A Detailed Eyewitness Account of Hyde Park on Halloween

A Hyde Parker who was an eyewitness to much of the happenings of Wednesday night, Halloween, has summarized what she saw, which supports the observation that Chicago police behavior appeared to make the situation much worse than it otherwise might have been. This was contributed by the author to the "Good Neighbors" email forum, 4:12pm yesterday Friday November 1st. -- Sid

"Hi neighbors,

I largely stay out of conversations on this thread, and I’m getting my thoughts together about Halloween night, but as someone who was there and is not seeing represented in this discussion what I saw that night, I feel compelled to share some observations and hopes with my neighbors.
The following is not intended to be a comprehensive account; it represents only what I have seen and experienced, and I am not trying to speak for anyone but me.

I live right around the corner from 53rd and Lake Park; I have lived in the neighborhood for nearly a decade.

Last year, during Halloween 2017, I witnessed a mass presence of police pushing young people off of 53rd street with their hands and their batons, while multiple officers forced one young man into the ground. For more than an hour after this, I saw police verbally and physically provoking young people in multiple ways on and around 53rd street. Those things were not the totality of what happened last year, but they WERE part of what happened, and they were almost entirely left out of the subsequent conversations.

I had hoped this would not happen again this year. I was encouraged to see that among my neighbors, some people were planning alternative activities. I was (and am) in favor of the Promontory party, and I appreciate those of my neighbors who worked hard to put it together. Because I read the concerns aired on this thread about what would happen when it ended, and as a result of teens not being allowed on the commercial corridor, I wanted to be outside on the street near my home - as a calm presence, a resource, and a witness - at that time.

My roommate and I walked over towards the Promontory from the direction of 54th Street, sometime between 8 and 8:30. We saw a number of youth in costumes outside, many of them on their cellphones, at least some of whom were obviously trying to figure out what to do or how to get home. We spoke with 2 adults: one person who was an orange-shirt volunteer who was standing near the barricade leading onto 53rd St, and one person who was wearing a uniform. The orange shirt volunteer told us that the party had been shut down early. He redirected kids away from 53rd St. with respect, and although I can’t speak to the rest of the evening but we were there, not one young person he redirected failed to heed his directions. When they asked the (perfectly reasonable) question of why they couldn’t enter 53rd street, however, he was only able to say, “I’m sorry, they won’t let y’all.”

My roommate and I also spoke to the man in uniform. He said he worked for a private security company and the sheriff’s office, and that there were “sheriff’s people there.” He told us the party was over, and it was getting shut down “to teach the young people a lesson.” He said that people had been running around and that neighbors “were going to get trampled” so “the mayor told them to shut down the party.” (I have no idea if this is true). He said multiple derogatory things about young people from the South and West sides of Chicago, implying that they were all criminals, and he interrupted his conversation with us to shout at young people that they had to go away or they would be arrested. When we asked why, he said they would be arrested for not following orders. Again, the young people we saw were not causing any harm to anyone. It was not curfew time. They were being redirected calmly by the orange shirt volunteer.

Because most young people were being pushed onto Lake Park between 52nd and 54th street, my roommate and I walked there. There were probably 5 or 6 cop cars with their lights and sirens on and off, and more than a dozen police on bikes (just at the intersection of 53rd and Lake Park. Essentially, the police had many young people corralled on this corner (I’m not that good at estimating crowds, but probably a couple hundred), near where the 15/28 bus stop would be. The thing is, no bus was coming. I asked multiple police officers when the bus would come or if they knew – some told me that no busses were coming, some just didn’t answer my question. My roommate overheard some officers say they had no plan. While my roommate and I stood on those blocks with the young people, I observed young people mostly just standing around talking on the sidewalks. I heard a couple insults, but no young person that we saw was engaged in any violent behavior.

Both collectively and individually, police officers engaged in behaviors that escalated the situation. They literally herded the young people back and forth over these blocks with their lights and sirens blaring, demanding that they move. I witnessed a female cop grab a young woman out of the crowd by the cords of her hoodie (around her neck) and yell at her in the face. The young woman kept repeating, “I didn’t do anything!” I witnessed a cop grab a young man out of the crowd, slam him against a car, and threaten him with arrest for not “moving fast enough” – despite the fact that the young man had been walking already in the direction the police were pushing them. I witnessed another interaction in which a young person complained to his friend about their treatment by the police, and an officer who overheard this literally broke out of the police line and stepped into the crowd of young people in a threatening way, demanding, “What did you say?” and then mocking (remember, this is a grown, armed, officer, directly inviting this with a teenager) “What are you going to do about it?” The only reason that these potential confrontations didn’t escalate even more is because the young people’s friends held them back, got between them and the police, and reminded them not to engage. In other words, most of the de-escalation going on came from young people themselves.

The police kept yelling at the young people to go home (as though no young Black people live in the neighborhood; I witnessed one young person try to explain that he was trying to go home, behind one of the blockades, but the police still wouldn’t let him through) and go away (as though there were a way to do that, which there wasn’t, because no busses were coming and no cars could get through).

After maybe half an hour (maybe more) of this, young people walked and ran for 55th street, across the Treasure Island Parking lot. There was a booming sound, so I guess someone threw a firecracker-like thing, and everyone walking across the parking lot temporarily scattered running. It was clear that most young people were scared and didn’t know what was going on. The police then started pushing young people back west on 55th Street, herding them with their bicycles, blaring their lights and sirens, repeatedly demanding they go away and go home (but again, with no way for anyone to actually leave the neighborhood, because they still had the busses blocked off). By this time, some of the young people were more agitated, some talking back to the police, and some trying to break out of being herded around. I still didn’t see any young person do anything violent. I asked the officers where they expected young people to go, and they said “home.” I asked how that should happen, when no cars were passing, and one officer said “they can walk” – while also saying it was almost curfew. Once young people had been pushed out of the commercial corridor (and away from the bus stops) the police gathered at the intersection of 55th and Harper.

Things were quiet briefly and I walked my roommate home. I then heard another booming sound and saw a lot of blue and red lights in the direction of Ridgewood Court, so I headed over there. When I arrived, I saw a fire truck with firefighters spraying water on a car, and I saw police talking to residents. I asked what had happened, and one of the neighbors shared what she had seen and experienced, and I shared what I had seen and experienced. Since those accounts are already presented here, and since I wasn’t there to witness them, I’ll let others speak to those events, but obviously, property was damaged, and people were shaken up – saddened, frustrated, and angered - by last night’s events. I feel for these neighbors. I would have been shaken up too.
I was also really impressed and moved to hear them try to put what happened into context, and think about the larger picture. As several of them themselves commented, last night was also scary and frustrating for many teenagers. By the time the incidents occurred on Ridgeword, a large group of young people had been facing verbal and sometime physical aggression from the police for at least an hour (not to mention last year, or on multiple other occasions), in many cases simply for being outside. And as some of the neighbors on Ridgewood themselves commented, this was not an isolated incident, but something that occurred in the context of a reality where Black youth contend with consistent harassment and threats to their safety and well-being from the police, which they mostly have no power to do anything about. As multiple of my neighbors on Ridgewood themselves said to me, we cannot pretend to be having a full conversation about what happened in Hyde Park last night without an acknowledgement of this context.

Let me be clear: I am not trying to speak for the young people involved, or suggesting that I know what they were thinking or what intentions people came with. I don’t. Nor do I believe that young people have no agency and are victims of circumstance alone. Nor am I saying that smashing windows and throwing firecrackers is ok, or that there is no need for accountability or further discussion. I’m not saying any of that.

What I am saying is that when we talk about accountability only of in terms of greater policing and more punishment or exclusion of young people, we are missing some very important pieces of the picture.

If we want to talk about accountability, many people need to be held accountable. This includes the police. I have seen no one talk about – this year or last year – any consequences for the inappropriate and irresponsible behavior of law enforcement officers. Some of you may ask me to consider that this was a difficult situation for them as well. I am sure that it was. They certainly weren’t helped by the lack of any plan to help young people safely leave, and that is unfortunate. But teenagers, like anyone other human being, are both worthy of, and respond better to, respect.
Yes, some young people caused damage to property. But this does not mean that all of them deserved to be treated to abuse. Yes, some young people called police names. But we regularly expect other public servants, like teachers, to de-escalate these situations and still find ways to treat young people with respect, rather than to invite further confrontations. We should expect at least as much of people who carry around guns.

Our asks for accountability should also include those who pushed teens out, refused to proactively engage with this situation, and, frankly, all of rest of us who have failed to appropriately respect and resource youth demands for space on the South Side to be teenagers, to be outside, to be respected, to be free, and to have fun.

Accountability doesn't inherently mean blame and punishment, either. It means we need to figure our how to repair harm and figure out how to prevent further harm.

From our neighborhood meetings, to the voting booth, to advocacy around the city budget and police oversight mechanisms, to volunteering in our communities, to fighting against policies which harm the South Side overall, to conversations with our neighbors about the deeply internalized racism many of those of us who identify as white carry around -- we can all be doing more. And should be.

What we should not do is begin conversations about next year the assumption that Black youth are inherently criminal, and deserve to be treated as such. My experiences have made it clear to me that this IS the message we have sent, loud and clear, by preparing for Halloween with massive police presence in anticipation of “thugs” and “riots.” I don’t see a route towards any kind of collective, healing, holistic response that begins there.

As the group who planned the Promontory Party has made clear, there are other ways to deal with this. That party alone was not sufficient, but it was a start.

I have been really humbled and grateful that many of the people I talked to on Halloween – a group of neighbors and friends of diverse race and age, including those who themselves suffered property damage, and others who themselves have witnessed or experienced harassment from police – were willing to think through some of this. They asked some of these bigger questions about how this whole situation came about and could have been avoided. I was grateful for that.
I hope we can take this example, and restart this conversation, in a way that doesn’t demonize all teenagers who were in Hyde Park on Halloween, or rely on assumptions about where they all came from and what they all came to do.

I hope that as this conversation develops, there is space to talk about our collective responsibility to acknowledge the corrosive consequences of living in a city and neighborhood where there is zero accountability for police misconduct, which was undoubtedly one (not the only, but absolutely one) of the factors in how Halloween has occurred in Hyde Park.

I hope that we can dig deeper into a larger conversation about what Hyde Park is and is becoming, and what that means for Black youth in this neighborhood, not just on Halloween, but always. It is not a coincidence that Halloween disturbances have been worse since the build-up of 53rd Street. 53rd street offers resources that are not available elsewhere and have been stripped from other South Side neighborhoods. 53rd Street, a public space and product (at least in part) of public money – should be for everyone. But – on Halloween in particular, in at other times more subtly – youth on the South Side that they are not welcome here. That is wrong.

I hope that next year is different.

More than anything, I hope that we will ask for, and listen to, young people's own reactions, suggestions, and solutions. They have been sorely absent from this discussion, and they are important.

If you know young people arrested on Wednesday (or whenever, this service exists always) please know that you can call First Defense Legal Aid at 1-800-LAW-REP4 with the person’s name and birthday and a lawyer can help find them and go down to the station to help them within the first 48 hours of arrest.

If you are a young person and you have thoughts and ideas, please know there are at least some people in this neighborhood who want to hear you, who value you, who respect you, and who are glad you are here.

I am one, and I am not the only one."

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I am adding a second and an additional corroborating eyewitness report here now ... these two posts appeared first on a Facebook group:

"J. L. About 7:15-7:30, the police mounted a bicycle brigade and started a blitzkrieg which pushed the teens East down 53rd Street toward Lake Park forcing them into the barricades. Then the police blocked traffic on Lake Park so no CTA buses could get through and effectively blocked the teens from being able to get home. After that the police started chasing the teens South down Lake Park from 53rd Street to 55th and back again North around the corner onto 54th Street herding them toward Ridgewood Court and out again to 55th Street, forcing them around back North down Kimbark to 53rd and past CVS at about 9:45-10:00. I watched all of this first as an “Orange Shirt” volunteer who helped organize the Teen Party at the Promontory and was passing out pluggers about the party on 53rd Street and then second, as I returned to my home later on further West on 53rd Street.. The teens gathered on 53rd Street were MOSTLY GROUPS OF FRIENDS, NOT GANG-BANGERS, who were out looking for fun, not mayhem. We can do better next year with more cooperation from community groups and the powers-that-be to create a street festival for teens that keeps the majority occupied positively on 53rd Street instead of being villainized, paniced, and incited by strong-armed tactics designed to get rid of them rather than recognize and welcome them like the 0-12 & 20-elder-year-olds are to Downtown Hyde Park on Halloween and every other day of the year.

So. C. I was also there and can confirm this."