After COVID-19 scuttled National Night Out activities in 2020, a year that needed it most, it's back.
Tuesday night was perfect for a comeback.
No, not for the Cubs, but for National Night Out - that annual celebration of community that was disrupted last year by the COVID-19 pandemic when our communities needed it most.
This week, with clear skies and temperatures in the 70s, people in dozens of suburbs got out to enjoy themselves - together with members of their police departments - to build on that relationship and chip away at the walls that in some cases have grown taller in recent years.
Our John Starks popped in on National Night Out celebrations in Schaumburg and Rolling Meadows. And Rick West visited one of seven such celebrations held in Elgin.
You can see from their photos from Tuesday night that people from all walks took part in a variety of activities and shared some fun.
National Night Out is an outgrowth of a take-back-the-night movement in the 1970s in which people left their front lights on and sat sentinel on their porches. In 1984, with a newly-formed consortium of police departments, Neighborhood Watch groups and other organizations behind it, National Night Out as we know it was born.
It became a way for residents and police officers to get to know each other under decidedly less stressful circumstances - to build bridges of understanding and reduce friction.
With the deaths of a number of people of color at the hands of police and the ongoing protests that followed, 2020 sorely needed National Night Out as a way to ease some of the tension. But the ongoing pandemic made that impossible.
These events are organized in all 50 states. Millions of people participate. And each event has a personality of its own. It could be as simple as a weenie roast and as robust as a full-blown festival.
One thing is common, though: Cops are at the heart of them.
We saw officers showing off what the array of police vehicles do. Elgin officers showed off their dancing skills. Whatever works to make those valuable connections.
"I grew up down the block and I remember going to these events when I was a young kid," Elgin Officer Edwin Alva told West. "I remember the type of effect that they had on me, so I wanted to be able to give back in the same way."
Alva, in his first year with Elgin and living on his neighborhood beat, organized his neighborhood's event. Other resident officers did theirs.
Would that we could have such celebrations more than just on the first Tuesday in August. To their credit, many suburban police departments try to carry the spirit of National Night out through the rest of the year. And we applaud the important effort.