A downtown alderman said he will push to bump the teen curfew in Chicago up to 8 p.m. after a tourist was shot in front of a movie theater over the weekend in his ward.
Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, told the Tribune he intends to advance his stalled ordinance from the Rules Committee — often the de facto home for items stuck in legislative limbo — by using a parliamentary move that would require a majority of his colleagues’ support for a floor vote to proceed.
Hopkins said there was not time to compel a hearing using the maneuver this month because of laws requiring public agenda disclosure before meetings, but added he plans to make the push in April.
“It’s time to have the debate,” he said. “It just can’t be dismissed. It just can’t be overlooked. We need to take action to prevent it from here.”
His efforts could meet resistance from Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was tepid at best when asked about the proposal on Tuesday.
“As far as making sure that we keep our community safe, we have to do the things that work. And what works is that we have to invest in people,” the mayor told reporters during a news conference about the city’s summer youth jobs program. “More work to be done, but I believe that by having policies in place that actually work and investing in people, that’s our pathway to continue to build a better, stronger, safer Chicago.”
The shooting unfolded about 8:10 p.m. Sunday on the 400 block of North Columbus, according to Chicago police. A 46-year-old woman was shot in the arm while walking on the sidewalk, and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in good condition. No one was in custody as of Wednesday morning.
Hopkins, whose ward includes that block, told the Tribune a crowd of around 50 teens was loitering in the movie theater’s lobby before the shots rang out. Many fights have broken out at the theater, even as its management cooperates with police, he said.
A second bullet hit the wounded woman’s purse, inches away from her torso, Hopkins said.“People have dismissed it as a non-life-threatening injury. That may be so, but it’s a life-altering injury, you know? This woman was here for a convention. She was here as a guest,” he said.
It’s a familiar discussion among Chicago leaders whenever the weather heats up. As mayor-elect, Johnson vigorously defended his calls to not “demonize youth” following a chaotic weekend in April 2023 when three teens were shot as hundreds of young people converged downtown and along the lakefront.
Later that summer, the mayor chastised a reporter for referring to another teen gathering as a mob action. “To refer to children as baby Al Capones is not appropriate,” Johnson said.
Under his predecessor Lori Lightfoot, backlash over downtown violence led to her successfully passing a curfew expansion in 2022, but not without controversy. The move to lower the curfew to 10 p.m. from 11 p.m. for all days of the week came on the heels of a teen’s fatal shooting at The Bean in Millennium Park. She also banned unaccompanied minors from entering Millennium Park after 6 p.m. Thursday to Sunday.
The curfew law, passed in 1992, had imposed a 10 p.m. cutoff on weekdays and an 11 p.m. curfew on weekends, both of which applied to those ages 12 to 16. Lightfoot’s ordinance amendment moved up the curfew to 10 p.m. across the board and added 17-year-olds to the restrictions.
For children under 12, the curfew remains 8:30 p.m. on weekdays and 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
Hopkins’ proposal was met with swift opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois: “The Alderman’s call for a curfew on minors for downtown is predictable – it happens every year after the first warm weekend of the spring. … Rather than penalizing all Chicago youth for the misguided actions of a few, the City should focus on diversion, anti-violence, and job programs for youth, and improve our Chicago Police Department through the Consent Decree,” ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka wrote in a statement.
