Four people were arrested during a “teen takeover” in Hyde Park on Saturday night.
Beginning at around 8 p.m., upward of 50 teenagers arrived on 53rd Street. A heavy police presence was already in place in anticipation of the event, with dozens of patrol cars parked between South Woodlawn Avenue and South Lake Park Avenue. At least two helicopters were also spotted in the area.
Officers began taking people into custody around 9:30 p.m. At 10:07 p.m., police were seen handcuffing teenagers and putting them in the back of a van outside of Capital One Café on South Harper Avenue. A Chicago Police Department (CPD) officer at the scene told the Maroon that police were enforcing the city’s 10 p.m. youth curfew in the area.
CPD told the Maroon that the arrests included two 15-year-old boys, one 16-year-old girl, and one 18-year-old man.
One of the 15-year-old boys was charged with assault, obstruction of traffic, and resisting arrest. The 16-year-old girl was charged with one count of reckless conduct and three counts of resisting arrest.
The adult and the other 15-year-old were charged with reckless conduct.
Teen takeovers—large gatherings of teenagers, often organized via social media—have been a trend in Chicago for years. In 2022, a 16-year-old was shot and killed in a crowd of teenagers assembled in Millenium Park. Last month, a 15-year-old boy was wounded in a shooting at a similar meetup in Streeterville, prompting officials to consider earlier youth curfew hours. On April 1, a teen was charged in another shooting connected to a March 9 teen takeover, also in Streeterville.
Early this month, social media posts about a Hyde Park takeover began to circulate on Instagram. Screenshots from the now-deleted Instagram page thekidfrmchicag0 show posts advertising a “Hyde Park CIRCUS” taking place on April 12 at 51st Street and South Lake Park Avenue, telling attendees to meet at Kenwood Academy High School. The post was also uploaded to the local Facebook page Hyde Park Classics, where residents expressed worry about the trend coming to the neighborhood.
On Thursday, renewed concern regarding the teen meetups led CPD to issue a warning to Chicago Public Schools parents, encouraging them to prevent their children from attending the gatherings and warning that “de-escalation and dispersal techniques” would be used to “encourage our young people to comply with the law.”
A Saturday morning email sent by the Kenwood Academy administration to the school’s parents preemptively clarified that reports about the event occurring on the high school’s campus were inaccurate.
“We received an inaccurate report from the Citizen app that an event was happening on Kenwood Academy’s campus,” the email read. “This incident did not occur at Kenwood Academy High School and does not involve any of our students. Our students at the school are safe and sound and continue to be engaged in their Saturday programs.”
This is a developing story.
