The close working relationship between the North Riverside Park Mall and North Riverside police paid off again Saturday night.
While there’s no indication that anything that happened over at Ford City Mall earlier on Saturday evening was starting to spill over in North Riverside or that a separate social media call for a flash mob was going around for North Riverside, security and police acted appropriately and quickly to defuse any thought of it.
Police dispersed one large group of teens from the food court and then began limiting access to the mall among groups of unsupervised juveniles.
North Riverside Park Mall is a very important part of the village’s financial lifeblood. Incidents such as the one that happened Saturday at Ford City, where a large group of teens ran, shouting, through the mall — apparently only for the purpose of upsetting everyone inside — give people reasons to stay away.
In the past few years, North Riverside Park Mall officials have been trying to lure back local shoppers by opening stores with widespread appeal and making notable improvements to the theater, food court and other areas of the mall. Since 2006-07 when the mall experienced a pair of serious incidents, security and police have worked to tighten rule enforcement.
According to the mall’s general manager, they are now working on a plan to deal with the issue of large groups of unsupervised juveniles gathering at the mall. Making potential troublemakers feel unwelcome at the mall is a good thing. Applying such a policy will be a balancing act, however, and needs to be enforced fairly and reasonably.
In the meantime, police and the mall need to continue their close collaboration to prevent trouble before it has a chance to start. North Riverside really depends on it.
