Monday, July 14, 2014

Details Emerge About The Montrose Beach Melee

Now that the dust has settled, there's more information coming to light about the circumstances leading to the mob action at Montrose Beach Sunday evening.

There was a large music festival, Tamborazo Beach Party, that took place Sunday afternoon.  A reader says, "Mexican tambirazo party got out of control. Too much beer and no security. The party was announced on social media. A lot of attendees. It was all good times until the alcohol got the best of some people and the fighting started."

We have seen several videos of the event from someone's Facebook page.
  • One shows the large crowd starting to throw bricks, rocks and bottles at each other, with one man bleeding after being hit in the face by one.  


  • The other one shows a police SUV slowly driving down the bike path with its blue lights on, being pelted with projectiles all along its route.  In the screen grab above, the man in black has just thrown a full bottle of some liquid at it (that's the white cloud above his head), which hit the SUV full on, as did many other projectiles as it made its way through the crowd.
It's a good thing we're not cops because we don't think we'd have been able to exercise the same self-control these officers did, to continue driving while multiple people threw bottles at us.

According to the Crime In Wrigleyville blog, the first 911 call came in 6:50pm.  At 7pm, another call came in reporting a fight between 50 people.  Then a call at 7:38pm that there was a man with a gun near the bait shop. That triggered (pardon the pun) the massive police response shortly before 8pm that so many readers saw. Read CiW's report of the scanner activity as things escalated.  According to the story, there were nine arrests, four police officers injured, and at least one police vehicle damaged.

We wonder if the promoter of the event had the insurance required for all events taking place in the park, and why (if?) there was no security present, as is also required for park events?

We'd love to know the Park District's plans for ensuring that similar events don't spiral out of control in the future.

It all ended with the park being closed early, and people being evacuated.  What a shame for the law-abiding majority of people who went to the park on a lovely July weekend, and ended up getting thrown out because a crowd of drunken louts started acting like idiots.


Update:  According to the Tribune, "The crowd had gathered Sunday evening for a concert but the bands didn't have permits to perform in the park, police said." Later in the story, it mentions four men in the crowd are charged with felonies for various attacks on police officers, and six other men are charged with misdemeanors.

Update:  There's another event planned this weekend by the same promoter, with no mention of what went on this weekend.  It's to take place at a bar directly across the street from McKinley Park.  Given how the Montrose Harbor music event went, it'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

8 comments:

  1. What could go wrong? A hot day. Alcohol. Thousands of young men some with guns and gang ties. Sounds like a par tay to me!

    In the future perhaps the police need to keep Littleton and Captain Boytoy on call for such emergencies. Littleton, being an expert on all things, would surely be able to simultaneously entertain and disperse the crowd with his twerking to the sounds of Ricky Martin's "Living La Vida Loca". Captain "B" could introduce himself as the newest whitest member of a newly formed version of "Menudo". His nickname will be "El Blanco".

    I can see it now Captain Boytoy speaks to the crowd standing on a cart being pulled by a white horse. "Attention, attention, please let me have your attention. Aren't I pretty? Don't despair. Karen Lewis is going to run for mayor and reopen all the schools! YIPPPEEE." Shouts of "pendejo" rip from the crowd as firecrackers are set off and the horse panics and gallops away.

    The horse runs into the lake soaking Captain Boytoy and bringing joy and laughter to the crowd. This along with a huge police presence, some tear gas and a lack of alcohol compel the crowd to disperse and head over to Sonic for Littleton's nightly twerking protest in the curb cuts.

    This is turning out to be a sadly interesting summer city wide. Gang killing of an innocent on Devon in Rogers Park. Lakeview at night is up for grabs. Beating death in Lincoln Park. Shooting at Montrose Harbor and a mini riot. What's next?

    Am I going to be walking along the lakefront one of these evenings and see Godzilla approaching downtown from the east? Let's see Rahm spin that. I can just see the commentary now from our Uptown Uprising intellectual inferiors and moral betters. "Godzilla, is just angry that the yuppies are trying to move the gay pride parade downtown. I'm prettier than those receding hairline yuppies/guppies They should move ot the burbs.. WHAT? Who said my eyes are too close? AHHHH."

    So endeth the rant. Go in peace and enjoy a hopefully cool and peaceful week.

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  2. We wonder if the promoter of the event had the insurance required for all events taking place in the park, and why (if?) there was no security present, as is also required for park events?
    ^^
    Good questions. If the answer is no, then somebody at Park District dropped the ball. And/or the organizers just took over the beach without notice to the PD. They should be fined and prevented from using PD land again.

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    1. As quoted in the article:

      "..."The crowd had gathered Sunday evening for a concert but the bands didn't have permits to perform in the park, police said..."

      If they didn't bother with the permits, I bet they didn't bother with the insurance riders...

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  3. It was a one time incident. Everyone was a gang member, really? They had guns at Gay Pride, know one talked about the white gay crowd.

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    1. "Know (sic) one talked about the white gay crowd." Sure they did; they are referred to as the victims, since.. well you know... they got beat up, chased off and robbed.

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    2. You are one funny hombre Irish Pirate!

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    3. I'm not nearly as funny as the unintentional hilarity that rears it's not nearly as pretty as it thinks it is head over at the Uptown Uprising Facebook page.

      Yesterday was solidarity with the Palestinians day. Some goof put some pro Palestinian graffiti on the old AON building on Broadway and Captain Boytoy, Ryne, and former Uptown resident Philip Devon decided to defend it. I'm guessing the families of the dead kids on the Gaza beach will be moved by this magnificent gesture. Since Philly couldn't handle Sheridan Park and ran off to a condo in Lakeview I'm tempted to post some uplifting graffiti on his building. However, since his neighbors already have the joint horror of living in a 4 +1 AND have Philly as a neighbor I decided not too. Piling on like that would be considered a crime against humanity at the Hague.

      Worse yet Ryne is sporting a new photo of himself, and his too close eyes, wearing a kaffiya as a scarf. I haven't looked today, but I'm hoping unofficial JPUSA spokesperson Jon Trott didn't comment under his "Johannes De Silencio--Knight of Faith" avatar/ID. A few months back Ryne posted a new photo and Trott suggested he looked like a young Bogart. Wrap your mind around that. There are more homoerotic undertones there than a joint Taliban/Greco Roman/GOP/Evangelical convention.

      It's amazing over there. Even Denice Davis's slackey, Cortez, criticized the mini rioters for throwing stuff at the cops and Captain Boytoy and the 4 +1 Anarchist Avenger downplayed the seriousness of the offenses. What's a bottle to the back of the head to some thug/cop when there are larger issues involved. If only Rahm hadn't closed the schools this mini riot wouldn't have occurred.

      Where's my black anarchist flag? Where's my kaffiya? Where's my brain?

      Run Karen Run!!

      Don't get me started on Littleton. His need to be the center of attention has now led him to "create" an Uptown Art Fair piggybacking on a neighborhood yard sale. Hopefully it will be more successful than the neighborhood wide community group he was touting a few weeks back.

      Littleton Uptown Group Joined Against Gentrification. LUG-JAG

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  4. I think this was an illegal concert with no security that got out of hand. I don't agree with Alderman Cappleman's response and solution in Tuedsay's Red Eye that parking spaces near Montrose Beach should be gotten rid of! We need those parking spaces for soccer games, birthday parties, barbecues, kite flying, sledding and the like.

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