Oak Park police confirmed Sunday that pepper balls were deployed against a group of teenagers on Halloween evening as police from Oak Park and other municipal police forces worked to direct a group of hundreds of teens who had gathered in Downtown Oak Park east on Lake Street and toward Austin Blvd.
Chief Shatonya Johnson of Oak Park said through a spokesman that the chemical devices were not deployed by Oak Park officers. As of Sunday morning, the village spokesperson said it was not known which officer from which agency had shot the pepper balls near the teens.
Laura Shaeffer of the Compound Yellow Studio at Lake and Harvey was among those who witnessed the confrontation. She said in a Sunday interview with Wednesday Journal that a fight broke out among 8 to 12 teens in front of her gallery. “Two to 3 girls were slapping each other. It was a slap fight, the sort of thing you see sometimes with teens,” she said.
Shaeffer said a couple of police officers “charged toward the teens. I didn’t see any sign of an effort at de-escalation. They had these huge pepper ball guns,” she said. At least one officer began firing pepper balls.
One of those affected was Jasper Nord, the 23-year-old son of Shaeffer. He went outside to observe when the fight began. He said one officer shot “at least 5 pepper balls onto the driveway at the studio.” That impact dispersed the chemical irritants into the air.
When he complained to the officer who shot the pepper balls he said the response was that the officer had shot them into the ground and not at any person. Nord said an Oak Park officer called him a “moron” and a “crybaby.”
Dan Yopchick, Oak Park’s village spokesperson, confirmed in a Sunday morning email to the Journal, that a fight was reported to Oak Park police on Friday at 10:12 p.m. at Lake and Harvey, and that pepper balls were deployed but not by an Oak Park officer. In his email he wrote, “There are no reports of any medical attention needed or adverse reaction to the pepper ball deployment.”
Yopchick has said there were officers providing backup from River Forest, Forest Park, Chicago and other communities. A request from Oak Park for backup from the Cook County Sheriff’s Police was turned down due to a shortage of staff.
Nord said that by the time the fight broke out around 10 p.m. that almost the entire crowd of teens had already reached Austin Boulevard and the small group in the fight were the last stragglers.
In response to a question from the Journal, Yopchick confirmed that only municipal policing agencies were involved on Friday night. “There was no presence of ICE or other federal personnel as it relates to this activity on Friday,” he wrote.
