Make beach neighborhoods safer without slapping on a padlock

Ald. Brendan Reilly wants to close overnight a pedestrian underpass beneath Lake Shore Drive, which is exactly what his predecessor wanted to do back in 1985.

It was a bad idea 32 years ago, and it’s a bad idea today.

Closing any underpass to Chicago’s beaches, even if only from midnight to 6 a.m. during summer months, is an overreaction to late-night crime in a neighborhood. A stronger police presence and improved security camera surveillance, which Reilly also is calling for, would be more proportionate and effective solutions.

Reilly wants to close the Ohio Street underpass, which is near where a young woman, Raven Lemons, was shot and killed in the wee hours of Sunday morning. It was the first downtown homicide of the year, as Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times reported, but violent crime has been on the rise in the general area, with shootings along the Riverwalk and across the street from Millennium Park.

But closing any underpass to the beaches creates both practical and symbolic problems. Anybody stuck on the beach side of the underpass once the gate is closed would be tempted to dart across Lake Shore Drive. That happens often enough as it is, and the city could be legally liable.

And Chicago’s lakefront, with its beaches and many tourist attractions, is the city’s pride and joy. It welcomes everybody. To slap a padlock on the lakefront feels like a city running scared.

Every homicide is horrific, but they are rare in the Gold Coast neighborhoods of Reilly’s 42nd Ward. Far more common for many years has been the nightly disorder, especially on summer weekends, when the beaches are officially closed at 11 p.m and beachgoers — sometimes loud, drunk and intimidating — pour back through the underpasses.

“What happens is they forget that they are in somebody else’s neighborhood,” former Ald. Burt Natarus lamented in 1985. “They come down for a fling and it ends up a rampage.”

We can’t agree with Reilly’s call to close the Ohio Street underpass, or any other underpass, but we share his concern that Chicago’s beaches — and the tourist-filled neighborhoods that border them — must be kept safe.

That begins with better lighting and surveillance cameras, improved police work, stepped-up private security by local businesses, and a zero tolerance for petty crimes of disorder.

It is not enough that people are safe. They must feel safe.

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