The chief of staff to Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson (D) announced new plans to prevent riots in the downtown area in the aftermath of black youths terrorizing the Loop, causing damage to property and attacking random people.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports Rich Guidice said the Chicago Police Department's response to the spontaneous riot was "unacceptable," but said the circumstances were unique.
"Leading into this weekend, we’ve already made a lot of adjustments. We have infrastructure assets that are on site in the downtown area. We have additional teams on site, undercover police personnel on site, just a lot more coordination," said Guidice. "This morning, we had a coordination call regarding the potential for trends that are coming downtown. So we’re in a better place to make better decisions."
Second Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins also revealed the city plans on using "violence interrupters" to convince youths to stop the chaos should it happen again.
"They go up to large groups of youth and basically say, ‘Hey, don’t cause trouble while you’re down here.’ ... We’ll have people from the Chicago Public Schools system who will recognize CPS students and can basically call them by name," Hopkins said.
"The other side of that will be having prisoner transport vans parked all around Millennium Park,” said Hopkins. “In the situation we saw last week where the young couple from South Carolina was attacked by at least 12 individuals, we wouldn’t have had the ability to arrest all 12 of them at that moment anyway. That’s gonna change."
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Johnson came to the defense of the rioters because, according to him, they were just kids who made "silly decisions."
"Demonizing children is wrong! We have to keep them safe as well. Have you ever taught middle school? I have. Have you ever raised young people? Do you understand the risks that young people take just because they are young? Do you that home plate is at the bottom of my stairs? I found that out when my son was sliding down those stairs trying to score! They're young, sometimes they make silly decisions! They do!" Johnson said.
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