When teens with guns go on a carjacking spree

Chicago Police Supt. David Brown set the proper tone in a Thursday evening news conference announcing changes designed to curb a spike in carjackings — most of them by teenage offenders.

Brown said the new police approach will include cops working with community leaders and youth advocates to “try and reach our young people and help them make better decisions.”

But given that cars are being taken at gunpoint — and sometimes with fatal consequences — Brown’s new tack also includes a tough side, as it must. The police have beefed-up their Vehicular Hijacking Task Force, the superintendent said, and will work with prosecutors and courts “to make sure there are serious and significant consequences for the offender.”

Brown is walking a politically difficult line, as well he knows. Many of the offenders are alarmingly young, not adult criminals, yet the first responsibility of the police is to keep the rest of us safe.

‘We have 12-year-olds committing these acts’

The new year is less than a month old, but already there have been 144 carjackings in Chicago, with 104 suspects arrested, Brown said. And one additional statistic really gives us pause: While investigating this year’s carjackings, officers have recovered an astounding 611 guns, and nine officers have been fired upon.

Carjackings alone more than doubled between 2019 and 2020. A spotlight was shone on the problem early last December when retired Chicago firefighter Dwain Williams was fatally shot during an attempted carjacking after he bought popcorn in the Morgan Park neighborhood. Four people have been charged in his death.

Chicago’s surge in carjackings is part of a nationwide trend. Minneapolis leads the country with a 537% increase in carjackings since 2019. New Orleans saw a 126% jump during the same time, and there have been serious upticks in Louisville, Milwaukee, Nashville and other cities.

Suburban Chicago has not been immune from the problem, either, with carjackings this year in Aurora — a woman was shot and left critically injured last week — and Naperville. An attempted carjacking last weekend in Elmhurst was foiled only when the vehicle’s owners fought off two men and took away what turned out to be a replica gun.

Ride-share drivers have been targeted, as well. A driver was robbed of his car by a passenger last Sunday in Wicker Park, one of six such carjackings around the city since late December.

Brown said most of the Chicago offenders are between 15 and 20 years old. One of this year’s suspects was just 12 years old. Police said the armed youth hopped behind the wheel of a woman’s car and threatened to shoot her if she did not move from in front of the vehicle.

At Thursday’s news conference, Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan said the pandemic, last year’s civil unrest and the courts and schools not being fully functional have likely played a role in the surge of carjackings.

“We have 12-year-olds committing these acts now,” he said, “and we have to do something together as a city to stop these actions.”

A mix of compassion and cracking down

The stolen cars mainly are being used for joyrides or to commit other crimes, rather than being sold to chop shops that sell auto parts on the black market, which was the case in years past.

Deenihan said the police last February formed a citywide carjacking task force composed of police and prosecutors. This year, he said, the police are putting carjacking investigative teams in each of the city’s five detective areas. Officers will be working with federal prosecutors, he said, to “build best possible cases” for prosecution.

Deenihan also said the police will work with youth intervention officers in neighborhoods with the most carjackings. “We need to work directly with the young people to provide opportunities and dissuade them from contributing to the problem,” he said.

But those who don’t take the olive branch might face stiff penalties. Brown said many of those arrested are repeat offenders who have carjacked before or been arrested for other crimes.

“We really have to hold these people accountable and be more strategic about the bonds that are set, and be more strategic about the consequences,” he said.

Good police work is always about doing two things at once — addressing root causes of crime while cracking down as necessary.

Here’s hoping Brown’s strategy, mixing compassion with tough law enforcement, wins the day and makes Chicago safer.

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