Fairview Heights police cracking down on large groups of ‘unruly’ juveniles, chief says
The Fairview Heights Police Department is taking a “zero tolerance” approach to the unruly behavior of juveniles in public places, its chief said.
That includes steps officers were forced to take Saturday when about 500 juveniles assembled at Moody Park to play loud music with vulgar lyrics, drive recklessly, use illegal substances and start fights, police said.
Police disbanded the crowd and closed the park for the remainder of the day so they couldn’t come back.
Chief Steve Johnson said Saturday wasn’t the first time that unruly juveniles have disrupted others at the park, or the first time police have been forced to shut it down. Additional measures to head them off, Johnson said, will include towing vehicles, taking juveniles into custody and holding parents legally culpable for their children’s behavior.
Surveillance cameras are located in many places in the park and license plate readers are being installed, he said.
“You want to take your family out to the park and enjoy the day,” Johnson said. “That’s why we’re taking a hard stance. We’ll close the park down if we have to.”
According to the department’s official Facebook page, officers arrived at Moody Park to find about 500 people assembled “and saw at least two juveniles getting ready to fight. They were prevented and Officers called for additional outside law enforcement to assist.”
Johnson said they had received multiple complaints, including one “from a credible source,” that one of the juveniles intended to shoot another.
The sergeant in charge made the decision to close the park and force everyone to leave.
“As ‘preservation of life’ is our highest priority this was the correct decision,” the Facebook post said. “One person approached an Officer and said he ‘did not normally agree with the police but fully agreed the juveniles were out of control and needed to be removed.’”
At least 150 juveniles waited outside the park because they didn’t have transportation, Johnson said. While some arrived in their own vehicles, others were dropped off by family or even Uber.
Johnson said the incident remains under investigation. He would not comment on how many of the juveniles had been identified, what, if any, charges will be filed against them or their parents, or why the crowd assembled in the first place.
Speaking generally, Johnson said these types of unruly gatherings are arranged via social media and they are a common issue across the metro-east.
“I can tell you that Fairview Heights is not the only community dealing with this,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “This is an issue in many other jurisdictions in our area.”
Fairview Heights police have also dealt with crowds of juveniles at the SkyZone trampoline park, where fights have broken out both inside the building and in the parking lot.
Most recently, Johnson said, officers disbanded a large crowd at Moody Park on March 4. At least two of those removed from the park were involved in the alleged brawl and shooting at St. Clair Bowl in O’Fallon later that same day. Four people have been charged in connection with that shooting, including residents of St. Louis, Columbia, Missouri, O’Fallon and East St. Louis.
Others were involved in a shooting on Interstate 64 that is being investigated by Illinois State Police, Johnson said.
Neither of those shootings were fatal.
