On Sunday evening, July 30, at around 8:00, I was in a supermarket near Roosevelt and Canal in Chicago’s South Loop, an upscale shopping, health club and movie hub on the edge of downtown. The area has been regarded as safe and on the upswing since the late 1990s and is even being considered for a new White Sox park or Bears stadium.

While entering the store I noticed scores of African American teenagers lining the street. At first, I thought that there was some kind of festival or parade. But there was already a city policeman guarding the entrance. I asked him what was going on. He replied that something called a “teen takeover” was beginning, and that the Chicago Police Department had been monitoring it but that they were so far outnumbered.

After my purchase I drove out from the parking garage, only to see a mob approaching. I changed direction immediately, away from the crowd, and proceeded several blocks to the opposite end of downtown until I could exit onto a roundabout route home. 

I had heard of previous flash mob events in Chicago and elsewhere during which teenagers had been playing chicken with the police or pursuing dangerous encounters such as fighting, throwing things, jumping on cars, and looting. 

On my drive home I switched on Chicago’s twenty-four hour radio news station, WBBM, and not a word was said about the growing crowd, even though WBBM is known for its traffic reports and for announcing “police incidents” that may affect drivers. Here was a clear obstruction -- and possible danger -- to drivers in real time, and there was no radio warning to them!

After the much longer trip home due to the unexpected detour, I called WBBM and its affiliated CBS2 Chicago to complain about the failure to alert the public. The person who answered told me that she was unaware of the event. Were they really clueless?

Then I determined to call the other news desks. The person at ABC7 told me they were “keeping an eye on it.” Fox News Chicago said they were “waiting for some activity” (for a shooting?). WGN9 (the local CW station) was holding off until they could send a person there. NBC5 was on voice mail.

I checked the local Fox and WGN 9:00 news and there was no mention of the takeover. A report at 9:00 could have still alerted people to avoid the area. There was no mention on the other stations’ ten o’clock news. Yet all of them had some story in place by 6:00 p.m. the next day (Monday, July 31)

The local news bureaus I called were all certainly informed by nine o’clock the same evening, if only by me. But they made a decision not to alert the public. What could justify such dereliction of duty to inform and to warn?

I tried to imagine possible reasons for that decision. What if, for example, the mayor’s office or police department had discouraged publicizing what was happening.  (I have no reason to believe that this was the case; I present this only as a hypothetical.)  Suppose that there had been an administrative concern that publicity would bring more than the three to four hundred youths who did show up at the bidding of whatever internet inciter instigated the gathering. Even under such circumstances I would say that the press’s first duty would have been to the unaware public. Drivers needed to be warned. Family members listening to television or radio could have alerted relatives on the road. 

The next day, I learned that the mob I had avoided trashed and looted a nearby Seven Eleven store.

YouTube screengrab

I was sad to hear about this attack, especially because I sometimes park near that store and am always uplifted by the beautiful opera music that the management pipes outside via loudspeakers.

The police did discourage the youth from criminal activity, both verbally and by their presence, and ended up making some 40 arrests with the hope of impressing the teens and their families with the folly of participating in such mob action. Most of the arrests were made after the 10:00 p.m. curfew time, mainly of those who had looted the store or who had tried to break into or damage other businesses. 

As far as I’m concerned, the local TV and radio news desks were all useless at performing their public duty, every one of them. Perhaps we can gain insight into their agendas from their 10:00 p.m. reports on the following day, Monday. 

NBC5 Chicago focused on the Interim Police Chief’s statement that some teens crossed the line when they ransacked a store and tried to break into others. The editorial decision was made to link this story with coverage of the plan of the St. Titus One Youth Anti-Violence Program to sponsor a city-wide “day without crime.” The pastor, Michael A. Jones, courageously urged communities to “pull ourselves together and take a better look at our own selves to see what we can do to mitigate the damage that we are causing.” The theme here was parental responsibility. By including an interviewee’s reference to violence, the report suggested (but stopped short of saying) that the very phenomenon of “teen takeover” is a form of violence or a catalyst toward it. 

ABC7 featured a witness who said that the crowd grew gradually and quietly from dozens to hundreds, until some started fights, threw bottles at cars and tried to break into stores. The anchor related that “dozens of young people are facing charges,” the youngest only twelve years old. Taking due note that the “police intended to send a message to the suspects and their parents,” the reporter suggested that the attack on the Seven Eleven store may not have been motivated by theft, since several teens threw looted items into the air. She concluded on the basis of one interviewed observer that “aside from the few dozen causing problems, the majority of the young crowd appeared to just be looking for a place to hang out.” This is the narrative decided upon after the station chose not to alert the public the previous night.

CBS2 offered the best 10:00 p.m. report. The anchor lauded community activists who “saw the situation brewing and headed to the scene to try to stop it.” Reporter Jermont Terry related that two “violence interrupters” from the African American community thought that there would have been more arrests had they not stepped in. He profiled a group called Mr. Dad’s Father’s Club, which had convinced some teens to leave and had broken up fights. Terry featured a police radio dispatch that ordered officers to arrest looters running out of the Seven Eleven (and curfew violators?).

Terry also related that some parents responded to live feed alerts about the takeover event, though he did not mention the source of the feed. He cited a father who collected his daughters, reprimanding them for lying about going to the movies. Terry was the only journalist in the 10:00 slot to report that two guns were confiscated, one with a silencer. 

The local Fox station did a creditable job during its 9:00 p.m. Monday quarterback news. Reporter Tina Ewing noted that community activists and parents did show up on the spot. She is the only one who detailed that a 15-year-old had a gun with a laser and silencer and that a 17-year-old carried a machine gun with metal-piercing bullets!

Of course, these latter two news stories, the best ones, raise the questions of how the parents and the Mr. Dad’s group and other violence interrupters found out about the incident, and why the legacy TV stations did not have reporters on the ground. All of the footage was provided by an outlet called Chitown Crime Chasers who were either on the scene or had immediate access to eyewitnesses, putting the news stations to shame.

In the weeks and months that followed, I hoped for follow-up by local TV news, but there was none. There was no coverage of whether arrested looters were charged, nor if camera footage led to the subsequent arrest of others. 

A free press interested in exploration and deterrence would have tackled issues like possible legal consequences for the internet instigators of the “takeovers,” especially after coverage of the prosecution of a New York influencer whose actions led to rioting. And I have yet to see TV news discussion of financial liability on the part of parents of looting and vandalizing minors.  

The strongest statement by Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, was his rejection of the term, “mob actions”: “We’re not talking about mob actions,” he insisted. “Respectfully, these [are] large gatherings. It’s important that we speak of these dynamics in an appropriate way. This is not to obfuscate what is actually taking place. But we have to be very careful when we use language to describe certain behavior. There’s history in this city. I mean, to refer to children as like baby Al Capones is not appropriate….There have been other attempts to have large gatherings, and we’ve intercepted those attempts.” It seems that when Mayor Johnson referred to “history in this city,” he was not talking about racist attempts to characterize black youth gatherings as “mob action,” but was reserving the term, “mob” for the Cosa Nostra (adding to stereotypes of Italian Americans?)

Several months later, in late fall 2023, I was caught in another teen takeover. That Saturday night the police were effective shepherds. There were no break-ins reported. I was able to drive home without changing my route. I don’t recall any news coverage.

But despite the effective efforts of police and the insistence of city officials that the teens had the right to assemble, the worst possible horror recently occurred—and not surprisingly, considering that guns were confiscated the first time.

On Saturday night, March 2, 2024 there was another teen takeover event at which a 17-year-old was shot to death during an altercation. The tragic loss of a promising young man hit home. In fact, I had parked in that lot only a day before. 

Following this latest event, local TV news totally eschewed the word, “mob,” clearly deciding to use the mayor’s preferred term, “large gathering,” over “teen takeover.”

The next night, on March 3, most local news stations avoided use of even the expression “teen takeover.” WGN9 called the mob event a “large gathering,” but listed previous similar incidents. ABC7’s “Digital Team 7:04 p.m.” referred to “a group of people, potentially [?] teenagers,” who “were in the area”; its later 10:00 p.m. news employed the wording, “large gathering.” The anchor on CBS2 described “an out-of-control crowd,” but the reporter preferred the wording, “so-called teen takeovers” and spotlighted crisis prevention specialists sporting orange hats and jackets dealing with teens who were “dancing in the middle of the street” and “antagonizing law enforcement.” Only NBC5 unequivocally spoke of a “South Loop takeover,” also featuring a grill owner’s remark about “teenage meet-ups.”

On March 4, two nights after the horrors, NBC5’s 10:00 p.m. coverage contained a reference to “Facebook meetings.” A relative of the murdered teenager observed that such “meetings” can be “real deep,” but it was not clear whether by “deep” he meant hard for parents to track or far-reaching or both. A local violence interrupter called for more community centers to open as “as a way to slow down these social media driven teen takeovers that happen when the weather warms up.” Reporter Christian Farr deserves credit for including the only explicit mention in 10:00 news coverage of the role of social media.

At 9:00 p.m. WGN had referred to “that teen gathering,” while Fox Chicago had designated it as “a large gathering,” adding that the murdered teen and the 200 others present had “heard about the meet-up on social media.” In brief stories at 10:00 p.m., CBS2 labeled the event a “teen takeover,” but ABC7 characterized it as a “so-called teen takeover” (the same terminology this station used last July 31), while NBC5 said it was “described as a teen takeover.” 

ABC7 shared on March 3 that the police tried to warn businesses of a “planned large gathering in the area,” urging them to lock their doors. A local business owner spoke of a parking lot full of youths in their late teens to mid-twenties who had been parading down the streets. Alderman Jason Ervin stated: “We definitely need to have necessary [law] enforcement, but we also have to have activities for young people to do in their respective communities, so they do not feel the need to come downtown to do those types of things.” Activist Andrew Holmes observed on Fox Chicago (March 3) that even though the police “had eyes in the sky, and officers on the streets too, there were not enough eyes.”

It is unclear whether Mayor Johnson’s aversion to the term, “mob action,” would extend to the expression, “teen takeover,” which seems to have emanated from the social media instigators and participants themselves. But surely the word, “mob,” is a centuries old legal term, which has implications and ramifications for all American cities.

Designating teen takeovers as mob action would provide legal guidelines to protect both the public and the teens from the destructive and even murderous outcomes of such escalating events. Only decisive action by city officials and states attorneys, along with a forthright and probing press unshackled by political correctness, can help Chicago and other cities to find legal and communal pathways to countering the use of social media for mob incitement.