Mayor Brandon Johnson was urged Monday to choose counterterrorism Chief Larry Snelling to be Chicago’s next police superintendent with all signs pointing in that direction after in-person interviews with all three finalists.
Johnson is expected to announce the make-or-break appointment this week after spending much of Monday meeting face to face at City Hall with each of the three finalists: Snelling, 54; Angel Novalez, the Chicago Police Department’s 50-year-old head of Constitutional Policing and Reform; and Madison, Wisconsin, police chief Shon Barnes, 49.
Snelling, the Chicago Police Department’s chief of the bureau of counterterrorism, has been the safe choice — and the odds-on favorite — from the moment that the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability announced the names of the three finalists.
That’s because police morale is at rock bottom, Johnson is determined to improve it, and Snelling has the best chance to reverse a mass exodus that has left the police department with 1,700 fewer officers than four years ago.
For that same reason, Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th), chairman of the City Council’s Police and Fire Committee, is urging Johnson to appoint Snelling the next top cop.
“Larry has played a part in the training of a large majority of the police department simply because of his tenure at the Chicago Police Training Academy. When you have that — when people remember you, and they have nothing but respect for you — they’re gonna be willing to work for you. The department will shine under Larry.
“He has a great temperament. He is very calm, collected. Given some of the issues that the city is faced with from a law enforcement challenge, he would be the perfect person to take up the helm and move the department forward,” Taliaferro said.
A former Chicago Police officer himself, Taliaferro got to know Snelling during their days together at the police academy, where Taliaferro taught marksmanship and Snelling was the physical fitness and education instructor.
Marksmanship and physical fitness are the things most likely to trip up a police recruit. But Snelling wouldn’t let his students fail — even though “not everyone comes into the training academy physically fit,” Taliaferro said.
“I’ve seen Larry in inclement weather not putting training aside knowing that the mission had to be accomplished. He made sure that they ran throughout the building — even in the small building that we had on Jackson. That’s good leadership.
“You break down a muscle just to build it back up. ... You use that from a mental perspective as well — not to break you down so you’re broken, but to give you a different mindset in protecting yourself and your partner and being physically and emotionally fit to do it. That’s what I appreciate about Larry. He’s going to be an incredible superintendent if he’s chosen,” Taliaferro said.
Anthony Driver, president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, said it would be “unfair to the candidates” for him to handicap the three finalists or say whom he hopes Johnson will choose.
“All three of those folks could be generational leaders,” he said Monday.
Driver said he would love to see the new superintendent assemble a “team of rivals” by offering top jobs to the two failed finalists — but it’s up to them.
“They will be held accountable for their team. So, it’s only right if they have the autonomy to actually build their own team,” Driver said.
Even so, Driver said the importance of building a team around the new top cop cannot be overstated.
“I do have meetings with the superintendent. But more frequently, we’re meeting with their support staff and seeing just how vital a role they play in the day-to-day functions. This is the second-largest police department in the country, and no one person can get the job done by themselves. They have to have a strong support system, or they won’t be successful. Even the best leaders will fail without a good support system,” Driver said.
Johnson’s choice for the $260,004-a-year job will replace David Brown, the retired Dallas police chief who never managed to convince the rank-and-file he either understood Chicago or had their backs.
Pressed to set an agenda for the new superintendent, Driver outlined a long to-do list of items that are “equally important,” he said.
“There’s bringing the department into full consent-decree compliance. There’s getting the clearance rates up and the murders down. There’s building trust with communities and acknowledging the harm that has been done to a lot of communities from the history of policing in Chicago,” Driver said.
“There’s also building trust with rank-and-file members who, from everything I saw, had lost faith in previous leadership.”
