With just a week before the Democratic National Convention kicks off in Chicago, the city’s top cop on Monday sought to quell the fears of movers and shakers about what will be tolerated from the protesters planning to descend on the city.
“We’re not going to allow you to riot,” Police Supt. Larry Snelling assured the crowd gathered for a City Club of Chicago event at Maggiano’s Banquets downtown.
“Protesting and rioting are two different things. You have the right to protest, but there will be no rioting tolerated,” Snelling added as the business leaders and elected officials in the crowd began to applaud.
Snelling has repeatedly claimed his department is prepared to both handle demonstrations and keep neighborhoods safe throughout the convention, which is set to run from Aug. 19-22.
His tough talk comes amid concerns over how officers will manage protests and potentially respond to the type of chaos that marred the 1968 Democratic convention and swept through Chicago in the summer of 2020.
Snelling insisted the more recent turmoil, sparked by the police killing of George Floyd, should be remembered as “rioting.” He noted that people were murdered, cars were burned and businesses were looted — and he made it clear that cops won’t let that happen next week.
“I’m not going to wait until it gets out of control and then try to bring it back in,” he said. “The moment it starts, you put an end to it quickly. … So we will not allow people to come here and destroy this city.”
Asked to draw a clear line between rioting and protesting, Snelling told reporters after the event that police are specifically going to crack down on “violent actors” and vandals.
But he couldn’t say how exactly protesters will be treated if they diverge from an approved route, noting that such issues will be handled on a “case-by-case” basis.
Ed Yohnka, spokesperson for the ACLU of Illinois, said the superintendent’s comments seem to ignore some of the policing failures of 2020 when officers “responded to people not engaged in criminal activity by treating them as though they were.”
Yonkha said describing rioting so broadly “blurs that line for officers.”
“I think it also sends a signal to … residents of Chicago who may be confused that there was rioting when there was really nothing more than people engaged in expression in which a few people among a very large group did something that they shouldn’t have done,” he added.
In a 464-page report, the city’s inspector general’s office concluded that officers were “outflanked, under-equipped and unprepared” when they responded to the chaotic events in 2020.
In the lead-up to the convention, the department revised its new mass arrest policy amid scrutiny from a coalition of community groups who warned that an earlier version “eviscerates protections” otherwise granted to protesters.
On Monday, the superintendent said officers are well prepared and insisted their wellness will be prioritized throughout what could become a tumultuous stretch. He noted that they’ve received more training than officers did ahead of the 2012 NATO Summit, an event he played a key role in preparing for.
“All of the things that worked there, we utilized that, we worked it up, we sharpened the saw to make that better,” he said. “But we also looked at things that we know that we could’ve done better, and we’ve taken corrective action with that.”
Questions still loom, though.
Snelling acknowledged that police are still working with Cook County prosecutors to determine how charging decisions will be made and how arrestees will be processed in court. It’s also unclear where roughly 500 outside officers will be coming from, and what exactly those officers will be charged with doing.
Questions about the so-called mutual aid officers became more pressing after a group of cops from Columbus, Ohio, fatally shot a man during the recent Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
On Monday, Snelling told reporters that the outside officers “will be here to protect infrastructure locations where we know that we’re going to have delegates.”
Still, it’s unclear what will be expected of the officers if there’s an emergency or a disturbance at those sites.
Late last month, a police spokesperson said the department was still “in the process of finalizing mutual aid agreements” with other Illinois law enforcement agencies.
Another contingent is coming from Milwaukee, where some Chicago cops were deployed for the Republican convention.
The officers were expected to receive 12 hours of training ahead of next week’s convention, although it’s unclear if that has happened.