As teens ‘take over' downtown once again, Chicago faces a choice

Yahoo

06-04-2025

When Khalil Cotton was growing up on Grand Boulevard on the city's South Side, he and his friends often struggled to find places to hang out outside of school. A hoop with a crate on a pole was a replacement for a basketball court because there wasn't one nearby, he said.
Cotton, now 21, started to attend 'trend gatherings' — large meetups of young people downtown — when he was in middle school, simply for a place to go.
'You want to feel like you belong,' he said. 'Gathering sometimes makes kids feel like they're all together and all having fun. Like this is where we should be.'
Hundreds of young adults like Cotton have attended what are now commonly called 'teen takeovers' over the past few years in the city's downtown neighborhoods. Videos of these gatherings — including two notable ones just last month, which ended with a 15-year-old boy sustaining a graze wound and a tourist being shot as she walked back to a hotel with her son — have circulated across social media, generating debate in the City Council and neighborhood groups alike as summer approaches.
Streeterville residents say they're worried about safety and accessibility in their pricey neighborhood, calling for stricter curfews and police enforcement. Groups working with kids on the South and West sides, however, believe more investment in after-school activities is needed, and are worried about criminalizing young people with 'punitive' measures.
So far, Mayor Brandon Johnson has rejected calls for an earlier curfew, telling reporters this week that he was more interested in how to 'invest in young people and create more healthy safe spaces for them' as a solution.
But teens can be notoriously picky about what safe alternatives they are drawn to.
Cotton stopped attending teen gatherings downtown when he started going to an after-school program called Umoja — or 'unity' in Swahili — which he admits he first joined because of the snacks. That participation led him to the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization.
A few years ago, while still a teen, Cotton asked some of his friends whom he went downtown with to join him for KOCO's annual We Walk for Her march, raising awareness for missing and murdered Black and brown women and girls in Chicago. When they declined, it was an eye-opening moment, he said.
'So we're going to spend five hours downtown walking around for no reason, but you can't come walk for two hours for something that actually matters?' he said he asked himself at the time. 'That was one thing that made me change. … Like, we're just here doing nothing.'
During adolescence — the phase of life between childhood and adulthood — kids seek individuality and independence from their parents or guardians, and begin to explore more of the world, said Emma Adam, a human development professor at Northwestern University. There's also a 'very strong drive' toward social belonging at this age, which can sometimes include misbehavior, she noted.
'The groups are a way to belong with others. They're fun. Their rewards systems are still developing, so it's thrill-seeking for adolescents,' Adam said. 'Even though they're doing something that is often in defiance of societal norms and values, they're seeking respect from peers, and they're seeking to be noticed.'
Large teen gatherings — some of which devolve into violence, and others which don't — aren't unique to Chicago. On March 29, the day after the Streeterville gathering, Oak Park police said the department learned of a planned 'trend' in the west suburb. That evening, 70 teens congregated on Lake Street downtown, but no incidents of violence were reported during the event, police said.
The Aurora Police Department also sent additional officers to certain locations to prepare for meetups, which they said can 'lead to unsafe situations and serious consequences.' Large teen gatherings have also been reported in Philadelphia and Cleveland in recent months.
From her 14th-floor condo on the corner of East Illinois Street and North McClurg Court, Amy Kraynak said she watched dozens of kids running on the sidewalks on March 28. They began to spill into the streets, walking in front of pedestrians and cars, she said. She saw police officers approach the teens to break up a fight, but they didn't further intervene, she added.
'There's like, mobs of them,' she said. 'They have no regard for their own lives and safety, let alone strangers' lives and safety.'
The following night, she said she and her husband had to make a decision about whether they felt safe walking to church, and decided they'd feel more comfortable staying inside.
'We couldn't even have gotten into our condo door,' she said. 'And that's not how we want to live. We live in the city because of the convenience and being able to go everywhere. You can't do that now.'
She said her doorman was injured last summer when teens tried to enter her building. Last year, another group in June attacked a Streeterville couple who were walking on the street.
In 2023, 16 people were arrested after three teens were shot as groups of young adults swarmed downtown during one weekend in April. In May 2022, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot banned unaccompanied minors from Millennium Park after 6 p.m. in wake of a 16-year-old's fatal shooting near The Bean.
More recently, officers on patrol March 28 heard gunshots in Streeterville and saw a large group of teens fleeing the scene. Police found a 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 with that gathering, police said.
An 18-year-old man from South Shore was one of the adults arrested and charged with reckless conduct, police said. A surveillance camera captured him punching someone else, though no victim was found, records showed.
A 20-year-old woman from Washington Park who, in recent years, faced other arrests for allegedly possessing a stolen vehicle and for not paying to board a CTA train was also arrested. She was charged with reckless conduct after police officers saw her darting through traffic on North Columbus Drive, forcing drivers to swerve and slam their brakes to avoid striking her.
Another teen was arrested Monday morning for allegedly shooting a tourist, a 46-year-old woman, on March 9 as she was walking back to her Streeterville hotel with her 11-year-old son. They were waiting for a light at the corner of North Columbus Drive and East Illinois Street, police said.
The gatherings often start with a post on Instagram or TikTok, spreading quicker if people considered important or influential boost them, said Suleman Rashid, an organizer at KOCO. Kids from the South Side typically go to centrally located neighborhoods like Streeterville on warm summer nights to 'explore' and 'see the city where they live,' riding the train and moving in packs in stores, he said.
But when the group is large enough, Rashid said, tension can build and fights can break out. The gatherings appear to have grown more violent recently, as social media has more power over social dynamics, he said.
Melissa Lewis, the principal at Albizu Campos Alternative High School in Humboldt Park, said parents have expressed concern that their kids will get caught up in the downtown rush. Recent delayed funding for about 40% of the state's after-school programs will make it harder to carry out Johnson's initiative to invest in kids, she said.
'(Kids aren't) understanding that they have a future in front of them,' Lewis said. 'And when they see funding cuts like this, then that's telling them: 'Not only do I not believe in myself, but others don't believe in me either.''
Adam, the professor at Northwestern, said stereotypes can become self-fulfilling prophecies. If Black or low-income teenagers are assumed to be 'bad' or 'depicted in negative ways,' their emotional and well-being may be affected, she said. Adolescents who face more discrimination have altered stress hormones, she noted.
'Adolescents like to belong,' Adam said. 'If they're in neighborhoods compartmentalized by race, by socioeconomic status, I can understand some defiance to want to push on those boundaries. In some sense, making a statement: We belong everywhere, or we should be able to belong anywhere in the city.'
'Definitely if you see a bunch of kids walking downtown … everybody's going to be scared,' Rashid added. 'But as young Black men, we should be able to be comfortable going into places and not being perceived as a threat.'
For at least one Streeterville business, Niu Japanese Fusion Lounge, the gatherings and other unruly teen behavior have led to a slowdown in revenue, said owner Cherie Cheung. She said the behavior worsened last summer.
'COVID didn't even hit us this hard,' she said. 'We're simply helpless. We don't know what we can do to help the situation.'
She opened the restaurant in 2007, choosing a spot in Streeterville because it was 'one of the best locations in Chicago' to attract foot traffic and tourists. Now, however, she said teenagers are 'constantly standing and causing trouble right in front of our restaurant,' which is next to the AMC River East 21 movie theater. She said business at their outdoor patio plummeted.
She said teens have damaged displays and got into fights at Paris Baguette bakery, which she also owns, right across the street. She said she's told some of her staff — who feel unsafe leaving work late on the weekends — to go through the back door directly to the garage instead of walking outside. A heavy police presence will also deter customers, she noted.
'We pay premium rent and property tax considering the location,' she said. 'We have a lot of regular local customers who are concerned, but I think we're also losing the tourist business because they don't feel safe to stay in the area.'
While Kathy Gregg, 65, doesn't want to think about moving out of Streeterville, she said her 95-year-old dad, two kids and friends call her to check in because they're worried. She has lived in the neighborhood for about three years, moving downtown from the suburbs after her husband had a stroke to be near medical professionals and have easier access to amenities.
While many of the teens are simply hanging out socially, she said there appears to be a small 'more nefarious element,' and she's worried that her husband will be knocked down since he's weaker on his right side.
'I don't want to be shot by a random bullet,' she said. 'We came here for safety and security and access to health care. Because we can't travel as much as we like to, we wanted to have our golden years be really nice and sweet.'
Frustrated by a lack of action by the city, residents and community groups have suggested a number of actions — some more feasible than others.
The Streeterville Organization of Active Residents asked the mayor in a letter 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.'
Others, like Kraynak and Gregg, have expressed their support for a stalled City Council bid to impose an 8 p.m. curfew on unaccompanied minors. Ideas such as bypassing stops on the Red Line near Streeterville, establishing a curfew on the CTA or holding parents legally responsible for their children's actions at the gatherings have also floated around.
Such measures are 'a little bit harder to implement with fairness,' Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, said. But his curfew amendment is more targeted, he argued. It includes exemptions for teens at work, going to events, running errands and even attending protests. The tweak to the long-standing rule would be a targeted tool to rein in chaos, he added.
'Shutting down the Red Line, you don't get home from work,' Hopkins said. 'The curfew might sound like it's a broad-stroke measure, but it's not, because it is not applied in most scenarios. The police aren't going to be walking around grabbing every person who looks like they are a teenager.'
The downtown alderman said he filed a request to bring the curfew measure up for a vote at an April 16 City Council meeting.
Ald. Lamont Robinson, whose 4th Ward stretches into downtown, described a curfew as misplaced energy. Parents must be better stewards of their kids, but the city needs to give them better options too, he argued. Johnson has also resisted calls for an earlier curfew.
The South Side alderman has already tried such work himself. After several chaotic and at times violent teen gatherings at 31st Street Beach last summer, he added security, bag checks and barriers. Robinson also tracked down one of the people promoting the meetups on social media, and brought the young man into his office for a summer internship. There, he helped organize a Peace Palooza music festival at the beach, the sort of clean fun Robinson thinks teens need.
Through the young people he works with, Robinson has learned many of the meetups in Chicago are composed largely of teens from south and west suburbs. He is meeting with leaders from those areas and wants them to alert the city when large groups are making plans on social media or traveling downtown.
'It's more nuanced than doing a blanket curfew,' he said. 'We have to create opportunities for our youth to have safe spaces.' Community leaders have suggested opening more teen centers on the South Side that offer sports and arts programs, and starting more paid-job programs, for example.
Katrina Adams, a Chicago Public Schools parent of three, said her 13-year-old daughter, Infinity, went to the city's Teen Bash event at Navy Pier on March 29 and had a good time with her friends.
Adams, who lives in the Marynook neighborhood on the Far South Side, runs a nonprofit called Starr Community Service International Inc. that offers performing arts classes and an astronomy program. These types of investments, she said, would better address the disparities, trauma and violence that kids live on a day-to-day basis.
'It's not normal seeing your best friend get shot in front of you, and you have to walk over the blood and go to school the next day,' she said. 'They feel like they're hopeless, they don't have anything to live for, things are chaotic in their world and they're lashing out.'
Hopkins, however, thinks the idea that the city must choose between an earlier curfew or investing in safe activities for teens 'is a false equivalence.' No 14-year-old should be let loose downtown at 9 p.m. — and certainly not with several hundred other kids and scattered guns present, he said.
In Kenwood on Thursday, a group of six young organizers walked through the long halls at the end of their workday. They talked about their upcoming summer activities in their new 'KOCO van' and their vision for the latest designs on T-shirts.
Cotton, who now works at KOCO, points at the hundreds of kids who gather in the building for their catered activities as a success.
'We make our own trend,' he said, 'but in a space (kids) aren't incentivized to bring a weapon.'
Chicago Tribune's Sam Charles contributed.