a large teen gathering in Hyde Park<\/a> near 55th and Blackstone Avenue.<\/p>\nPolice say a 14-year-old girl was arrested and charged with aggravated battery after she ignored verbal warnings and hit an officer on the head.<\/p>\n
Justin Peters, founder of Chitown Crime Chasers, started his violence interruption organization years ago to help bridge the gaps between police and the community.<\/p>\n
“I’m tired of seeing a lot of these kids out here getting hurt. They want to come out and have fun. There’s nothing wrong with coming out and having fun and congregating, but when things turn chaotic and violent, then that’s when there’s an issue,” Peters said. “I’ve done seen several takeovers that got real chaotic, real violent, and some turned deadly. But we be out here trying to provide resources and build a bond with these kids.”<\/p>\n
And with the summer months around the corner, Justin and his team are working to expand their reach.<\/p>\n
“Seems like the goal here is to put yourself out of business,” ABC7 reporter Cate Cauguiran said.<\/p>\n
“Something like that, but we’re out here, we’re trying to show our face more, build a bigger team, so that we can expand all over the city and get all hands on, and all helping hands on deck. It’s going to take all of us to save us,” Peters said.<\/p>\n
Peters said that includes parent intervention on top of community organizers and police, something that Chicago’s mayor has spoken about as well.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO (WLS) — Community-based groups are doubling down on their pleas to parents to ensure that any teen…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":806626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[328158,960,328155,5462,5464,5386,1818,328156,267358,328157,255472,291392,75470,294991],"class_list":["post-806625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-328158","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-beaches","tag-chicago-news","tag-chicago-police","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-north-ave-beach","tag-north-avenue-beach","tag-senior-ditch-day","tag-teen-takeover","tag-teen-takeover-chicago","tag-teen-takeovers","tag-teen-trend"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116599283324404654","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}