Morning Rampage, Nighttime Nightmare: Chicago’s Downtown Unravels – 24 Hours of Chaos

Sept 23, 2025 SubX.News Street

From a shovel-swinging maniac at dawn, to a woman stabbed in the heart of the Loop, to a teenager shot over a juice bottle at night — it was 24 hours of collapse in plain view, while City Hall played theater.

Morning Mayhem on Roosevelt

The day began before sunrise with violence spilling out from the Ruble Street camp under the Dan Ryan. At 5:14 AM, an unconfirmed 911 call reported a maniac throwing a shovel at passing cars near Roosevelt and Union.

Dispatch logged it, but no arrests, no injuries confirmed. The threat evaporated into thin air, but the danger was real — a driver’s life could’ve been ended in a second.

Minutes later, destruction spread. At 6:05 AM, Sid’s Clothing at 609 West Roosevelt reported shattered windows, followed by Ike’s Tailor Shop at 544 West Roosevelt at 6:15 AM. By 7:14 AM, video showed multiple storefronts gutted, their glass sprayed across the sidewalk.

Shop owners whispered that addicts from the nearby camp were behind it but feared retaliation if they spoke too openly.

UIC neighbors know the pattern.

A student raped and strangled to death by a vagrant criminal riding teh CTA Blue Line. Ruth George, who was found strangled in a UIC campus parking garage on Halsted. A woman shot in the head at the Ruble Street tent encampment most likely part of a drug deal gone bad.

Benny’s Liquor, Dollar Tree, even the weed shop nearby have all taken hits before.

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The so-called “relocation” of the camp on September 5 — after $814,000 was wasted on a DNC security fence — didn’t fix anything. It just pushed violence further into the Roosevelt corridor.

23rd & Halsted Shelter Chaos

By sunrise, the spillover wasn’t just busted glass on Roosevelt — it was human wreckage stacked outside the city-run shelter at 23rd and Halsted.

Sidewalks became open-air drug markets. Venezuelan suppliers with bags, feeding fentanyl and tranq straight into the hands of half-conscious zombies stretched along the curb. Some slumped in tents, others sitting on sidewalks. Dealers held court like it was sanctioned space.

Police presence? None. Cars drove by, squads sat elsewhere.

Residents going to work walking past had to navigate around addicts and pushers camped like permanent fixtures. The very shelter meant to provide structure instead bred disorder — a city operation turned distribution hub.

Scanner listeners and witnesses couldn’t miss the bigger point: it wasn’t ignorance, it was allowance.

CPD allowed it. City Hall allowed it.

And the Fraternal Order of Police, whose president John Catanzara is quick to rant on TV, had nothing to say about migrant stations without OSHA complaints, labor grievances, or even paperwork. Sellouts collecting checks while chaos thrives.

What morning commuters saw on Halsted wasn’t just a failure.

It was a warning — when the city itself owns the property, the sidewalks, and the conditions, and still lets drugs trade openly, it proves the neglect is by design.

Afternoon Downtown Stabbing – Washington & Wabash

By early afternoon, the Loop itself bled. At 1:10 PM, a fight broke out in the 100 block of South Wabash, near Washington and Wabash — right in the thick of downtown foot traffic.

Witnesses said a 36-year-old woman got into an argument with the driver of a silver sedan. The confrontation turned physical, and the driver pulled a sharp object, stabbing her in the chest and arm. He sped off eastbound, leaving her bleeding on the sidewalk.

Paramedics rushed her to Northwestern Hospital, where she was stabilized in good condition. Area Three detectives opened an investigation, framing it as possible road rage — though to anyone watching the city’s disarray, it looked just as easily like the morning’s vagrancy spillover creeping into the Loop’s core.

No suspect in custody, no alert on the police Media Major Incident Notifications website.

For scanner and Citizen app listeners, the stabbing was real. Another daylight assault tucked under the rug while downtown workers and shoppers stepped around police tape.

Jewel-Osco Sweep – Roosevelt & State

Late afternoon, the focus shifted back south to 1224 South Wabash Avenue — the Jewel-Osco lot at Roosevelt and State, a known dope hub. Around 4:00 to 5:30 PM, Cook County Sheriff’s deputies rolled in with at least four squads, breaking up the open-air drug market that’s become routine on that corner.

A female overdose victim was hauled off by ambulance. Deputies pulled a driver in a fully tinted car, detained him, and ran his record. Another tent-linked male ended up in custody. Dealers scattered, homeless dopers sleeping yanked, and for a brief moment the area was cleared.

But the sweep was cosmetic, not systemic.

Within minutes, suspected buyers hovered again — one in a cap was released after questioning, another pulled off but not charged.

The market paused, then reconfigured.

Then one cop turned on us at SubX, threatening arrest for filming.

When confronted about threatening to lock a reporter up for trespassing on public-access ground, his badge number was demanded, and the threat backed down.

The exchange summed it up: law-abiding citizens get warned, while the corner’s real rot keeps trading.

By nightfall, Roosevelt’s Jewel was primed to boil again — and hours later, it did.

Evening West Side Wander – Harrison, Flournoy, Polk & California

As daylight drained, the West Side made clear who really runs Chicago after dark. Rolling west along Harrison toward California, the contrasts were brutal: kids playing football in the park, while a block over, addicts lay folded on sidewalks, faces twisted and gone.

Scooters were ditched in the street — quick getaway tools abandoned mid-deal.

The deeper the drive, the starker the divide.

A BBQ joint buzzed with family traffic, but across the way the sidewalks were owned by dealers. The Flournoy spot was still raw from a recent shooting — a young man and an older woman cut down by gunfire near a tree that locals now walk past like it’s furniture.

The bus stop across the street had turned into a dealer’s corner, with dogs tied to nodding zombies.

And then came the core: Polk and California.

A tip turned out right — the alley was jammed with more than 30 people, cans clattering as lookouts, clusters of buyers and sellers moving dope in the open. Scooters, cars, and shadows wove in and out. It wasn’t desperation; it was infrastructure — a distribution hub operating without fear.

Cops? Nowhere.

The only recent law enforcement presence had been back in downtown, where Cook County deputies were harassing buyers at Jewel.

Here, where the volume was obvious, where the danger was thick, there wasn’t a badge in sight.

Driving away, it was clear: this wasn’t just a corner. This was an empire in the open. And it proved Brandon Johnson’s “root cause” rhetoric is just that — rhetoric.

On the ground, gangs and zombies run the block.

Nighttime Jewel Shooting – Roosevelt & Wabash

Back at the same Jewel-Osco lot at Roosevelt and Wabash that had seen sheriffs sweep hours earlier exploded again — this time with blood on the pavement at 10:34 PM.

A 17-year-old girl was shot in the right thigh by security guard Raven Seymone Aikens, a Black female in a gray uniform, employed at the store. Witnesses said the confrontation started when the teen threw a Simply Orange juice bottle. Aikens drew her weapon and fired.

On-scene first responders worked fast, applying tourniquets before Ambulance 41 rushed the girl to Northwestern Hospital, where she was stabilized in good condition by 10:38 PM.

The shooter fled east on Roosevelt in a black pickup. A police helicopter tracked the truck south onto Lakeshore Drive, before units boxed her in at 8100 South Saginaw around 11:00 PM. She was taken into custody.

The Jewel manager confirmed her employment; teens at the scene called the lot a “hot spot” swarmed nightly by homeless crowds and youth cliques.

Blood and spilled juice stained the sidewalk — a literal mess over a bottle that escalated to bullets.

To anyone watching, the point was clear: a grocery store turned into a battleground because the city let the area fester.

Roosevelt’s problems didn’t vanish with a sheriff sweep. They mutated into nighttime gunfire.

Reader note: One SubX follower wrote in after the shooting, saying: “I heard they may have been in a relationship. She went there to confront that guard. Here say!!!”

That detail is unconfirmed — but it shows how quickly the community tries to piece together the why when the city leaves everyone in the dark.

Loop Crime All The Time

Even beyond the major blows, downtown was peppered with calls that show the Loop never sleeps, it just seethes:

50 North Wabash (5:22 PM): Police responded to a report of a person stabbed.

71 East Wacker (6:43 PM): A woman reported her gold necklace was snatched by a man.

42 South State (4:43–5:25 PM): Group of teens hit Five Below; one suspect detained, more charges pending.

35 North State (7:33 PM): Three teens threatened store staff, police called in.

Randolph & Wabash (3:13 PM): Seven to eight men assaulted a person in a red Honda after the driver honked.

E Jackson & S Wabash (8:06 AM): Report of a man with a shovel and fishing net trying to steal from an ATM.

800 South Michigan (2:31 AM): Caller said a man on a bike was chasing another man on a bike.

618 South Wabash (12:13–12:44 AM): Woman refused to leave the front of a building; police intervened.

31 East Adams (4:22 AM): Woman dropped onto a barbed wire gate near Dunkin’, bleeding from her leg, offender fled.

415 East North Water (11:40 AM): Blue tent set up on Riverwalk private property, police called.

Lake & Wabash (Sept 22, 9:22 PM): Fight injured one woman; police detained a suspect, ambulance called.

One day, one district, endless noise — a cycle where small assaults, thefts, and stabbings stack into the same picture: the Loop as a laboratory of unchecked crime.

Collapse of Control: Adams & Woods Scanner Meltdown

As if the Loop and South Loop chaos wasn’t enough, the Near West Side gave listeners a raw glimpse of what “defund in real time” really means. Scanner traffic out of Adams and Woods lit up with profanity from a traffic management aide (TMA) — not a sworn officer — who lost control over the airwaves:

“Hey, somebody get the fck over here before I get fcking mad. I’m trying to beat the fck out somebody. Get the f*ck over here.”

Dispatchers scrambled, begging for units to respond: “Does anyone know who their TMA is? If so, can you please go to them, because they about to fight somebody …”

By the time a squad finally checked in, the aide was sitting in a truck and things had cooled. But the damage was done — on the record, in real time, the collapse of discipline and the absence of police played out for the whole city to hear.

This wasn’t just an embarrassing slip.

It was a warning: in a city where sworn officers are cut, sidelined, or absent, civilians in orange vests are shoved into the front lines of confrontation they’re neither trained nor equipped to handle.

Brandon Johnson calls law enforcement “a sickness” he plans to eradicate.

What Chicago got instead was untrained staff on the verge of street brawls, private security pulling triggers at Jewel and Smoke Valley, and violent “peacekeepers” celebrated by the political class.

That’s not reform.

That’s substitution — and it’s the lived chaos of anarcho-tyranny.

Responsibility in the Ruins

One day — dawn to midnight — was enough to prove what Chicago really lives under. Morning started with a shovel attack spilling out of a Dan Ryan camp, glass shattering at mom-and-pop stores, and sidewalks overrun at a city-run shelter.

Afternoon brought a stabbing in the heart of the Loop, while sheriffs staged theater at Jewel only for the night to end in gunfire from a security guard.

Out west, Polk and California showed the truth: gangs and dealers run open-air empires while police are invisible.

This isn’t absence. It’s facilitation.

City Hall moves camps like chess pieces, pushes addicts from one corridor to the next, and lets gangs claim the void.

The mayor talks about eradicating “law enforcement as a sickness,” while the real sickness spreads through Roosevelt, Halsted, the Loop, and the West Side.

It is our responsibility to end this chaos — because in 24 hours it’s clear the city is not only failing to handle it, but actively managing its spread.

In the West Side, criminals run the streets themselves.

Downtown and the South Loop show the collapse in real time.

The police that remain aren’t guardians — they’re stagehands in Brandon Johnson’s eradication theater.

The scanner doesn’t lie.

The sidewalks don’t lie.

Chicagoans live the proof every day.

The question is how long we accept it before the responsibility shifts back where it belongs: to us.

This report is compiled from a daily live feed, radio dispatches, and crime reports from the streets of Chicago.

Pic … Ike’s Tailor Shop, 544 W Roosevelt — glass gutted in the morning rampage. Another mom-and-pop left paying for the city’s neglect … 7am Sept 23, 2025.

SubX.News® on-the-spot reporting

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