It’s difficult to bike around Chicago safely. Check our guide on page 18.
DePaulia
The
DePaul athletics held the inaugural ‘The Billys’ awards Friday night. Find out the winners on page 28.
Volume #106 | Issue #26 | May 23, 2022 | depauliaonline.com
‘WHY WILL IT WORK THIS TIME’ Chicagoans question Lightfoot’s plans to curb crime By Sam Moilanen Staff Writer
When entering Millennium Park Thursday evening, one would expect to see tourists and Chicago natives alike laughing, snapping photographs next to “The Bean,” and enjoying the summer evening. Instead, visitors were greeted by security officers, subjected to bag checks, handheld wand screening and surrounded by police officers and private security routinely surveying the park. The downtown park, once known as a safe space for people of all ages to venture to enjoy the summer evening, is now rife with security in light of a recent shooting. In response to the fatal shooting May 14, resulting in the death of 16-year-old Seandell Holliday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot implemented a 6 p.m. curfew for all unaccompanied minors in Millennium Park, Thursday through Saturday. On Tuesday, Lightfoot issued an executive order to change the city’s curfew for teens from 11 p.m. to 10 p.m., which was passed by City Council’s Public Safety Committee during a meeting Friday. The new policy also extended the curfew to include 17-year-olds indefinitely, where in the previous ordinance, it only applied to minors ages 12 to 16. “We, as a City, cannot allow any of our public spaces to become platforms for danger,” Lightfoot said in a statement addressing the shooting and new curfew. “This new policy will be strictly enforced and violations will be dealt with swiftly.” Lightfoot’s strategies to reduce violence with curfews received immediate backlash from the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois (ACLU). “There is literally no evidence that curfews reduce crime,” said Edwin Yohnka to The DePaulia, the director for communications and public policy at the ACLU of Illinois. “I don’t understand the approach and it feels like just going in the wrong direction.” Although it is not the first time increased security measures have been used in Chicago’s downtown parks, it is typically for large events and not everyday life. “Adding security measures to Millennium Park is a way to make tourists feel safe and not to protect the people who live here,” Chicago resident Rayy Vana said.
PATRICK SLOAN-TURNER | THE DEPAULIA
A Chicago Police Officer walks by the Bean in Millennium Park Thursday afternoon as visitors take photos near the attraction. Before the start of the pandemic, Lightfoot announced an updated security plan for Millennium Park, including bag checks and metal detectors upon entering the park, but this was only enforced during concerts and major events. “All these [solutions] have been done years ago and none of them worked,” Yohnka said. “Why will they work this time?” During the press conference on public safety Friday afternoon, Lightfoot said the primary cause of the recent downtown shootings is young people’s access to guns. “That is literally what is killing us,” Lightfoot said in the statement. “Too many illegal guns readily accessible, now, to children.” As of May 2, downtown shootings were already up 22 percent compared to the same period a year ago, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Now, the downtown area is once again experiencing an increase in gun violence causing concern for residents and city officials about the safety of Chicago’s downtown. On Wednesday, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a bill banning “ghost guns” throughout the state. The bill, which outlaws guns without serial numbers, was
See CURFEW, page 9
PATRICK SLOAN-TURNER | THE DEPAULIA
Security in Millennium Park scans visitors with a metal detector at the newly implemented security checkpoint near the park’s west entrance. A curfew was initiated last week.
DePaul law graduate enters mayor’s race with community focus By Patrick Sloan-Turner Staff Writer
Kam Buckner is used to having his hands full. The Democrat and Illinois state representative serves in the state’s general assembly, chairs the Legislative Black Caucus and fathered a son last year. Now, he has another task to juggle. On May 12, Buckner declared
his candidacy for next year’s Chicago mayoral election. Managing so many responsibilities might be overwhelming to some, but the DePaul Law alumnus says the key is hard work. “Nobody’s going to outwork me,” the 37-year-old told The DePaulia over his son’s cries as
he changed the 6-month-old’s diaper. Before assuming his current position as a state representative for the 26th district in 2019, the South Side native received his law degree from DePaul in 2012. By then, Buckner already had an impressive resume, serving as an aide to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin on Capitol Hill after graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he
played football. “When he graduated, he could’ve gone on and used his connections to get a corporate job and made a lot of money,” said Major General Charles Tucker, the former leader of DePaul College of Law’s International Human Rights Law Institute. “But here’s a guy who’s always been about… dealing with people’s issues [because] he cares about them.”
Buckner, whose mother worked as a Chicago Public Schools teacher and father as a deputy sergeant at the Cook County Sheriff ’s Department, says the tenets of a public servant have been in him for as far back as he can remember. Friday marked the 10-year anniversary of Buckner’s graduation from DePaul’s College of Law, which
See BUCKNER, page 7