It seems that when the temperature rises, kerfuffles and dust-ups, typically liquor-fueled also increase in downtown Naperville. It happened during the very early hours of January 21 near Bar Louie, when a crowd of over 100 revelers got out of hand and had to be broken up by the Naperville police. Reinforcements from the Lisle and Aurora police departments, along with DuPage County Sheriff’s Department also were summoned to gain control.
A few folks were arrested on a variety of charges including two counts of battery, criminal trespass to property, felony aggravation for resisting a police officer. In the chaos, one Naperville police officer was struck by a beer bottle. Fortunately the officer was not injured. There was no mention if it was an import or domestic.
It was the warmest day since November 18, so if this is any indication of what it might be like this summer, Naperville police officers might find themselves quite busy in downtown Naperville. More people, more traffic, more bars, makes for more problems.
This happened around the same time that Neighborhood Scout website released its 2017 list of 100 Safest Cities in America and the 100 Most Dangerous Cities. Naperville was nowhere to be found on the list for safest cities, though Wheaton, Plainfield and Lockport were listed. Fortunately Naperville was not on the list for the most dangerous cities, which included Rockford, Danville, and the #1 least safest, East St. Louis. Chicago did not make the list due to its higher population, and per-capita crime rate.
Cabot Cove, in ‘Murder She Wrote’ with a population of 3,560 has the world’s highest murder rate, with an average of 5.3 per year which equates to about 1,500 murders per million. It’s estimated that 2% of Cabot Cove’s residents met a grim end, with the murder rate for visitors even higher.
Neighborhood Scout ranked cities with a minimum population of 25,000, and looked at violent crime data reported to the FBI, with the total number of property and violent crimes per 1,000 residents. Crimes included murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and vehicle theft. It wasn’t that long ago that Naperville was listed among the safest cities in the U.S., but now that’s just a memory.
Surprisingly, Naperville did find itself on a list among the nation’s best places to live for families, another list as the 29th best place to purchase a vehicle, and in the Top 100 best places to buy a sesame bagel. So at least we’ve got that much going for us.
According to the full report the three arrested were in their 30’s and not Naperville Residents or NC students (this is a popular NC Student hangout). The fight started when one of the three refused to pay their bill. The fighting was limited to these three and a couple of Bar Louie’s staff. There was no report that this was a drunken brawl involving 100 people, only that a crowd of about 100 on-lookers were sent away by police. This all happened around 1am which is also closing time for this establishment on a Friday night/Saturday morning which has a capacity of 275.