Even as Mayor Brandon Johnson continued Tuesday to resist calls to ban teens from downtown after 8 p.m. following several violent incidents, the prohibition on teens in Millennium and Maggie Daley parks after 6 p.m. on weekends is set to enter its fourth summer.
Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd Ward), who has regularly demanded that Johnson ban teens from downtown after 8 p.m. in recent years, renewed those calls after two high-profile shootings in Streeterville, a neighborhood popular with tourists and wealthy Chicagoans, in the past three weeks. The city’s curfew starts at 10 p.m. seven days a week and applies to everyone 17 years old and younger.
But banning teens from downtown after 8 p.m. would only shift the problem to other communities, rather than addressing the root cause of the problem, Johnson said Tuesday at a City Hall news conference…