Chicago police are racing the clock to pull off a Guinness World Records attempt next Saturday, and they are asking for more cars to take part. With six days to go, organizers behind the Austin Community Trunk or Treat are calling on people to decorate a trunk and join the attempt on October 24.
The attempt, aiming for the record of most vehicles at a single trunk-or-treat event, is featured in a post from the 15th District – Austin.
police unit and Assumption Church. According to event details posted by civic non-profit organization
Together Chicago
The event is scheduled from noon to 3 p.m. and will include a children's costume contest at 2 p.m.
Anyone interested in registering a vehicle can email [email protected].
A Past Halloween Event in the 15th District
CBS Chicago reported that a Carve with a Cop event took place in the 15th District on October 23, 2021, bringing local youth and officers together for Halloween.
The record attempt is planned as a community gathering, not just a one-off Halloween spectacle.
A Centralized Event in Austin
The choice of Austin as the site for a community-policing milestone traces back more than three decades. The Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, created in April 1993, selected Austin's 15th Police District as one of five original prototype districts to pioneer neighborhood-based community policing before it expanded citywide, according to Chicago Police Department records. Beat meetings and public events under that program were designed to foster direct dialogue between residents and officers.
The trunk-or-treat is planned as a single gathering in Austin rather than a series of smaller events.
Austin's history as one of the city's historically most violent neighborhoods remains part of the backdrop for events like this one.
Other Halloween Events Around Austin
Trunk-or-treat events themselves trace back to church groups in the late 1990s, who developed the car-based format as a safer, centralized alternative to traditional door-to-door trick-or-treating, according to background reporting cited by Hoodline. The model allows communities to consolidate participation and keep an eye on safety in one contained lot rather than spread across blocks.
Austin has company in offering Halloween events for local kids. In 2023, the Chicago Park District hosted trunk-or-treat events at Austin Town Hall Park and Moore Park, as reported by Austin Weekly News. For a regional sense of scale, suburban trunk-or-treats in the Chicago area have drawn solid turnouts of their own — La Grange's West End event this month featured 54 decorated cars and drew roughly 400 attendees, Hoodline reported.
With six days left before the October 24 attempt, organizers are asking for more decorated trunks, and every vehicle counts.
