Lawlessness downtown and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s dangerous delusions
When the weather gets warm, the pests come out, and in Chicago that includes not just insects, but “exuberant” youth. Another weekend in Chicago, another teen mob, another community left shaken. This time, the epicenter was Streeterville, a neighborhood that has now become a recurring backdrop for lawlessness masked as “gatherings.” What unfolded near Columbus and Illinois was not a protest, not a block party, and certainly not youthful exuberance. It was disorder — punctuated by brawls, arrests, and gunfire.
Hundreds of teens swarmed the area on Friday night, disrupting businesses and alarming residents. Fights broke out, one teenager fired a gun into the crowd, and a 15-year-old was grazed by a bullet. A police officer was injured trying to break up the melee. Four arrests were made, including two for assaulting that officer and two for carrying replica firearms. The mayor’s response? A casual shrug wrapped in buzzwords.
Brandon Johnson, ever faithful to the progressive playbook, used the opportunity to deflect blame, dismiss calls for increased enforcement, and insist that more recreation centers are the solution. At the city’s “Teen Bash” event at Navy Pier on Saturday, he acknowledged that “dangerous behavior” occurred — but immediately pivoted to opposing calls to move the city’s 10 p.m. teen curfew earlier, to 8 p.m., as many residents and city officials have urged.
“We’re not shifting the problem into other communities,” he said as if basic law enforcement is some kind of colonial exercise rather than the foundational responsibility of municipal government. What Johnson failed to articulate is how, exactly, the city plans to protect residents from flash mobs and street violence if it won’t embrace curfews, enforcement, or deterrence.
Left unspoken is that Streeterville isn’t just any neighborhood. It’s probably the richest ZIP code in the city and one of the wealthiest postcodes in the country. Now that may not arouse any sympathy, particularly on the left, but the reality is that the property values there are astronomical, and as a result, so is the Chicago’s tax take. To be blunt, one of the reasons that cities tend to provide extra police protection to certain neighborhoods is because they generate more tax revenue than others and the city needs those tax dollars. We can already see from the strained budget afflicting Chicago what happens when the tax base deteriorates.
Let’s face it. The majority of these kids are not from Streeterville, and encouraging them to express their exuberance in their own or each other‘s neighborhoods is not an unreasonable policy.
Let’s be very clear: This is not a philosophical debate about youth empowerment. It’s a practical debate about public safety. And Johnson is on the wrong side of it.
A dangerous pattern
What’s most alarming about the mayor’s position is that it’s not an isolated misstep. It’s part of a broader ideological framework — one that sees enforcement not as a tool of justice, but as an expression of oppression. That worldview may play well in faculty lounges and on activist podcasts, but in the real world, it is collapsing under the weight of its own consequences.
Just ask Streeterville residents, who now live with the expectation that warm weekends will bring chaos. “It’s become like a hazard,” one resident told NBC 5. “Now you have to worry about this every day when it’s warm.” That’s not hyperbole. It’s the voice of a citizen whose daily life is being eroded by city leadership that treats lawlessness as a sociology paper topic rather than a crisis.
Or ask Alderman Brian Hopkins, who said what many are afraid to say aloud:
“We can’t have this. We have to put a stop to this. We can’t allow this to continue all summer long. It’s just a matter of time before someone is killed.”
Hopkins is absolutely right — and he’s not alone. There is a growing consensus among those who actually govern (as opposed to those who moralize) that Chicago needs real policy change now.
The fantasy of recreation as prevention
Johnson’s alternative to curfews and enforcement? More recreation centers. More programming. “Constructive activities,” as he and his allies call them.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with giving teens something positive to do. But the idea that a 24-hour community center will magically siphon hundreds of teens away from the thrill of flash mobs and social media-fueled chaos is not just naïve — it’s insulting.
It presumes that what we’re seeing is simply the result of boredom. It ignores the deliberate nature of these gatherings: Organized via social media, often with the specific intent of disruption. These are not kids wandering into trouble. These are coordinated acts of misbehavior, and in some cases, violence.
And what’s the proposed deterrent? A dance class?
Accountability without consequence
Johnson claims he wants to “hold people accountable.” But in practice, his administration continues to signal the opposite. The message from City Hall is that there will be few, if any, consequences for bad behavior.
This is why the kids, in Alderman Hopkins’ words, “just laugh.” They’re laughing at adults who are afraid to act like adults. They’re laughing at a mayor more interested in scolding police than backing them. They’re laughing because they know the enforcement side of city government is paralyzed by politics.
When you remove consequence, you remove deterrence. That’s not radical criminology; it’s common sense.
The failure of ideological governance
What we’re witnessing is what happens when ideology trumps governance. Johnson’s worldview is rooted in a theory of structural inequity that sees every incident of enforcement as a potential injustice, and every act of chaos as a failure of social programming.
That’s fine as a thesis statement. But it’s a disaster as a governing strategy.
It leaves neighborhoods like Streeterville vulnerable. It demoralizes the police. It encourages bad actors. And it does so in the name of moral high ground that feels increasingly disconnected from the lived experience of ordinary Chicagoans.
The real cost of inaction
The true danger of Johnson’s approach is not just the individual incidents — it’s the cumulative effect. Over time, people begin to lose faith in the city’s ability to keep them safe. Businesses consider leaving. Families reconsider living downtown. Tourists decide not to come.
This is how a great city deteriorates — not in a single dramatic collapse, but in a slow erosion of confidence and order. And it’s preventable. That’s the tragedy.
Mayor Johnson had a chance to pivot after this latest episode. He could have stood with residents, with law enforcement, with reason. Instead, he retreated to the same empty rhetoric: Programs, transformation, equity. All are valid in theory. All utterly irrelevant in the face of mobs and bullets.
Time for leadership — or a reckoning
The City Council now has a decision to make. A curfew vote is reportedly coming in April. This is more than a procedural step — it’s a test of whether anyone in city government is willing to lead while the mayor continues to abdicate.
Residents are watching. Voters are watching. And if Johnson continues to cling to an ideology that can’t police a sidewalk, the reckoning at the ballot box may arrive sooner than he thinks.
Streeterville residents can also vote with their feet, taking their tax dollars with them and depressing the property values that fuel Brandon Johnson’s already creaking budget.
Until then, the people of Streeterville and neighborhoods like it will continue living with the consequences of leadership that mistakes talking for doing — and theory for reality.
