Mayor Brandon Johnson has spent a lot of his time period in workplace arguing that curfews for youngsters are ineffective, outdated, and rooted in what he has known as “the sins and the values of the previous,” whilst massive youth gatherings downtown have repeatedly devolved into violence, together with murders.
Now, with a nationally televised New Yr’s Eve celebration set to unfold alongside the Chicago River, Johnson is hanging a sharply totally different tone, warning youngsters that town will strictly implement its long-established 10 p.m. curfew downtown tonight.
The pivot, and that’s the most charitable phrase out there, is troublesome to overlook.
Johnson has constantly opposed increasing or strengthening curfews when youngsters have shot one another, violently robbed out-of-towners, and even shot vacationers within the Loop and Streeterville.
However with ABC broadcasting a midnight countdown within the coronary heart of downtown tonight, the mayor is all of a sudden emphasizing the significance of town’s 10 p.m. curfew, which has been in place since 1992.
Dick Clark’s New Yr’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest will likely be hosted regionally by Likelihood the Rapper, in accordance with ABC.
After a collection of enormous teen gatherings turned violent in June 2024, Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) proposed an 8 p.m. curfew for minors within the downtown space. Johnson responded by portraying the thought as unworkably advanced.
“If an adolescent must be accompanied by an grownup, what’s the definition of an grownup?” a puzzled Johnson questioned. “Is it an 18-year-old, a 21-year-old?”
“These are cheap questions,” he continued, twisting hypotheticals like a Rubik’s Dice. “And if a toddler is downtown at 8:01 with an 18-year-old or 19-year-old pal, does that depend because the accompaniment?”
When the proposal resurfaced earlier this yr, Johnson rejected it once more, arguing that curfews merely relocate violence reasonably than stop it.
“Shifting the issue into different communities, that’s not how we remodel our metropolis,” he mentioned. For some purpose (TV cameras), he now believes it’s OK to pressure these “different communities” to suck it up for New Yr’s.
Johnson has additionally repeatedly argued that curfews merely don’t work. In an interview with the Chicago Solar-Instances final yr, he mentioned, “All the information signifies that setting arbitrary curfews, they don’t result in any constructive outcomes.”
“I’ve to do what works,” Johnson sermonized. “Serving to younger folks discover their objective is a very powerful factor we will do as authorities.”
Simply not tonight, although. Sorry, younger folks.
Nonetheless, teen gatherings downtown proceed to finish with shootings, most lately after the annual Christmas tree lighting final month. A gunman that evening shot seven folks, all 13 to 16 years outdated, in entrance of the Chicago Theatre. One other gunman shot two extra folks close by, killing one.
However Johnson nonetheless wasn’t on board with modifying town’s curfew legal guidelines.
Again in June, the Metropolis Council really handed an ordinance permitting the police superintendent to declare narrowly tailor-made emergency curfews to forestall or disperse so-called teen “developments.”
Johnson vetoed the measure, the primary mayoral veto of any Chicago laws since 2006.
He mentioned the ordinance “would create tensions between residents and legislation enforcement at a time when we’ve got labored so exhausting to rebuild that belief.”
“It’s vital now greater than ever that we don’t repeat the sins and the values of the previous,” Johnson mentioned.
However tonight, he’s going to shelve his values and unleash these sins, all within the title of excellent TV protection. Hey, what good are “values” in case you can’t flip them on and off for municipal advertising and marketing functions?
Throughout the debate on that ordinance, Johnson argued that town’s current curfew legislation had already failed.
“It has not labored,” he mentioned. “And now we’re doing stuff that works, after which they need to give you one other concept that has not labored. What sense does that make?”
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