Park Ridge City Council discusses crime near highway after armed robberies

Simmering concerns about whether crime in Park Ridge has increased and the city’s recent symbolic gestures calling for further gun regulation sparked a confrontational debate among City Council members March 20 as they discussed a pair of armed robberies that took place in the parking lot at Mariano’s grocery store.

In the process, aldermen revisited a number of recent hot topics, including a gun control resolution and the city’s approval of two adult-use cannabis dispensaries.

It was a rare moment of flaring tempers on a generally even-natured council as aldermen rehashed some of their most contentious recent decisions.

“What toothless resolution are we going to pass this time to stop it from happening?” a visibly angry Ald. Rick Biagi said. “This is unbelievable. This is my ward. This is your ward,” he said, turning to Ald. Mwende Lefler.

Both of the robberies, which occurred March 10 and March 19 in the grocery store’s surface parking lot, involved firearms being displayed, according to police reports, which indicated no shots were fired.

Biagi was referring to the city’s sign-on to a non-binding resolution by the Northwest Municipal Conference that called on state and federal leaders to tighten gun regulations in the wake of the fatal mass shooting last July in north suburban Highland Park.

That resolution incited a wave of public comment and some disagreement among aldermen as to whether the measure would move the needle on gun violence and whether gun control is a solution to mass acts of violence.

Mayor Marty Maloney signed onto the resolution following two rounds of discussion in December. He did so as a representative of Park Ridge, but had told aldermen he’d sign representing himself even if the council as a whole failed to back the item.

In an email to Maloney shortly before aldermen voted on the resolution, Biagi wrote that he shared Maloney’s conviction that elected officials needed to do more to prevent gun violence like that seen in Highland Park.

“However, I do not believe that non-binding resolutions at a local level have a meaningful impact in changing the course of matters that have such profound importance to our state and our nation,” he said.

Biagi, Sanchez and Wilkening abstained from the vote on the resolution, with 5th Ward Ald. Charlie Melidosian the sole “no” vote. Abstentions are recorded as “yes” votes in city records.

Entangled in the discussion about guns, their prevalence in Park Ridge and the city’s recent statements around gun violence was another disagreement about the prevalence of crime in the city.

Mayor Marty Maloney and 1st Ward Ald. John Moran both pointed out at different moments in the discussion that the police department’s statistics point to crime staying level or even dipping in the long run in Park Ridge.

“You can’t argue that we have an out-of-control crime problem in Park Ridge because we don’t,” Maloney said. “It’s the lowest it’s been since 2013, other than one year in 2019.”

But other aldermen like Biagi and 5th Ward Ald. Charlie Melidosian questioned that.

“Whatever the numbers are, they are, but the perception is that crime is up,” Melidosian said, adding that he’s worried about the south end of the city because of its location near the I-90 expressway.

“Do you think the perception is fueled by your statement that the south side isn’t safe?” Maloney asked Melidosian.

Maloney personally vouched for the safety of the city’s southern neighborhoods, saying “I live in the seventh ward; I think I live further south than anybody sitting around this table, and it’s safe.

“Park Ridge is a very safe community and I challenge anybody to show me the data that says otherwise,” he said.

“It is safer than other communities,” Melidosian replied.

Moran said crime in Park Ridge near the highway has been an issue as long as he’s lived in the city.

“It helps drive our property values up, but it also makes it a convenient spot to hit from time to time,” he said.

“You can’t look at the entire south side of town and look at its proximity to that intersection and deem it all an unsafe neighborhood.”

“[Increasing police presence] is not going to solve the problem,” Biagi said. “What’s going to solve the problem is putting these people in jail, to prosecute them.”

Moran said desperate people were likely to think of the highway if they were thinking of committing crimes — “and there are always going to be desperate people,” he said.

“And yet Council approved two dispensaries on that side of town,” 3rd Ward Ald. Gail Wilkening interjected.

Next to her, 4th Ward Ald. Harmony Harrington broke into a quiet round of applause.

The city approved two adult-use cannabis dispensaries for two parcels along Higgins Road last summer, one of which attracted significant public opposition and one of which passed with minimal public comment.

Maloney told Wilkening there is no data that indicates dispensaries make neighborhoods less safe.

‘Yeah, and there’s no data to say that having two dispensaries within a few blocks at the end is going to make one place safer either,” Wilkening said.

Lefler, whose 7th Ward covers some of the southern end of the city, told Chief of Police Frank Kaminski that she would welcome a “heat map” of where crimes were taking place in the city.