Update 6:00 p.m.: Evanston police say shots were fired near Evanston Township High School about 4 p.m. today and that officers in the area recovered a gun from a suspect seen fleeing the scene.
Police also took several other persons into custody as part of their investigation into the shots-fired incident, which happened near where the department’s new armored surveillance vehicle was parked and just across the street from the high school.
Top: An officer unrolls crime-scene tape on the southeast corner of Church and Dodge. Above: Officers stand near the department’s armored surveillance vehicle.
Police say no was injured in the incident and that the high school is back to normal operations.
Police declined to release identities of the persons in custody, pending the filing of charges in the incident.
Evanston, we’ve got a problem
A driver drops off his son this morning at ETHS and then gets robbed and slashed in the middle of the road on Church and Darrow.
Then this afternoon shots are fired at Church and Dodge just after ETHS school lets out.
Ah, I would say we have a serious problem at the high school and this needs to be addressed immediately by the Mayor Tisdahl and Fifth Ward Alderman Delores Holmes. It wouldn't surprise me if we have a major gang problem here. And who are these new folks moving into the area?
It's just a matter of time that some innocent northside ETHS kid is shot.
There are no gulity or
There are no gulity or innocent kids northside or any dam side,that mindset got us here Mr I got no name!!
There are young people involved at all levels some at 0 some at ten,and a westside child thats involved at 0 is just as valuble as THAT NORTHSIDE kid you speak of, the warping of a community starts with class separation!! We have all helped allenate a whole genration of kids and young people,some who have come to belive and feel as if there worthless and dieing or going to jail is all they have!!
Who painted this picture they see? We did !! My kid Bleeds and she was born on the west side sir! and if shot her family wont feel any less pain then a north side family!!
Let put equal value in there souls if not there pockets please!!
No excuse for violence
I agree Lonnie.
My point is that unfortunately the second a white kid is shot near the high school the entire Evanston community will go up in arms. I feel most Evanstonians have had their head in the sand about growing violence for way too long.
But there is no excuse for violence. Many of these kids joining gangs come from disfunctional single parent families. Who's fault is that? It also doesn't help when certain kids hear over and over that they are victims. I would hope you can give kids in your neighborhood positive messages that there are opportunities for them they just have to go for it. Personal responsibility is color blind.
People every year risk their lives to sneak into America for a better life. We must be doing something right. If you wanna see victims then spend an hour in the cancer ward of any children's hospital.
Poor choice of adjective
Al, dude, poor choice of adjective with "northside." Stop, think, and then type.
Duly noted, dude
Duly noted, dude.
According to Lonnie Wilson my poor choice of adjective was innocent.
Consider honestly, though, the areas where gangs predominant and the number of shootings, stabbings and gunfire deaths occur. What adjectives should be used to describe this phenomenon?
Shootings
It is so sadwe have gotten here, a great town great people!!
But somthings wrong at a root level! Respect for our in town institutions is gone!
The young dont respect our schools, community centers,police or elected officails!!
WHY?
Could this just HAPPEN ?
Or would a steady eriosion of respect be required?
See we did this by making so many lose the IDEA the has a chance.and we better clean it up!
And it will take more then a town hallnmeeting,or a bunch of black churches marching singing WE SHALL OVERCOME its time EVANSTON to put TANGABLE REAL ACTION to the forefront or lose in a bigger non changeble way!!
We need to make all and I mean all a part of Evanstons future,not just those on the lake or nere cental st all
parts of our town have got the shaft some are tossing that spear back!! Is this town ready to roll up its sleaves and work or are we happy with drive by deversity and South African style separation of people and money!!
Cause these shooters are not west side implants THERE EVANSTON Generation gone wild!!
May I suggest two places to start?
Lackluster schools that don't educate students. That's a good place to start.
District 65 fails to provide a rigorous education. That means that hundreds of students enter ETHS without the tools to succeed. ETHS Board members and administrators are talking publicly about this. Not surprisingly, some of those students see violence and crime as the way to be somebody, to get something and to succeed at something when school is not a place that they succeed.
We need to demand that D65 educate students at a high level so that each student can formulate an intelligent sentence, make a coherent argument and read above grade level when they leave D65 at 8th grade. When a student enters high school without those skills, a very negative result (dropping out, graduating with no chance for college or advanced job training, involvement in crime, violent lifestyle, etc.) for that student is almost guaranteed.
D65 needs to stop setting the school year for the absolute minimum amount of time for class work. It needs to stop wasting time on meaningless assemblies, multiple goofy outside performances in the same month, mindless makework, empty slogans and hollow feel good programs. We need to demand that D65 stop holding up ISAT scores as a measure of success. For those who aren't familiar with ISATs, they are a weak set of tests that are pegged much below grade level. Any child educated in D65 for at least three years should be able to score at least 70 percent on these tests.
I have had a child in D65 for several years. I have practically had to beg for a decent teacher to teach my child when my child's teacher was on leave when that leave was a medical leave, obvious for all to see months before that leave began. Instead of a teacher ready to teach the entire class, we had a parade of unqualified subs and bushels of excuses from D65. I have had to plead with teachers for more rigorous coursework when I felt that my child had mastered the content being covered in class. Usually, I just provided challenging work at home outside of school hours. I have had to ask again and again for teachers to return my child's work so that my child can learn from the teacher's grading, rather than just seeing a score posted online.
And boy, do they pound the homework and test scores into the online grading system — the appearance of education, rather than education itself. No time for learning by being comfortable with making mistakes on new content. Almost no feedback from homework or tests. Just test, test, test and pound those scores into the online system. Such a wrong-headed approach to educating children or adults.
But schools don't stand alone in shouldering the blame for violence and crime in this city. Standing along side are families that are not involved in students' education or lives. When adults fail to set limits and set expectations for the children in the home, those children will likely not succeed later in life.
Not all children in D65 wind up at ETHS shooting at classmates or trying to rob classmates' parents. So what's the difference? Adults in the students' lives actively involved in the students' education and daily lives.
I have seen students alone without supervision on playgrounds more than an hour before classes start. I have seen students show up at school without proper coats and boots. I have volunteered in my child's classroom where students did not have their homework done on an every day basis. I have heard parents threaten violence (exact words: beat you silly) to discipline for a minor infraction. I attend school functions in the evening and can barely hear the performance or speaker because the parents are talking loudly from before the performance begins and through the entire performance, showing no respect to the children on stage and the effort that they have made to prepare for the night's performance.
With the resources available in Evanston, none of these things should happen. There are free and reduced cost child care options. There are clothing donation programs where a student can get the needed winter gear and clothes. There are free after school programs where homework help is provided. There are free parenting classes so parents can learn approaches to discipline that don't include beatings or threats of beatings. Common courtesy dictates that when you attend a performance, you watch and listen to the performance, no mattter the age of the performers.
Yes, D65 is lackluster. But with parental involvement and parental effort, your child can receive a good education and can succeed in high school and can go on to college or meaningful job training that can lead to a job.
When the schools and families fail to prepare children for a productive future, those children will almost certainly NOT have a productive future. None of this will come as a surprise to anyone but if you want to address violence and crime in this city, start there.
My man no name theres is
My man no name theres is nothing I mean nothing I can do but agree,the Families Non involvment or subpar involvment and schools who make memorizing stand as education!! Need to take a big part of this blame! But a section of blame can go to the CITY OF EVANSTON for being a cartoon of deversity and not one of substance and binding diversity!! a town where as long as its certain wards shined it shined!! Well your getting world wide press now ole shinning city on the lake,for all the wrong reasons!! Kinda makes you wish you had paid attention dont it? I know I know you did with the POLICE, wrong answer!!
What do you mean by cartoon of diversity?
What do you mean by cartoon of diversity? Someone explain the complaint that I'm hearing. PLEASE!
It’s the parents!
It's the parents! No guidance!
Agreed!
But who is going to fix these adult children who had no parental guidance? The parents of these current juvenile delinquence that are running the streets don't care either. There are going to be adult children soon with no parental guidance.
Taking over
The gangs run Evanston. We got murders that these cops can't even solve because when it comes to the shooting they stall and get scared they wait a good 10 minutes to show. Shouldn't they already be in these areas where recent shootings have happened?
Uh
So you state response times on what kind of facts? There is probably a great deal of recorded evidence on response times to show you are talking out your bottom end. You might want to refrain from spouting noise until you know what you are talking about.
Response time was not an
Response time was not an issue at all in this most recent shooting. I was at BooCoo at the time and from the time people came running in for protection until the police arrived was 30 seconds, max.
But I do think that there is a part of Evanston that appears to be under gang control right now. I used to ride my bike through various streets in the Church/Dodge area– have done so fo many years, but I have stopped because in the last year or two I have heard too many racial taunts and threats. Until about two years ago I had experienced none of this, zero. Clearly the culture has changed.
Is this your experience?
How do you know they stall and get scared and wait a good 10 minutes?
Right on, Lonnie
"Some innocent northside kid"?!?! No kid is more or less precious and valuable than another, no matter what neighborhood they happened to be born into. Kids and adults from the whole city play into our current issues. The city and its progressives (of which I am one) love to tout its diversity and I think they truly do value that diversity philosophilcally. But in reality, the city is really only diverse on paper. Neighborhoods are very segregated and separate and it is too rare that socio-economic groups truly live and work and interact together in meaningful ways. And people all too often lose sight of their philosophies when it comes to their own kids. There's no easy solution (though I believe universal access to Head Start programs would go a long way). But fingerpointing about parenting and talking about innocent northsiders just makes the existing divisions worse.
Diversity?
Does it mean I don't support diversity because I don't want to live in the war zone?
Call Mayor’s Office
Bombard the mayor's office with calls and emails until something happens. Make them focus on the violence instead of their parking and bike lanes. Guess that survellence vehicle didn't do any good.
Surveillance decoy
I Would have to agree with the poster ,what was the serveillance van actually watching.Here it was right in the midst of all the gun fire and only one subject is in custody. Why isn't there video on the other shooters?
Once again it seems EPD has dropped the ball,and allowed more of these little thugs back on the street to put more of our children at risk. Why isn't the house being searched? Why aren't the residents of the house where this occurred being questioned? Why wasn't GSR (Gunshot Residue ) test performed on all the suspects?
I agree flood the Mayor's office with phone calls stating there's something much more important than a bike lanes and B&B's — our children's lives!
Once again it seems EPD has
Once again it seems EPD has dropped the ball,and allowed more of these little thugs back on the street to put more of our children at risk. Why isn't the house being searched? Why aren't the residents of the house where this occurred being questioned? Why wasn't GSR (Gunshot Residue ) test performed on all the suspects?
Maybe because all those actions would be unconstitutional without specific evidence, which apparently the police did not have?
Get a clue.
Do you know where your kids are?
The most important education one receives is in their home! Im sure that 95% of the parents of these hoodlum gangbangers dont even know what their kids are doing or where they are….ever. And nobody ever mentions the skin color of these people involved in gang shootings etc. Stop blaming the city. Evanston is a wonderful city minus the areas where gangbanging occurs. Is the city supposed to raise your children for you? Are they supposed to tell them to not involve themselves with gangs or shady people? Take responsibility for your own children. Hold yourselves accountable. Stop blaming everyone but yourslves. Until that happens, nothing thw city does will end the violence. I somehow made a conscious decision to not gang bang. I somehow manage to wake up 5 days a week and work for a living. I contribute positively to society. Teach your kids the same values.
14 year girl on Church and Doge Sat @ 9:30
I saw the 14-year-old daughter of a neighbor out after dark on Saturday at the corner of Church and Dodge. Single, career mother and the girl is just about a straight "A" student. BUT… what the heck is the daughter doing out after dark at Church and Dodge? See? Where is the parent?
The most sensible thing I’ve heard on the subject
"Innocent white kids"? How about "guilty parents of all races".
Someone I respect very much pointed out to me that the same culture of silence that got the baseball team (which certainly contains white kids) into trouble, and tolerates teen drinking and drug use, also complicates and increases the incidence of violence we see on the West Side of Evanston. We have to change the culture all over town if it's more important for some parents to cover for their badly-behaved kids than it is to keep the community ethical and safe.
Just get in the solution!
I've seen non-white in these shooting sprees and drug busts I think in the last 6-7 years since I lived here. Why pretend like it's not true? It is what it is. Why is that?? Someone tell me. Getting defensive and pretending like it's not, just takes up time that could be used to fix the problem. If blame is tried to be place a little over there and a little other here etc., that's not being realistic. The problem is where it is!! Read the crime bulletin's. Get in the solution! Btw yes, sexting is inappropriate for those kid!!!
Parents and Father
Parents and specifically fathers have a huge role to play here. Everything else schools and community groups do can only partially make up when this is lacking. Can we talk about this? It is so important but we do not seem to know how to talk about it without emotions coming out so strong that most folks just want to avoid the topic.
As long as witnesses won’t come forward
When people with eviidence won't come forward or when even the one a crime is committed against, crime won't decrease and they only have themselves to blame. Unfortuantely others in the community—who hopefully would come forward if they saw a crime—will be the next victims. And so it goes on and on.
Someday the people and even the Council will realize this is not the nice suburban bedroom community they like to dream it is and will finally take some of the necessary and even obvious steps necessary. Until they get disabused of their dream, more will be victims and even killed.