8865: Unruly Flash Mobs.

From The Chicago Tribune…

Mag Mile mobs

Chicago police need to target violent flash mobs

The flash mob phenomenon has taken an alarmingly dark turn on Chicago’s Near North Side.

Teenage posses, some apparently assembled via social media networks, are visiting chaos on retail and tourist hot spots in and around the Gold Coast, Streeterville and Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile.

Warm summer nights tend to bring out troublemakers, and Saturday night was a good example. Police believe the same group of 15 to 20 young men was responsible for five separate attacks. One man was sitting on a bench in Streeterville. One was parking his motor scooter near Northwestern University’s downtown campus. Three others were on the lakefront bike path. All were beaten and four were robbed.

But the problem didn’t come out of nowhere. Student journalists at Loyola University’s Water Tower campus have been reporting since February about a rash of crimes committed by “flash mob offenders.” Instead of bursting into song and dance, groups of juveniles activated by text messages rushed into stores, filled their arms with merchandise and fled. The idea apparently was that security guards couldn’t possibly catch them all.

Loyola’s campus security warned students that the gangs were believed to be arriving via the CTA Red Line’s Chicago Avenue station.

Police stepped up their presence in the area and merchants doubled down on security. But things have clearly escalated. In April, the McDonalds at Chicago Avenue and State Street was swarmed by 70 youths who created a disturbance serious enough to summon 10 police units. The restaurant was closed for hours afterward.

Saturday night’s attacks were senseless and over the top. How many young men does it take to relieve a single unsuspecting citizen of his iPod? The victims all were punched and beaten repeatedly; one was hit in the face with a baseball. The take: a handful of electronic toys, a bicycle, a wallet.

Police in Philadelphia are dealing with a rash of similar crimes, also instigated through social networking.

It feels like a variation on “wilding,” in which roving gangs assault strangers, seemingly for sport. In 1989, five young men were charged with raping a jogger in New York’s Central Park. Police said the attack was a case of wilding — though in the end the convictions were vacated.

The violence hasn’t reached that level in Chicago. It needs to be stopped before it does. Step one: Chicago police need to speak forthrightly about the scope of the problem and the steps being taken to combat it.

Many residents are worried that police, merchants and city promoters want to keep things quiet so shoppers and tourists won’t be frightened away. So on a hot, humid Memorial Day, when police closed North Avenue Beach “for safety reasons,” some were suspicious of the assertion that the park had become too crowded for ambulances to come and go if needed. Beachgoers reported encounters in which riders were shoved off their bikes, for example. That had nothing to do with it, police said.

Maybe not. But if things were as dicey as some beachgoers say they were, then it isn’t particularly encouraging for the cops to say everything was hunky-dory except for the heat. It’s time for the cops to publicly declare war on the flash mobs. The gangs need to hear it. So do their potential victims.