Downtown shootings put aldermen in panic mode

Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) isn’t having it.

Not on his watch.

Not in his ward.

After Raven Lemons, 25, was fatally shot while standing near the Ohio Street Beach in the Streeterville neighborhood last weekend, Reilly is demanding more police patrols, surveillance cameras, better lighting and the shutdown of an underpass at Ohio and Lake Shore Drive.

Lemons, a bartender and 2010 graduate of Marshall Metropolitan High School, was celebrating her birthday in the swanky area when someone started shooting, according to Chicago Sun-Times’ Homicide Watch. Bullets also struck windows of a nearby condo building and furniture store.

Lemons’ death was dutifully recorded. But the outrage isn’t about the loss of another young person in the city as much as it is about where this shooting took place.

The gun violence is now beginning to show up in areas where white folks live.

Of course there’s panic.

People who are paying a ton of money to live across the street from Millennium Park and along the Riverwalk aren’t going to stand for being awakened by the sound of police sirens and gunfire.

And while shootings in Lawndale or Englewood are often labeled as gang- and crime-related, they don’t know what to make of people shooting it out at 2 a.m. in the heart of downtown.

Reilly has vowed to use his aldermanic menu funding to install more cameras and to pay for enhanced lighting installed near pedestrian underpasses along the Lakefront Trail.

He is also asking Mayor Rahm Emanuel for a “significant increase in police visibility and beat patrols on the block where Lemons was killed, and the Lakefront Trail, Riverwalk and greater Streeterville between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., especially on weekends.”

That’s what he’s supposed to do.

More than 1,500 people have been shot so far this year, about 290 fatally. The majority of the victims were killed in predominantly African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods.

Those of us who live in neighborhoods under siege by young people armed with lethal weapons don’t have the privilege of being out on the streets at 2 a.m. on a hot summer night.

And there’s no strolling over to the lakefront for a cool breeze in the middle of the night.

We scurry.

At 11 p.m., the gates to the parking lots for the 63rd Street beach are locked down and a police patrol is posted to make sure it stays that way.

Gone are the days when we could sit on the lakefront until the wee hours listening to drummers.

But there have been different rules for the parks where tourists are likely to visit. For instance, the area where Lemons was shot “remains open at all times.”

That didn’t just become a problem.

In 2016, Pamela Johnson was hit and killed by a pickup truck near 700 N. Lake Shore Drive when a group chased her and her boyfriend onto Lake Shore Drive. Semaj Waters was charged with felony murder, mob action and attempted armed robbery in connection with Johnson’s death.

The park area where the attempted robbery took place was supposed to have been closed. But the public still had access because the tunnel leading to the lakefront was open.

Although Waters is awaiting trial, the issue of access to the lakefront after hours was not addressed.

There is a silver lining in all of this.

Now that these gun crimes are popping up in downtown Chicago, aldermen in other parts of the city will see what their colleagues on the South and West Sides have been dealing with for a long time.

The recognition that gun violence can happen anywhere in this city puts us a lot closer to solving this problem.