UPDATE: Oak Lawn Chuck E Cheese Could Be Shut
Down Due to 911 Calls: Oak Lawn Mayor Sandra Bury
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Black Shootings, Black Brawls, Uncontrolled Black Children - Another public venue BLACKS are DESTROYING AS USUAL! Oak Lawn IL Issues a SEVERE NEGRO ALERT
Down Due to 911 Calls: Oak Lawn Mayor Sandra Bury
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Black Shootings, Black Brawls, Uncontrolled Black Children - Another public venue BLACKS are DESTROYING AS USUAL! Oak Lawn IL Issues a SEVERE NEGRO ALERT
Chuck E. Cheese, the chain of family friendly arcade and pizza joints, bills itself as a place where "a kid can be a kid."
But in Oak Lawn, where for years the restaurant on 95th Street has been plagued by fights and disorderly behavior, village officials are questioning whether it's a place where a kid should even visit.
"It's a big problem for the safety of children when you have an establishment that caters to children where this is a constant issue," said Oak Lawn Mayor Sandra Bury, noting that Oak Lawn police received 55 calls for service there through the first eight months of this year. "Would I take children there? I don't know."
The restaurant has had a reputation for attracting a "pretty volatile mix" for decades, although no Oak Lawn official would hazard a guess as to the reason.
Trustee Terry Vorderer, a retired member of the Oak Lawn Police Department who now represents the district where the Chuck E. Cheese outlet is located, said it was a problem even back when he was chief of patrol.
"It seems the type of incidents that take place there, other than the routine thefts of cell phones, things of that nature, are more domestic-related," he said. "They blow up pretty darn quick, and when they get out of control, people get hurt. Police officers get hurt."
Since 2011, Oak Lawn police have made more than two dozen arrests there, mostly for battery and disorderly conduct.
In one 2012 incident, two men fired multiple shots into a car parked in the Chuck E. Cheese lot, according to news reports. A 20-year-old man with alleged gang ties who was sitting inside the car is believed to have been the intended target. He was uninjured, and the gunmen escaped.
Over the years, the village has worked with CEC Entertainment, the parent company of Chuck E. Cheese, and Kimco Realty, which owns the shopping center, to enhance safety at that location.
"The management of Chuck E. Cheese has actually been really responsive," Bury said. "Anything we ask of them, they pretty much do."
To date, CEC has installed prominent surveillance cameras and monitors throughout the restaurant; hung "Rules of Conduct" signs in three different areas of the establishment; rearranged the interior setup to increase visibility and sight lines, reduce congestion and increase traffic flow; and added brighter, color-true lighting, a company spokeswoman said.
CEC also pays to have multiple Oak Lawn police officers work a security detail inside the restaurant every Thursday through Sunday, and in 2014, it voluntarily relinquished its liquor license.
In a statement, CEC Entertainment acknowledged that incidents had occurred at their Oak Lawn location, but said it had taken numerous actions to improve the guest experience and was committed to continuing to do so.
"We understand that there have been incidents at local businesses, including ours, and we always work with the local community to ensure a safe and wholesome environment at our restaurants," CEC spokeswoman Christelle Dupont said in a statement.
Even Kimco, which owns the shopping center, has done its part to improve security at the location — enhancing exterior lighting and paying for a police car to sit in the parking lot outside the store, according to Bury.
Yet the problems still persist.
"Everything they've done to date just isn't keeping kids safe" Bury said. "And if kids aren't safe, we have a problem with that."
The most recent violent incident at the restaurant occurred on Aug. 27 when a few family members were involved in a physical altercation.
A male patron head-butted his niece after she spat in the face of his girlfriend, according to a police report. The niece allegedly retaliated by punching him in the face before fleeing the scene, police said.
When an Oak Lawn officer tried to detain the man, he yelled an expletive and shoved the officer, the report states. Police arrested both him and his niece, whom they caught up to at a Walgreens in Evergreen Park, and charged each with battery and disorderly conduct, according to reports.
Immediately upon learning of the fracas, Bury wrote the village trustees a letter alerting them of the incident and asking for their opinions on how to handle it.
"We're taking this very, very seriously. I can't tell you how seriously," she said. "It's really important that people feel good about going to shop in Oak Lawn, and that people feel good about bringing their children to a children's place. We have to keep these kids safe. That's really what it's about."
While revocation of the restaurant's business license is an option, Bury and the village trustees preferred first to take their concerns to the company's executives, who agreed to fly in from Irving, Texas for a meeting two weeks ago.
"I told the president of Chuck E. Cheese (Roger Cardinale), I said, 'Look I don't know what you're going to do. I don't know the answers. I don't know how you solve your problems in that store, but it ain't my problem to solve them for you,'" Vorderer said. "It's my job to represent the community."
Both Vorderer and Bury said the meeting with the company's president and senior vice president was productive, and that executives from CEC Entertainment promised a swift response.
"They are committed to doing whatever it takes to make this location safe for children," Bury said. "They have agreed to, at their expense, hire a security expert to review what's been done to date."
Vorderer said the company had agreed to provide a security report to the board by Tuesday. The company will then present a revised version of the security plan — after village officials have provided feedback and the company has incorporated any suggested tweaks — at the first regular board meeting in October.
From there, the board will decide how to proceed, although it appears likely they'll permit Chuck E. Cheese to implement the plan and see if it has the intended effect of enhancing security at the location before taking any action against the business.
"I'm not going to turn a blind eye to it if there are more issues," Vorderer said, "but I'm giving a responsible corporation and a successful business in Oak Lawn an opportunity to solve our concerns."
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