On Halloween the past two years, large groups of teenagers have gathered in downtown Oak Park, Illinois, the community where I live. Both times, Oak Park police and officers from surrounding communities responded by ushering the teens along Lake Street toward Austin Boulevard, the border between Oak Park and the city of Chicago. That a large number of these teens were Black, with a substantial number coming from westside Chicago neighborhoods like Austin and Garfield Park, is often a tacit undercurrent in the commentary about these events. People – sometimes the teens themselves – refer to these crowds as “teen takeovers”, and they have also happened in downtown Chicago at various points over the past several years. Unfortunately, these Halloween gatherings in Oak Park the past two years have led to violence. Last year, shots were fired and a nearby resident found a bullet hole inside their apartment. This year, a group of people beat a man, sending him to the hospital.

Some Oak Park residents speak generally about the need for police or the Oak Park village board to “do more” to prevent this violence, without specifying what they should do. Others push for a stronger police presence to deter young people from assembling, or even for police to break up these gatherings before they start. Still others argue that our focus should be giving young people more fun and safe spaces to congregate and socialize which would encourage them to get together there and not in huge public crowds.

In many ways, this conversation is a microcosm of our national debate about policing. Some people look at violence and believe we must always and only respond by hiring more police officers, providing the police more resources, policing people more stringently, and incarcerating more people for smaller and smaller infractions. Others say that if we direct some funding away from policing and toward services that support people to have healthy, full lives – medical care, education, housing – or services to respond to people in crisis, we will reduce violence as an end result.

In this national debate, the data is complicated. Increasing the size of a police force or the rates of incarceration has not been shown to decrease crime levels. Visible police presence in a community can result in some decreases in crime during the time of visibility. But we have never really tried diverting a significant amount of police funding to social services. Even when this idea was popularized after the 2020 racial justice uprising, some cities created mental health response services and increased other social services without decreasing funding for police.

In relation to our local situation, I believe in a few principles. First, people – including teenagers – including Black teenagers – should have the freedom to gather and socialize in public spaces. Second, everyone should be safe and free from violence. Third, people’s rights to express themselves and to safety are not mutually exclusive but can be difficult to hold simultaneously.

So how do we balance and integrate these principles to find a solution? My answer is probably unsatisfying for many people. We allow young people to gather in public spaces. We continue to provide supervision when we know that young people plan to assemble in large numbers, whether those young people are Black, white, or whatever race. This supervision can continue to come from police but could also come from others in our community. We allow young people to do what they want within the bounds of the law, just as we allow for all people in public spaces. And if someone commits a crime, the police address it. And at the same time, we work as a community to create more safe and enjoyable spaces for teenagers to come together.

Some might say this approach ignores the potential for violence, as demonstrated by what happened the past two years. I respond that I am not ignoring it. Adults of all races and identities should have certain rights and responsibilities. Teens of all races and identities should, too. And we can’t give them up based on our fears about what might happen. Accepting that risk is part of living in this allegedly open, real-world society while continually trying to shape it toward the ideal for all of us.

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