Larry Snelling’s days in the $260,004-a-year hot seat reserved for Chicago’s police superintendent probably won’t get any better than Wednesday.
By a 48-0 vote, the Chicago City Council confirmed the man Mayor Brandon Johnson called a “son of Englewood,” with alderpersons from across the city singing his praises as the antithesis of David Brown, his unpopular predecessor.
After the vote, City Clerk Anna Valencia administered the superintendent’s oath to Snelling. Interim Supt. Fred Waller then pinned the superintendent’s star on his protege’s chest.
“Congratulations, Superintendent Larry Snelling,” Johnson told the city’s new top cop after the vote.
“Today is living proof that democracy prevails,” the mayor said, thanking Chicagoans for “enduring” its first civilian-led search.
Council rules were suspended to give Snelling an opportunity to address the body, pleading with alderpersons and the people they represent to treat his officers with respect, to join them in fighting crime and, above all, to judge them fairly.
“Anybody will tell you this: I hold officers accountable. I will call officers out. When we have bad officers, I will call them out. But when our officers are held accountable, they have to be held accountable fairly,” said Snelling, 54.
“If you’re gonna stand here as five, six officers in the middle of a crowd — a hostile crowd — who want to hurt you and you’re outnumbered 100 to 5, you don’t really know what that feels like. ... So, all I would ask is that you listen. Listen to the facts.”
Confronting Chicago crime
Snelling said he “feels the excitement in the room about the possibility of change.” But he pleaded with Council members to “use that and build upon that” by joining forces with CPD.
“We get a lot of marches, protests. But when a 1-year-old is murdered, where’s that same passion?” he asked.
“Officers who have children see this, and they suffer from it. The vicarious trauma affects these officers, but they find a way to go back out there and do it again. The question now is, do we all show up for our children? Do we all stand up when our children are hurt, injured and even murdered? Where’s the outrage when that happens?”
It’s a good thing Snelling is unlikely to let the praise and standing ovation go to his head after impressing the mayor, the Police Committee and the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability with his humility.
He’s now on the clock to confront Chicago’s persistent, pervasive crime. Brown had lurched from strategy to strategy with no clear plan, sometimes shifting officers from neighborhood to neighborhood, angering Council members. Brown, also confirmed unanimously by the Council, was an out-of-towner who, many officers believed, never understood the city and never had their backs.
More recently, an alarming surge of robberies and vehicular theft has residents of North Side neighborhoods such as Bucktown, Wicker Park, Lincoln Park, Old Town and Lake View up in arms, fearing for their safety.
A viral video posted Tuesday shows two men beating a man and dragging him across an alley in the 2000 block of North Damen after he refused to surrender his belongings. The predators then walk away, seemingly without fear of being chased or caught.
Year-to-date motor vehicle thefts are up 86% citywide over the same period last year and 227% above where they were four years ago. Robberies, up 24%. Thefts, up 8%. There were, however, declines in murders (11%) and shootings (13%).
In the Shakespeare District, which includes Bucktown, Wicker Park and parts of Logan Square, robberies are up 53% over last year and 93% higher than in 2019. Motor vehicle thefts in the Shakespeare District are up by 150%.
Robberies are also up 13% this year in the Near North police district, which includes a large portion of Lincoln Park, data shows. That number jumps to 34% when compared to 2021.
A rash of robberies in and around the DePaul University’s Lincoln Park campus has prompted the university to require its students, faculty and employees to start carrying their IDs on campus.
‘Our residents do not feel safe’
“Your experience has prepared you for this job, which is a difficult job ... even under the best of times. And folks, these are not the best of times,” Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), chair of the Public Safety Committee, said Wednesday.
“Our residents do not feel safe in their communities. We all know that. We’re all committed to changing that.”
Hopkins said that in four hours on Tuesday, there were “15 armed robberies in four hours by the same crew.”
“We’ve never seen anything like this in our lifetime,” he added, and “it requires new thinking and new leadership from the police department, better use of technology, better use of training, better use of the new police academy. All of those things ... await you on Day One. ... I know that you’re up to the task.”
The debate that was more like a testimonial got under way shortly after noon.
One by one, Council members rose to talk about their high hopes for Snelling and their confidence the transition from interim Supt. Fred Waller will be, as Ald. David Moore (17th) put it, the “most seamless” in the history of the Chicago Police Department.
“I know that because I worked with him in Englewood. ... I saw him have the compassion for the people. But when it was time to stand up and protect the citizens — especially our seniors, especially our young people — he was there on the front lines,” Moore said.
The political tightrope Snelling must walk was also on display.
Ald. Ray Lopez (15th), one of the police union’s staunchest Council supporters, talked about the progressive push to defund police, a concept once championed by Johnson himself.
“There is so much politics, so many narratives, so many agendas out to disrupt the most basic covenant of government, which is to keep our citizens safe,” Lopez said.
“We are not here to promote abolishing the department. ... We are here to show that you can have constitutional policing, safe policing and proud policing all in the same city. Larry Snelling will prove that is possible,” he said.
Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th) exemplified the other end of the political spectrum.
She was reduced to tears as she talked about the need for police accountability after countless examples of police abuse and wrongdoing that have cost Black men their freedom and Chicago taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in settlements.
“Too often, when we complain about the police in our community, we’re told we’re wrong. The thought that we’ve got survivors from [Jon] Burge who are saying that they don’t deserve this money or they’ve been wrongly convicted and we get ’em a couple of million dollars? They could never get back that time that was taken away from them,” Taylor said.
Taylor said “too many people” in her impoverished South Side ward “complain about folks not responding to them.”
“We’re quick to say it’s the people who wear the blue. No, it’s the system. I want us to remember what this system came out of. Policing came out of because we stopped slavery. I want us never to forget that. But I also don’t want us to forget something that Supt. Snelling said. These are people. They’re human. They make mistakes. But where’s the accountability to the community?” Taylor said.
Snelling vows ‘there will be more changes’
Snelling, until now CPD’s counterterrorism chief, spent much of his police career at the police academy. He trained many current officers with a tough-love, don’t-let-them-fail approach that earned their trust and admiration.
That’s why he was among three finalists chosen by the civilian oversight panel and why Johnson picked him for an appointment that can make or break any Chicago mayor.
During a news conference after Wednesday’s vote, Snelling said the high-level shake-up Waller ordered a few weeks ago was only the beginning.
“I’ve seen the department change in many ways. As superintendent, there will be more changes. It’s going to be necessary to move the department forward and to move our relationships forward with the community,” he said.
“These changes will prioritize the well-being of the men and women of the department. Changes aimed at building trust and forging stronger partnerships in our communities. Changes to strengthen investigations and bring justice to victims and survivors who we often forget about.”
Snelling said “technology will be a huge part” of confronting the robbery epidemic, but again dodged questions about the ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology that Snelling defends and Johnson campaigned on eliminating.
“I’m for any technology that’s going to save lives,” he said.
A year from now, Snelling said he would hope to produce a “significant increase” in consent decree compliance.
Asked how he’ll build on the progress Waller made toward improving rock-bottom police morale, Snelling reiterated his promise to give officers more time be with their families and wind down.
“We have to start looking at overtime issues and day off cancellations. Those things are going to be the start for officers just to have that time to wind down, spend time with their families,” Snelling said.
Reining in runaway overtime won’t be possible if Johnson chooses to chip away at a $538 million budget shortfall by eliminating some or all of the more than 1,500 police vacancies.
Johnson danced around that possibility, despite hinting strongly at possible cuts.
With “the budget and the vacancies in particular, we have an opportunity to imagine how our police departments can ultimately meet the expectations of this moment,” Johnson said, noting “a general consensus around the country that the way police departments have been situated historically is not the pathway moving forward.”
Snelling’s “commitment to mental health support for officers” as well as the community at large, the mayor said, are “ways in which we can imagine how vacancies can be positioned to best meet the 21st century demands.”
