Over spring break in late March, viral videos showed Baltimore Police officers chasing and even swinging batons at large crowds of teenagers who had gathered downtown Baltimore for a spontaneous “Inner Harbor invasion.”

The meetup, which escalated into fighting, ended with seven arrests. It was only a week after a similar gathering led to gunfire, though no one was injured during that episode.

The chaotic scenes provoked familiar questions that arise nearly every year as the weather warms up:

Were the large gatherings of teenagers a disaster waiting to happen? Should parents be held responsible for their children’s actions? Did city officials do enough?

The teen gatherings were part of an international social media trend of “teen takeovers” or “teen linkups.”

It is difficult to trace the origins of the “teen takeovers,” which are organized around viral social media posts that use AI-generated images depicting massive street parties. The trend dates back years, but appears to be especially popular this spring.

Baltimore Police launched a criminal investigation into who was behind the post advertising a takeover in the Inner Harbor. Meanwhile, Mayor Brandon Scott has placed the blame for the recent chaos squarely on the teenagers’ parents.

“We should not have to send police officers and staff from agencies from all over the city to babysit your children because you don’t know where they are or what they’re into,” Scott said in a recent Instagram video.

Duane Saunders Sr., vice president of operations for the nonprofit Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, said the coalition remains “committed to advocating for approaches that protect our businesses, welcome our youth and strengthen the district for everyone.” In downtown Baltimore last year, crime dropped roughly 14%, according to a study released by the group last week.

The business partnership has experience acting as an intermediary between city authorities and youth downtown. It was tapped by the mayor to help develop non-police interventions for young squeegee workers in the city after a teen fatally shot a driver who had exited his car and was aggressively wielding a baseball bat during a downtown confrontation in 2022.

Baltimore Police said they caught wind of the “Inner Harbor invasion” and planned a response, but when crowds swelled, they had to call in additional units, including a police helicopter, spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge said.

Three teenagers were arrested for assault, and an officer used a Taser on a 14-year-old at Market Place. Nearby, three other teenagers were charged with attempted armed robbery, and another teen was arrested for assault, then released, according to police.

Police Commissioner Richard Worley described the behavior by young people as “dangerous” and “disruptive.”

In a statement, Worley said the department would pursue charges against parents “when appropriate for the actions and damage caused by their child.”

“We urge parents to know where their children are and who they are with,” Worley said.

But youth advocates told The Baltimore Banner that the factors driving teenagers out to the gatherings are more complicated than parental failures.

Julia Baez is chief executive officer of the nonprofit group Baltimore’s Promise, which advocates for youth. The popularity of these teen linkups, she said, reflects an “opportunity gap” for young adults in the city.

“There aren’t places for you to go, there aren’t enough after-school programs, and when you hit periods like spring break, we just don’t have the infrastructure to support fun activities for young people to engage in,” Baez said.

Baez said data collected by her nonprofit shows about 80,000 young people should be served by city-run summer and spring break programming, but only a fraction participate.

“There’s just such a huge gap in resources,” she said.

Expanding recreational opportunities

Scott’s administration has pledged to narrow the gap.

As an example, they pointed to a recent change: recreational opportunities that now start earlier, during spring break rather than after Memorial Day.

Scott’s administration also stressed that young people have a right to gather in the city.

“It’s important to treat our young people and our teenagers not like they’re some feral cats that run around,” said Noell West, assistant deputy mayor for health and human services. “They belong to families, and they belong to us as a city.”

In preparation for the “Inner Harbor invasion” event, Stefanie Mavronis, head of the city’s public safety office, was on hand. She said the city deployed about 40 “credible messengers” who wore vests that marked them as “youth engagement staff.”

Those outreach workers de-escalated some tensions among young people from different schools and different parts of the city, Mavronis said.

“We all understood that this was something that was going to happen, and we wanted to have the right resources in place to respond,” Mavronis said of the cooperative relationship between police and other city officials.

“It’s really a minority, a handful of young people, who came out there looking for a fight,” she added.

Monitoring social media

Dr. Liz Park, a family therapist who serves on Maryland’s juvenile justice commission, said these types of youth gatherings are nothing new: Teenagers have always gathered in large numbers, typically at malls during the later decades of the 20th century.

But social media has given young people the ability to go “viral,” reaching hundreds of fellow teenagers and ending up with gatherings that draw “a lot more people than anybody could have anticipated,” said Park, who is director of the youth service bureau Greenbelt CARES.

That phenomenon has become the central point of the so-called “teen takeovers,” which youth advocates say appear to be an attempt to simply gather as many people as possible.

“I’m sure they find that exciting, that they can gather that quickly,” Park said. “In my experience, it’s not like anyone has a plan.”

The gatherings gained attention in the Baltimore area in early March, with a teen takeover at White Marsh Mall going viral on social media.

The most recent Maryland takeover, in Bowie earlier this month, was less eventful than the Inner Harbor gatherings: About 250 young people showed up at Allen Pond Park. The Bowie Police Department said they dispersed the crowd without any arrests.

Jack French, a spokesperson for the mayor’s public safety office, said the Inner Harbor teen gathering appeared to be a mix of county and city residents, with most coming from various parts of Baltimore.

Local authorities in Maryland are still grappling with the best ways to respond to large gatherings of teens, Park said. Police departments have been monitoring social media to patrol the locations they advertise.

Park said jurisdictions across the state would have to strike a balance between not criminalizing a natural teenage tendency to want to congregate, while also not ignoring the public safety risks that come from large, impromptu crowds.

“In some ways, it’s a new phenomenon. In some ways, it’s not,” Park said. “Adolescents have gathered throughout time. It’s just: How do we handle this type of gathering?”

‘Treated like a problem’

Dayvon Love, a community activist and director of public policy for the nonprofit advocacy group Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, said he remembers feeling an outsized sense of scrutiny on his actions compared to those of his white peers.

“I remember being treated like a problem,” Love said.

Love said media coverage of Baltimore teens can reinforce racial stigmas and instill fear that “distorts people’s ability to think rationally and humanely about young Black kids coming together at a mall.”

The resulting policy proposals from city officials, such as curfews and heavy police presences at teen gatherings, Love said, are “a reflection of an attempt to solve a problem that you cannot legislate or arrest your way out of.”

“Whatever levels of dysfunction and antisocial behavior that is expressed in the activity of young people, particularly young Black people, it is not a result of inherent pathology,” Love said. “It’s a result of an array of systems that don’t recognize their humanity.”

Kenneth Tisdale, a 32-year-old filmmaker and screenwriter, responded to the viral videos of teenagers at the harbor by putting out a message of his own on social media, describing the linkups as a “competition for how fast y’all can get everything taken away from y’all.”

Tisdale said in his post that he saw a lot of pointless and counterproductive behavior at the gatherings, rather than “meaningful events” or even just relaxation.

In an interview, Tisdale, a Baltimore native, said he can relate to both the teenagers and the people frustrated by their behaviors. He said people who live in the city don’t want heavily trafficked areas like the Inner Harbor to become “spaces of pure disruption.”

“If a single individual or a handful of individuals has the ability to pull hundreds of kids together, you have a lot of power, you have a lot of influence,” Tisdale said. “That’s great. Now my question to the young people is: How do you want to use it?”