Video: The WTTW News Spotlight Politics team on the day’s top stories. (Produced by Andrea Guthmann)

Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling did not wait for the bang of the final gavel at the Democratic National Convention before declaring his officers met the test posed by the days of sustained protests that swirled around the official nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president.

Just hours after approximately 400 officers kept the peace outside the Israeli consulate during an unpermitted protest demanding an immediate end to the war in Gaza and an end to aid to Israel, Snelling said CPD had not just exorcised the ghosts of the police riot that indelibly tarnished the 1968 DNC, but banished the shadow cast by the department’s botched handling of the protests and unrest triggered by the police murder of George Floyd during the summer of 2020.

“The Chicago Police Department is transforming,” said Snelling, who was present during a majority of the protests and wore a body camera. “This is a transformation.”

Just eight complaints of police misconduct were filed with the Civilian Office of Police Accountability between Aug. 18-22, records show. By comparison, there were 591 misconduct complaints filed between May 29, 2020, and June 11, 2020, the height of the protests after Floyd’s murder.

CPD used hundreds of police officers on bicycles to police the protests, only deploying officers in riot gear after a dozen protestors broke down a section of the perimeter around the United Center erected by the Secret Service on Aug. 19 and then again during the Aug. 20 protest outside the Israeli consulate. In all, 74 people were arrested during protests related to the convention. Two protestors suffered minor injuries, while an officer sustained a concussion after being pushed, officials said.

Snelling said he was deeply proud of the officers for following both the letter and the spirit of CPD’s new mass arrest policy, crafted specifically for the DNC and implemented after fierce pushback from police reform groups.

Mayor Brandon Johnson told WTTW News shortly before the DNC ended that CPD “most certainly” passed the test posed by the convention.

“I couldn’t be more proud of how the Chicago Police Department responded in this moment,” Johnson said, praising Snelling’s leadership as “compassionate, collaborative and competent.”

The next day, with exhausted delegates headed home, Johnson completed his victory lap.

“If the 1968 convention went down in history as the example of police brutality, then the 2024 convention will go down as the example of constitutional policing,” Johnson said, shortly before Snelling pleaded with the news media to stop talking about 1968.

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Not only were the protests mostly peaceful, but there was also no uptick of crime or violence elsewhere in the city, even with hundreds of officers focused on protecting the United Center and McCormick Place.

Shootings dropped 20%, homicides dropped 31% and robberies dropped 54% when you compare Aug. 19-22, 2023, and the same week this year, Snelling said.

Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 7, President John Catanzara, who predicted chaos around the United Center and a crime spike in the city’s neighborhoods, said praised Snelling for being present at every significant protest and being willing “to get his hands dirty.”

“It is clear CPD is on the right track with the right leader,” Catanzara said.

Protest Groups’ Perspective

But for the leaders of the groups that protested the convention, the lawyers’ group that worked to protect the rights of protestors and the reform advocates that forced police brass to revise its policies to avoid violating the constitution, the jury is very much out on whether CPD’s success during the convention represents a significant change in the department, which has faced decades of scandals, misconduct and brutality.

“Some of our worst fears did not come to pass” during the DNC, said Alexandra Block, director of the Criminal Legal System and Policing Project at the ACLU of Illinois, which forced CPD to revise its mass arrest policy. “What remains to be seen is what does CPD do when the glare of the national and international media spotlight isn’t on them, in the same way it was during the DNC.”

CPD deserves credit for “exercising restraint” to allow protesters to exercise their First Amendment rights, Block said.

“That’s simply CPD doing their job,” Block said. “This is what they should always do. The test for whether CPD has transformed is not what happens when everyone from the president to the governor, to the mayor to all the national and international press are watching them. It is how do they treat ordinary Chicagoans when the cameras aren’t rolling.”

CPD is in full compliance with just 7% of the consent decree, the 2019 federal court order that requires the department to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers.

“We know that CPD is not where it should be in those types of everyday interactions, the traffic stops, the street stops, how they treat people during regular protests that are not part of the DNC,” Block said. “Victory lap is a bit premature. The day-to-day interactions still target people of color are not the kind of respectful, de-escalatory interactions that CPD was able to achieve during the DNC.”

The Coalition to March on the DNC, made up of more 125 organizations, organized marches of more than 3,000 people on the first and last days of the convention after suing the city to be within “sight and sound” of the United Center.

Hatem Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the Coalition and U.S. Palestinian Community Network who helped organize and lead the protests, said his group focused their efforts on the DNC because Democrats control the White House and the country’s foreign policy.

Protests around the Republican National Convention in July were much smaller and only took place on one day.

“Tens of thousands are here because the Democrats are in power,” Abudayyeh said. “It’s Biden and Harris and [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken and all of those senators who are responsible for the deaths and the blood of 40,000 Palestinians.”

Abudayyeh said CPD’s decision to line the coalition’s marches with bicycle CPD officers on bicycles on both sides “put us in unsafe situations, forcing our marshals to struggle to navigate around the bicycles to maintain safety.”

The leaders of the Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild were highly critical of CPD’s handling of the protests, which the group said was defined by “massive shows of force, brutality, and mass arrests.”

Block said an inordinate number of officers lined the protest route near the United Center, and helicopters hovered directly overhead as trucks

“That did feel pretty overwhelming,” Block said.

The ACLU will ask the Chicago Police Department to complete an after-action report about its response to the DNC protests and solicit feedback from Chicagoans, Block said. There are still some open questions about why a mass arrest was declared and how arrestees were treated after they were taken into custody, Block said.

CPD’s response will also be analyzed by the independent monitoring team charged with enforcing the consent decree. After the protests during the summer of 2020, the consent decree was expanded to include new rules governing efforts to prepare for large protests and civil unrest to requirements that officers’ body-worn cameras be reviewed after incidents.

A spokesperson for Independent Monitor Maggie Hickey declined to comment to WTTW News, but said the CPD response would be assessed in the team’s next report.

The protests around the DNC — which were largely planned weeks in advance, took place one at a time and had official permits to take place in a specific area of the city — were very different than the impromptu allies that erupted across the city after Floyd’s murder, Block said.

“What happens when there are multiple spontaneous protests like there were in 2020?” Block said, noting that in that scenario, Snelling and other top CPD brass would not be able to be present while officers police the crowd. “Have the lessons of 2020, have the lessons of 2024 filtered down through the ranks of CPD enough for us to trust that when the superintendent himself is not there watching the intermediate-level supervisors, the sergeants and the line officers, will follow the law and follow CPD policy. That question did not get tested or answered.”

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]