The idiocy over “teen takeovers” gets worse: Chicago

Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| June 2026

Chicago – another city I actually like – has been cursed with a long parade of youth-haters: Mayor Daley, Rahm Emannuel, John Wayne Gacy, Michelle Obama, the press, the entire Chicago Police Department.

Even given a dismal history, today’s official cabal is setting records for deranged.

Hard to believe these days, but prior to 1990, Chicago was just your average metropolis with murder and violence rates similar to other big cities’, not the national punching bag it is today. (Yeah, there was that Valentine’s Day thing, but other cities had their gangsters, too.)

Now, after other large cities showed stunning violence and homicide declines especially among young people, “Chicago, Chicago” indeed does “things they don’t do on Broadway” (apologies to Sinatra), like tiddlywinks tournaments or Doris Day sing-alongs where someone gets shot.

I exaggerate, but not much, as 40 to 50 bullet-perforated Chicago bodies a week testify.

Chicago’s craven officialdom and press have long given up on any solutions beyond venting cliches and corrupt finger-pointing blaming their youth.

My substack last week complained that too many parents keep their kids at home too much. In Chicago, they got no choice. The city harshly (though unsuccessfully, as it turns out) enforces house arrest for young people.

Chicago Police Department reports (are you sitting down?) show cops for decades cited, arrested, and threatened parents over an incredible 100,000 youths every year NOT for real crimes, but simply for being in public.

With officers hell bent to curfew 275 youths per day, Chicago police don’t get around to solving two-thirds of violent crimes (including nearly half of murders) and 90% of property crimes.

Why bother with mere felonies and killings? The CPD’s big mission for decades has been to harass law abiding dark kids off the street.

Did Chicago’s strategy work?

Forty years past the halcyon day when Chicago was a normal big city for crime, Chicago’s homicide rate now is consistently double the average for the other 12 big cities with 1 million or more population. After decades of worse trends, Chicago’s teenage murder rate is now a shocking 2.5 times higher than the averages for other big cities.

Do Chicago leaders care? Not unless their hobby of talking loud and tough while repeating more and more of what has failed translates to caring.

Everything’s more violent in Chicago

Last weekend’s headline blared: “5 officers struck by car after ‘teen takeover’ hits Chicago’s West Side—as 19 people hurt in shootings.” Five officers were injured when an 18-year-old driver, now charged with attempted murder, plowed into them. If found guilty by the evidence, sure, he deserves the appropriately long sentence.

Because of that one driver, the press story labeled the entire gathering of hundreds of young people “a wild teen takeover” in which “fights, robberies and gunfire… erupted as the massive crowds of minors terrorized public spaces.”

Except that they didn’t and they didn’t. Just about no other arrests resulted from that “teen takeover.” You have to read further down to learn the “19 people hurt in shootings” that same day were not part of the “teen takeover.” They were shot at various other locales on a typical Chicago May 24.

Here’s another Chicago news headline on another “teen takeover” from last weekend: “Dozens of teens arrested, 9 weapons recovered during large gathering in Hyde Park.”

Here’s the subheading: “Chicago police say at least 13 teens, ages ranging from 14 to 28, received felony charges for possessing a weapon and battery.”

“Dozens of teens” became “13,” and “teens” became 28 years old.

CPD stats are maddeningly out of date, unreliable, and not reported to the FBI, so we don’t know the ages of all arrestees. But I’m betting that when finally issued, they’ll show what police stats on “teen takeovers” in other cities show: the large majorities of the city’s criminal offenders are in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and even 50s.

For decades, Chicago powers have labeled all teens as a problem. Now they’ve gone one better: anyone causing problem, regardless of age, is a “teen.”

Cops are just part of rotten Chicago leadership

Naturally, officials local, state, and federal are champing to punish all youths and a few parents of a few miscreants, such as parents of the 18-year-old police-assaulting driver.

If parents beat their kids daily and fed them crack for breakfast, fine, prosecute the parents – though it’s a tough legal road, especially since this “kid” is an adult. But no one today cares about abusive adults or even mentions them. Officialdom just wants parents to help them blame, ban, and punish mostly-Black youths. Of all persons arrested in Chicago, 92% are Black or Hispanic, which means virtually 100% of youth arrestees are Nonwhite.

The CPD’s statistical lag makes it impossible to evaluate individual incidents. Still, the CPD’s annual reports show youths are not some special crime scourge – far from it. Chicagoans arrested for criminal offenses by age (using CPD’s awkward age groupings) in the most recent year:

ages under 18: 7%

ages 18-21: 9%

ages 21-30: 30%

ages 31-40: 27%

ages 41-50: 14%

ages 51-older: 13%

That’s about the same pattern as in cities whose police didn’t issue literally 1 million threats to parents per decade to keep their kids at home, as is the fact that grownups age 21 to 50 or so are the city’s real crime problem.

I haven’t read every news report on Chicago’s “teen takeovers,” but I can safely bet none points out that readily available trend showing youth today are far less criminal than their parents were or are today.

Nor would any mention that whatever happens in any incident, Chicago suffers lots of unfortunate incidents every weekend. While grownups in age 21-50 groups act far worse and generate far more crimes, shootings, and arrests per capita than teenaged youths do, grownups going to bars, parties, and other venues are not branded by police as “unauthorized gatherings” the way all teenaged groups are.

So, yes, some Chicago teen gatherings cause trouble, just like some Chicago grownups’ socializings have even greater odds of trouble, and oftentimes Chicago’s varied ages perpetrate trouble outbreaks together like a well-oiled 9mm. As long as the city remains a national leader in scapegoating youth for crime and violence, 40 years of failure tell us it will remain a cautionary tale in an America already known for violence.