Chicago police arrested 26 people in connection with the Chicago Pride Parade on Sunday, CPD Supt. David Brown said, including the suspected gunman in a triple shooting and a woman who allegedly stabbed three people during a fight. Charges in those two cases, the most serious known incidents of the day, are still pending.
Brown said the parade itself went smoothly, but “the drunken, rowdy behavior that some engaged in after the parade, however, was very, very challenging to say the least.”
This year’s arrest total is the highest for the event since police arrested 52 people in 2015, according to records maintained by CWBChicago. Police arrested 46 people in 2013 and 2014. The march was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID.
“All you need is a few knuckleheads in the crowd” to taint an otherwise positive event, Brown said.
Most people arrested Sunday were released on recognizance bonds from a local police station, but five of them made bond court appearances Monday.
Three people, all women, were charged with felony aggravated battery of a police officer.
Prosecutors said a Chicago police sergeant suffered a torn eardrum and possibly a broken thumb after Chyna Scales, 20, punched him in the head in the 3300 block of North Clark Street around 8:30 p.m. Police responded to the area to disperse a crowd of people that had overtaken the street and began twerking in the roadway and on vehicles.
Scales became upset when police arrested two of her relatives and tried to open a squad car door to let them out, prosecutor Steven Haamid said. She then blocked the police car’s path and refused to move, Haamid said.
When an officer tried to move Scales, she allegedly punched him in the left ear. He was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center for treatment, according to CPD.
Scales has never been arrested before. Her public defender, Suzin Farber, said she works full-time in construction.
Judge Maryam Ahmad said Scales could go home with a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew by paying a $500 bail deposit.
Two other women, both accused of punching cops who asked them to stop dancing on CPD squad cars, received stricter bail conditions.
Kori Bender, 22, and two other women climbed onto an unmarked police car and started dancing, but Bender refused to get off the vehicle when cops asked, Haamid said. Once an officer removed her, she allegedly struck him in the face. He had no visible signs of injury and did not need medical attention, according to Haamid.
Bender later admitted that she was twerking on the police car and “muffed” the officer, Haamid said. She has no criminal background.
Judge Ahamad did not like some of the things she heard.
“The court has concerns when I hear public safety is affronted, which is what occurred when, according to the people, you climbed up on the car and started twerking,” Ahmad told Bender.
She ordered her to pay a $700 bail deposit to go home on electronic monitoring.
Jennifer Jackson, 29, allegedly punched an officer in the face and ran when he tried to push her out of the way of traffic as cops were clearing people from the roadway in the 3100 block of North Clark around 10 p.m., Haamid said.
He said she told arresting officers something to the effect of, “Who hasn’t struck an officer at some point?”
Prosecutors said she has a felony retail theft conviction, two misdemeanor convictions, and was adjudicated delinquent as a juvenile for aggravated battery of a school employee.
Ahmad highlighted the juvenile case as she ordered Jackson to pay a $900 bail deposit to be released on electronic monitoring.
In misdemeanor court, two men were released on their own recognizance after prosecutors accused them of carrying guns on or near the parade route.
Tyric Reed was arrested after he allegedly screamed at people in the street and raised his shirt, revealing the butt of a firearm.
Prosecutors said a “large group of people” saw the weapon and began yelling, “He has a gun!”
Police saw Reed grab the butt of the firearm and ordered him to the ground, prosecutors said. They allegedly recovered a loaded pistol from his waistband.
The other man, Jaziya Bankson, was arrested on Belmont Avenue after police allegedly saw an “L-shaped bulge” in his pants pocket that they believed to be a firearm, according to prosecutors.
They stopped him for investigation and allegedly recovered a loaded 9-millimeter pistol from his pocket. Officers also found 26 baggies of suspected cannabis in his bookbag, prosecutors said.
Judge Charles Beach ordered both men to surrender their firearms licenses and weapons to police until their cases are resolved.
Editor’s note: Photos of Reed and Bankson are not included in this story because Chicago police embargo mugshots for misdemeanor charges for four days.
