, including Area 3 Deputy Chief Jill Stevens, were on furlough, and the captain of the Central District was on vacation, according to one CPD supervisor.
Deputy Chief Matt Cline was assigned as the department’s street deputy on Saturday, and he was eventually summoned downtown to lead the department’s response, the supervisor said. Before Cline’s arrival, no officers downtown held a rank above lieutenant, which prohibited them from requesting more officers to assist, the supervisor said.
The following Monday, Lightfoot said the city’s youth have every right to spend time in the downtown area, so long as they don’t engage in violence or property destruction.
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“It’s not the first time that we’ve addressed these issues, but our young people have an opportunity and a right to enjoy the entirety of our city, but they have to do it in a way that is respectful for people and property,” Lightfoot told reporters.
Johnson called the criminal activity “unacceptable,” but added that “it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”
Lightfoot had her weekly meeting with CPD leaders the following Tuesday, and she pressed department brass about why officers struggled to contain the crowds, sources previously told the Tribune.
The events of April 15 were still top of mind for many who attended a South Side public forum to discuss the ongoing search for the next CPD superintendent.
“Parents need to be charged and penalized for their children’s behavior,” one speaker at the forum, Flora Williams, said to applause. “Until we do that nothing is going to change.”
Anthony Driver Jr., president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, later said that strategies to address the gatherings are among the criteria used to evaluate applicants for the job.
“There’s a number of issues that we face in our city and, (with) each of them, we plan on asking superintendent candidates how they would handle the situation,” Driver said.
