CHICAGO — Desperate to close the gaping $982 million deficit in next year’s city budget, the mayor’s office is looking at all options. And one of the expenses the mayor has in his sights is the cost of security at Millennium Park.
Lori Lightfoot set up checkpoints in the park and banned minors from being on the grounds without adult supervisors during certain hours after a series of incidents, including a murder at The Bean sculpture in spring 2022.
Now Mayor Brandon Johnson’s team wants to roll back security measures, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Johnson’s team was already reviewing the park’s curfew policy, but they want to make more immediate changes because of next year’s budget crisis. His office recently ordered a review of Millennium Park’s security budget, giving the agencies involved new marching orders: Create a new plan with fewer security obligations.
The security plan currently applies from Thursday to Sunday evening.
But the new budget guidelines call for eliminating the escort policy for minors except when Chicago Public Schools are on spring and summer breaks, an informed source said.
More: When schools are on break, the “enhanced safety plan,” which requires fencing the park and installing checkpoints, will only be active Friday through Sunday, removing Thursday from the plan.
The mayor’s team is hoping for savings, for example by spending less money on checkpoints, including the rental of magnetometers and tents. Naturally, personnel costs would also be pocketed.
The source emphasized that the security budget review was still ongoing, and that the city needed to ensure that any changes would not conflict with active contracts.
CWBChicago follows “large group incidents,” such as the teen trends that sometimes turned violent, prompting Lightfoot to take action.
Between December 5, 2020 and the rollout of Lightfoot’s plan in May 2022, we recorded ten large group incidents in Millennium Park and adjacent areas of the Loop.
However, since then we have identified only two such incidents, on April 13 and April 15, 2023, shortly before Johnson was elected.
Johnson was in the middle of a second election campaign against Lightfoot when these incidents occurred. At the time, he said he did not condone the violent behavior of some teens who attended the trends. Then he offered this:
“Look,” he said, “demonizing children is wrong. We also need to keep them safe. Have you ever taught high school? I have. Have you ever raised young people? Do you understand the risks young people take just because they are young? Do you know that home plate is at the bottom of my stairs? I discovered this when my son slid down the stairs, trying to score. They are young. Sometimes they make foolish decisions. They do. And so we need to make sure that we invest in making sure that young people know that they are supported.”
Since the city beefed up security at the park, “teen trends” have emerged in other areas, with multiple incidents at 31st Street Beach and the area around Roosevelt and Canal.
The mayor’s office did not respond to an email seeking input for this story.
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