Politics
Plan to Allow Chicago Police to Impose ‘Snap Curfews’ to Stop Teen Gatherings Faces Test
Video: The WTTW News Spotlight Politics team on proposed curfews and more of the day’s top stories. (Produced by Paul Caine)
A proposal to allow Chicago Police Department officials to impose a curfew anywhere in the city with just 30 minutes notice in an effort to stop large gatherings of teens is set to face a key test Wednesday amid growing concern the measure is unworkable and unconstitutional.
Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling said Monday he encouraged Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd Ward), who has regularly demanded that Mayor Brandon Johnson ban teens from downtown after 8 p.m. in recent years, to introduce a measure that would expand CPD’s power in an attempt to deter teens from gathering in large numbers during the warm weather months.
“What I didn’t want to do is have a situation where there is one particular part of the city where a curfew can be imposed and not everywhere else in the city, because there are other places in the city that that have seen those types of similar gatherings,” Snelling said Monday at an unrelated news conference.
Hopkins, who did not respond to a request for comment from WTTW News on Monday, had touted the plan as a “compromise” he crafted with the support of Snelling and Mayor Brandon Johnson.
But Johnson on Monday declined to endorse the proposal set to be considered at 10 a.m. Wednesday by the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, which is led by Hopkins.
Johnson again said he did not believe that expanding the city’s curfew would stop “teen trends,” large gatherings organized on social media and popular among teens, from turning violent.
“We have not seen any substantive evidence that lowering the curfew is going to change that,” Johnson said.
And Snelling told reporters he had concerns that the current proposal would be unworkable.
“We don’t want to put a parent in a position where they take their kids to a particular location, maybe to a movie, and when that movie lets out, there’s a curfew that has been imposed,” Snelling said. “We want to make sure that we have tools in place to prevent these things from happening. But we will do this constitutionally.”
Expanded Curfew Law Used Sparingly: Data
Even as Johnson has resisted calls to expand Chicago’s curfew laws, he has not lifted the ban on unaccompanied teens in Millennium and Maggie Daley parks after 6 p.m. on weekends imposed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2022.
Lightfoot also pushed through an expanded teen curfew, convincing a narrow majority of the City Council that it would put an end to a spate of downtown violence among young Chicagoans.
Between 1992 and 2022, the city’s curfew allowed teens to stay out until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and only covered those 16 and younger. Lightfoot’s changes, which Johnson has not moved to reverse, mean the curfew starts at 10 p.m. seven days a week and applies to everyone 17 years old and younger.
That extended and expanded teen curfew has been used sparingly since it was approved by a narrow majority of the City Council, according to records obtained by WTTW News.
In all, the Chicago Police Department documented 276 violations of the city’s curfew ordinance between May 1, 2024 and Sept. 30, 2024, according to documents obtained by WTTW News through the Freedom of Information Act.
Only 12 of those violations were recorded between 10 and 11 p.m. on a Friday or Saturday night, records show.
In addition, Chicago police issued 75 citations for curfew violations to the parents of teens who had violated the curfew three times in the past year or were also arrested on suspicion of committing a crime, records show.
Proposal Hits Wall of Criticism
Hopkins’ proposal would allow police to declare a curfew in the event of “a gathering of 20 or more people in a public place for the purpose of engaging in, or is likely to result in, criminal conduct, including reckless conduct … disorderly conduct … or that otherwise presents or causes, or is likely to present or cause an unreasonable risk to public health, safety or welfare.”
The snap curfew could be imposed at the request of Snelling or a district commander, according to the proposal. The draft set for a vote Wednesday is silent on how large an area the curfew would apply to, how that determination would be made or how long the curfew would be in place.
My Block, My Hood, My City founder and CEO Jahmal Cole said the proposal would do nothing to stop teens from gathering in large numbers on warm spring and summer nights, since it does not give them something else to do.
“This is a ‘not-in-my-backyard type of ordinance,” said Cole, whose nonprofit works to expose young people to other parts of the city and better their own communities.
The measure is rooted in the same kind of approach that led to rules that prevented the free movement of Black Chicagoans around the city during the Jim Crow era, Cole said.
“It communicates that the presence of Black teens is a threat,” Cole said. “But downtown belongs to everyone.”
The Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild warned City Council members Monday that if the proposal is used to cite teens for violating the city’s curfew, it would “potentially violate their First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly.”
This proposal “is highly susceptible to abuse and unequal enforcement. We are concerned this proposal would subject Black and Brown teenagers to the same historical over-policing that violates equal protection rights and is harmful and unjust,” according to the National Lawyers Guild.
A coalition of 20 groups, led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, also urged the City Council to reject the proposal in a letter sent Monday that called curfews a “tired and failed” public safety strategy.
It is also unclear whether the proposal to allow “snap curfews” is allowed by the department’s policy for handling crowds.
That policy has been repeatedly praised by Johnson and Snelling for ensuring that police properly responded to protests and gatherings outside the United Center and other locations during the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
Those rules were crafted after months of negotiations as part of the federal court order requiring CPD to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers, known as the consent decree.
That policy outlines when and for what reason CPD can declare a gathering unlawful and order people to disperse or face legal consequences. The policy requires that “three or more persons are committing acts of disorderly conduct that are likely to cause substantial harm in the immediate vicinity” before a dispersal order is issued.
Any changes to that policy would have to be approved by the Illinois Attorney General’s office as well as the independent monitoring team charged with enforcing the consent decree. U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, the judge overseeing the reform push, has the power to resolve any disputes.
Note: This article was published April 28, 2025, and updated with video April 29, 2025.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
