Last Tuesday in Chicago, a young male approached a metro train conductor with a handgun and stole $100 in cash from the collected fares before escaping onto the train platform. Video of the armed robber was captured by security cameras, but he was wearing a face mask, so the police asked for the public’s help in identifying him. Given the surging crime rates in the Windy City over the past couple of years, this would normally just be another day ending in a “Y” and probably not worth reporting. But this story comes with an encouraging twist. The robber showed up at a Chicago police precinct to turn himself in, but only after being dragged down there by his own mother who recognized her son in the video shown on the local news. Talk about some tough love. (NY Post)

The suspect sought in a Chicago train robbery has been identified as a Loyola University student recognized by his own mother, who reportedly dragged him into the police station to turn himself in.

Zion Brown, an 18-year-old sophomore at Loyola University Chicago, has been charged with armed robbery after allegedly stealing about $100 in cash at gunpoint from a Metra train conductor Tuesday afternoon, WBBM-TV reported. After recognizing photos of a masked suspect – seen glancing into a station security camera – shared by police and reported by the media as her son, Brown’s mother brought him into a police station in Calumet City for him to turn himself in, CWB Chicago reported.

Brown’s attorney argued for lenient treatment because he claimed that his client was “hungry and needed to eat.” The judge wasn’t buying it and remanded Brown to jail without bail pending a hearing on March 4. Brown also told police that the gun he used in the stick-up was actually a BB gun and he had ditched it in a dumpster outside of the subway station. The judge was similarly unimpressed with that story.

The real hero in this story is the mother, who no doubt had to make a tough decision here. We frequently hear stories about suspects who were supposedly “turning the corner” and “getting their life together,” or who allegedly just “fell in with a bad crowd.” But in the case of Zion Brown, that may actually be the case. Brown is currently in his second year at college and has been getting good grades. He also has no previous criminal record.

It’s certainly possible that Brown had already been up to no good and simply hadn’t been caught until now. But it’s also not entirely outrageous to believe that this might have just been a moment of bad judgment. The response by his mother certainly suggests that she’s been trying to keep him on the straight and narrow.

As I already suggested, Brown’s mother is the person we should really be focusing on here. Gang violence and criminal activity remain far too prevalent in many of our larger cities and the path to such a life is all too easy for teenagers to fall into, particularly in low-income areas with large minority populations. The police can only do just so much to keep up with gang-related criminal activities, even in cities where the municipal government isn’t actively working against them.

I’ve been beating this drum here for quite a while now, but the only way we’re going to see sweeping changes in our gang-culture problem is if there is a cultural shift. Parents and teachers can’t simply accept that their children have fallen in with the gangs, even if it saddens them. Children raised in homes where crime is seen as a definitively bad thing that won’t be tolerated will have a much greater chance of growing up to be law-abiding citizens. Mrs. Brown clearly did an above-average job in raising Zion if she managed to see him not only graduate high school but be accepted to Loyola University. And her willingness to drag him down to the police station and prompt him to confess demonstrates the lengths she’s willing to go to in ensuring that her son continues on that path.

Now Zion Brown will sit behind bars for a couple of weeks while awaiting trial and get a taste of what running with the gangs can really look like. Perhaps his previous clean record and scholastic achievements will persuade the judge to go a bit easier on him at sentencing. And if he’s lucky, his mother will be there to bring him home and get him back into the classroom. We need thousands more mothers like Mrs. Brown in cities across America. If we get them, the job of the police will become vastly easier and we might see the ongoing crime wave begin to finally recede.