Michele Lee decided to go outside with her neighbor in the warm, fresh air Friday evening. Lee, who uses a wheelchair, went over to Navy Pier and back to a pet store near her Streeterville apartment.
As she made her way home, she said she heard lots of yelling and saw hundreds of teenagers gathered on the street in front of her building. They didn’t move for pedestrians. At that point, she said she started to feel unsafe.
“I couldn’t even go into my door,” she said. “I had to flag down a bicycle policeman to take me across the street. I have a wheelchair — it’s not like I can run away or easily weave through people.”
Videos of the so-called teen takeover circulated on social media Friday night, showing young people running through the streets. Chicago police reported that a 15-year-old boy sustained a graze wound to his leg. Meanwhile, another teen was arrested Monday morning for allegedly shooting a tourist last month in the same area as she was walking back to her hotel with her 11-year-old son.
Residents, including a Streeterville neighborhood group, are now calling on Mayor Brandon Johnson to stop the “reckless and unlawful behavior.” A downtown alderman has also promised to revive a stalled City Council bid to install an 8 p.m. unaccompanied minor curfew.
Johnson has resisted calls in the past for an earlier curfew, including last summer after a group of teens attacked a couple in Streeterville. On Tuesday he told reporters he was more interested in how to “invest in young people and create more healthy safe spaces for them.”
For Lee, a longtime disability advocate and CTA board member, fixing the issue is a matter of accessibility.
“As a person with a disability, I just don’t know my other options,” Lee said. “I personally lived in this neighborhood because of accessibility, and I don’t know where to go now.”
“I don’t want to go outside of my house after dark now. It makes me — even talking about it right now — it’s making me shake a little because I’m scared for another warm weather day,” Lee added.
Lee said she’s lived in Streeterville for about four years. She chose the neighborhood because it’s generally easy for her to get around with her wheelchair, from the grocery store to the bank. It’s also close to her physical therapy appointments and she enjoys being near the lakefront.
What she experienced Friday night made her feel “very vulnerable,” and was the opposite of accessibility, she said. She described it as a “disaster and a nightmare,” and said the group felt “hostile.” While an officer helped her through the street, she said she thought about the tourist who was shot.
“I was thinking like, ‘Oh my gosh, what happens if this crowd turns and somebody pulls a gun,” she said. “I’m not able to duck into a store, or get down onto the ground or run away. I can’t just go off the curb anywhere.”
Officers on patrol Friday heard gunshots in the area and saw a large group of teens fleeing the scene. Police found the wounded 15-year-old boy lying on the ground shortly before 9:45 p.m. in the 400 block of North Cityfront Plaza Drive. He was taken to Lurie Children’s Hospital in good condition. Two adults and 10 juveniles were arrested in connection to Friday’s gathering, police said.
“We will continue to monitor these large gatherings to maintain public safety for all involved,” police said in a statement.
Earlier in the month, the tourist, a 46-year-old woman, was walking back to her Streeterville hotel from dinner with her 11-year-old son while on a visit to Chicago. They were waiting for a light at the corner of North Columbus Drive and East Illinois Street around 8:10 p.m. on March 9 when they heard two gunshots, according to police. The woman felt a sharp pain in her right forearm. Her son wasn’t injured, police said.
Debate over earlier curfew
Johnson faced a flood of questions Tuesday about this weekend’s shooting. He repeatedly insisted it was a critical issue, but pushed back against the potential of a stricter curfew for unaccompanied minors. The solution is “not simply an act of government,” he said.
“We have to do the things that work,” Johnson said. “And what I have seen is that we are better off putting our efforts towards getting guns off the streets, creating more structure for our young people, and then doing that together.”
The mayor pointed to the city’s “Teen Bash” Navy Pier event that about 1,000 young people attended Saturday as “proof positive” youths can gather safely downtown with “constructive space.” He also touted the city’s decreasing violent crime rates and ramped-up violence prevention efforts.
“People are working hard to prevent these types of incidents. One is too many,” he said. “But let’s just keep this in mind — it’s not like this is happening every night, every weekend.”
Despite Johnson’s resistance, some aldermen are convinced a stricter teen curfew is needed. Ald. Brian Hopkins said “everyone” supports efforts to add safe spaces for kids and get illegal guns off streets but those goals do nothing to curb mayhem when it erupts. A stricter curfew would empower police to disperse large teen crowds when needed, the alderman argued.
Hopkins, 2nd, said he plans to push his stalled ordinance to move the city’s teen curfew from 10 p.m. to 8 p.m. forward for a vote this month, but added it is “hard to say” whether he has enough support. Hopkins previously called for the earlier curfew last summer after a group attacked a Streeterville couple amid “chronic youth gatherings,” and again after the tourist was shot.
Hopkins pushed back when asked about critics who say such a curfew would be too strict on young people.
“These are crimes that are being committed,” Hopkins said. “No one’s criminalizing this behavior, this behavior by definition is criminal behavior.”
The Streeterville Organization of Active Residents said in a letter to the mayor that current city regulations “limit police intervention, emboldening disruptive behavior and put innocent people at risk.”
They asked the mayor to give police “the necessary authority to intervene before violence occurs and with necessary resources for crowd control, such as dogs and mounted police” and to engage community leaders to “address the root causes of this issue.”
“While we respect the right to gather, no one has the right to take over our streets and sidewalks in a manner that terrorizes residents, businesses, and visitors,” the letter said.
Lee said she supports the city offering more opportunities and resources for the kids but an 8 p.m. curfew isn’t a “bad idea as an immediate answer.” She also acknowledged that safety and security is a problem on CTA as well, and that it’s an “issue we have to tackle citywide.”
“Let’s open more safe spaces for them to gather. Let’s open more community programs for them, but, like, that takes time,” she said. “The immediate need is people are getting injured and people are getting shot. We can spin up a community program but that’s not going to solve the problem for next weekend when it’s 70 degrees.”
She said she has a tough decision ahead of her. While she enjoys the neighborhood and its “great amenities,” she doesn’t know if she can stay if her ability to move independently is taken away.
“I just want to be able to go out on my own for a walk with my neighbor,” she said. “What can we do? Just hide now.”
Chicago Tribune’s Alice Yin and Caroline Kubzansky contributed reporting.
