The Park Ridge Police Department and Park Ridge Chamber of Commerce held a special beat meeting on May 31 for business owners and residents to discuss safety concerns in the Uptown area. Their main concern? Rowdy, boisterous teenagers in the Uptown business district.
The meeting was led by Park Ridge Police Beat Team Leader Elle Czworniak. Representatives from the police department, the Park Ridge Park District, the Park Ridge Library, Action Ridge, and employees from the Uptown area were in attendance. The lion’s share of the meeting was dedicated to discussing groups of middle school students involved in disrespectful behavior, ranging from kids using profane language to destroying property.
“A majority of these kids are great kids,” said Park Ridge Police Chief Robert Kampwirth. “We’ve all been through it, right? And when you put them all together, they get bored.”
Kampwirth said there was only one report from the previous summer and that he hoped merchants would call the police when necessary. “We need you guys to call and tell us when they are damaging property,” he said.
“We don’t want to criminalize (kids) going to Uptown and hanging out, right? But if they’re causing disturbances, if they’re threatening people with breaking their property, damaging property, stealing stuff, those things are beyond safety issues, are criminal. So then we can talk to them, and then we can talk to their parents,” said Kampwirth. “But again, we had one fight incident, we had one arrest, last summer. That was the only report I remember seeing.”
A Panera employee said in the summer of 2023, their bathroom was heavily damaged by fireworks, causing $6,000 in damages. The restaurant installed security codes on the doors for patrons, but did not file a police report.
A Park Ridge resident said their daughter saw youth around middle school age enter the kitchen area of Chipotle and initially refuse to leave when told to do so. That incident was also not reported to Park Ridge police, according to the parent. Kampwirth said he was unaware of either incident and asked those affected parties to call the police.
Part of the issue in monitoring Park Ridge’s Uptown area, the central business district, is that there are a large number of youths that group up and move around throughout the area’s parks, businesses and library, Czworniak said.
“By the time the police officer gets there… we have at least 20 groups of 10 kids in different areas. So I don’t know if it was this group over here that was running in the street or if it was this group over here.”
“Try to get the little details (of the offenders) just so we can act as quickly as possible, because if we’re over here talking to this group, and they have nothing to do with the issue, that group that was offending, they could be long gone,” Czworniak said.
Another challenge in monitoring the Uptown area is the fear of backlash that business owners have if they were to call the police, said Jackie Mathews, the executive director of the Park Ridge Chamber of Commerce. “That’s their livelihood,” she said, noting the business could receive retaliation on social media if the owners were to call police.
Some businesses also feel hesitant to call police, Mathews said. “They feel bad. They’re like, ‘We don’t want to bother them. They’re so busy, there’s so much to do…’ But if we don’t document it, if (police) don’t have the documentation, they have no way to put together an action plan to address it. So we have to help the police department help us out.”
Several members of Action Ridge asked about what practices the police could use to address youth that have misbehaved. In October 2023, a Student Resource Officer from the police department attended a discussion hosted by the group to talk about the different approaches the police department has when handling misbehaving youth.
Deputy Police Chief Gene Ware said the department uses a peer jury system for juveniles who have a minor offense and have their peers, (youth their age or just a bit older), act as jurors.
“The jurors listen to the case, they have a supervisor who oversees the jury, and they talk about the case, they come up with a deliberation to talk about what they think the kid should receive as a punishment, and that could be community service, (or) writing a letter to the business and apologizing for what they’ve done.”
“So we do that as well. And that helps as far as that doesn’t put the kid in the status of being arrested or going in the juvenile justice system. This is an alternative program we use.”
Ware added that when the juveniles go through that mediation process, both parties need to agree to go through the process.
After the meeting, Kampwirth told Pioneer Press that the department will keep the same number of foot patrol officers in the area, and that the department will focus on building relationships with business owners. “We’re walking around talking to other managers and people that work at these places, so we can kind of get a better idea of exactly what’s going on,” he said.
Kampwirth said Park Ridge has seen upticks in misbehavior from youth in the summer in the past 30 years he has served in the department. “Every year the summer comes, the kids hang out in Uptown, there’s a lot of them doing good— but when you bring so many people together, some are blocking the sidewalk (and some) people are intimidated. So we just want to make sure that we are out there.”
