Commission aiding in police superintendent search will weigh candidate plans for controlling youth gatherings

The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, now holding public forums to gather input on helping Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson select a new Chicago police superintendent, will consider ideas for managing large gatherings of youths downtown as it sifts through prospective replacements for the department’s boss.

Anthony Driver Jr., president of the commission, said Thursday that strategies for crowd control, as well as “how to deal with youth and youth incidents,” are among the commission’s search criteria going forward as the group prepares to hand the incoming mayor a shortlist of names.

“There’s a number of issues that we face in our city and, (with) each of them, we plan on asking superintendent candidates how they would handle the situation,” Driver said. And that includes, he said, the type of chaos seen in the Loop last weekend, which police struggled to handle.

Driver noted that large-scale gatherings of young people in the downtown area are “not a new issue.”

Still, handling such impromptu crowds of young people moved quickly up the list of issues on the minds of many who spoke to the commission this week at its latest public hearing. Teens and young adults were captured in viral videos blocking traffic, attacking passersby and jumping on a CTA bus in the heart of Chicago’s tourist district, again putting an unwanted national spotlight on city crime.

More than 150 South Side residents and community stakeholders gathered Wednesday at St. Sabina Catholic Church in Auburn Gresham to give feedback on the ongoing search for the next superintendent.

The meeting, organized by the commission, came just a day after outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot questioned CPD leaders about the department’s tactical response to the chaotic gathering of young people. Two teen boys were shot near Millennium Park on Saturday — 11 months after another teen was shot and killed there.

Throughout the two hours of public comment, several speakers made reference to the events that unfolded Saturday in the center of the city.

“Parents need to be charged and penalized for their children’s behavior,” one speaker, Flora Williams, said to applause. “Until we do that, nothing is going to change.”

Once sworn in, Johnson can select his nomination for the next superintendent from the three submitted finalists, or he can instruct the commission to start the process over. Whoever is selected will then need approval from the full City Council.

Johnson, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and several current and former police officials have all said they would prefer the next superintendent to come from within the Police Department. Driver has said candidates from inside and outside CPD all will be subject to the same scrutiny.

The group has until mid-July to submit three names to Johnson, who takes office in mid-May. He can choose one or reject all three, kicking off the search process anew.

Johnson told the Tribune earlier this month that he wanted input from an array of stakeholders on his choice for superintendent.

“I want to make sure that law enforcement, of course, is at the table, the faith community, the business community, and people impacted by violence,” he said, “so that there could be some real discussion of who can help lead and put together a public safety plan with the community that we can actually get behind.”

Johnson issued a statement about the weekend chaos, calling it unacceptable and also saying it is not constructive to “demonize” young people. During his visit to Springfield this week the incoming mayor said there were two aspects to what he said and that it was not contradictory.

“Of course we don’t condone that behavior. That’s the first thing I said,” Johnson told reporters, before bringing up the environment of his home neighborhood to emphasize a message of public safety.

Johnson asked if anyone had “more incentive for a safer Chicago” than someone raising a family in Austin, the large West Side community area where he lives, which has been generationally afflicted by violent crime. The mayor-elect went on to tell reporters that the interpretation of his statement as a mixed message was giving residents a “false choice.”

“You can make sure that we eradicate the root causes that lead to violence, and we also can make sure that there’s support on the front line to make sure that we’re preventing violence,” he said. “It’s a false choice.”

Fred Waller, who retired as the department’s Chief of Patrol in 2020, oversaw many of the CPD’s responses to protest marches in the downtown area, which were a frequent occurrence after the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video in 2015.

Organizers of planned marches and protests would tell CPD what route they planned to take, which allowed the police to plan accordingly, Waller said. With “teen takeover” events, though, there is no leadership structure with whom CPD could consult.

“The ones that are ‘pop-up’ kind of protests or just kids running wild, so to speak, there’s no real person that you can talk to,” Waller said. “They’re just all over the place.”

“They just don’t have a straight direction or a straight route that they want to go to, and it makes it a lot harder because now all your resources with the police department get scattered and you’re all over the place with your resources,” Waller added. “You can’t really galvanize your resources as well as you would like to.”

At St. Sabina, more than 40 people stepped to the microphone to offer suggestions and critiques on a range of issues facing the Chicago Police Department and its rank and file, including officer burnout, disrespectful treatment of civilians and the murder clearance rate.

Marion Thomas told the commission that, as a child, he met CPD officers at his school whom he felt he could look up to. Now, Thomas said, “I look at officers as soldiers.”

“Officers don’t know the Black youth at all,” said Thomas, who is 25. “They sit there and just arrest us for guns and drugs and they really don’t know us, they just attack us.”

Other speakers urged the commission to nominate candidates who are committed to working with neighborhood community groups and anti-violence organizations.

“You have to have a police superintendent who’s willing to work with these community organizations and give them the power they deserve,” said Darryl Smith, president of the Englewood Political Task Force. “You cannot police from a book — you have to talk to the people that are out here every day, dealing with this every day.”

The application process opened April 7, and prospective applicants have until May 7 to submit their materials for consideration.

Leaders of the commission have vowed to keep the evaluation and selection process as public as possible. The first meeting was held in Austin last week, where more than a dozen residents voiced support for retired CPD Chief Ernest Cato III.

Cato was a finalist for the superintendent job in 2020, though Lightfoot ultimately selected David Brown, the former chief of police in Dallas. Cato abruptly retired in late 2022 after three decades with the department. Reached by phone last week, Cato declined to comment on his future job plans and the support he enjoys on the West Side.

Several more speakers endorsed Cato on Wednesday, but other potential candidates also garnered support, including CPD Chief Larry Snelling, Deputy Chief Rahman Muhammad and Cmdr. Roderick Watson.

Nino Brown, a former elementary school teacher, told the commission members that the leader of the CPD should be dedicated to violence-prevention efforts.

“What we need is a superintendent who can hold police accountable but also work themselves out of a job, right?” Brown said. “There’s a thousand and one things that happened before violence takes place and we need a superintendent that is invested in violence intervention, violence prevention.”

Thursday, the Police Department announced the May 15 retirement of interim Superintendent Eric Carter, who assumed leadership of the department after Brown resigned last month.

The commission has another public meeting, to be held over Zoom, scheduled for April 25. The next in-person meeting is set for May 4 at Roosevelt High School in the Albany Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side. Commission leaders have said that more meetings could also be scheduled in other parts of the city.

A flyer advertising another “teen takeover” at Millennium Park this Saturday has circulated on social media in recent days. Another speaker at St. Sabina, Matt Brandon, told the members of the commission that he and dozens of other men from South Shore were planning to go downtown to meet with youths who may be looking to start trouble.

“Whoever our police superintendent is can only be as strong as the community that stands behind them,” Brandon said to another round of applause.

Tribune reporter Jeremy Gorner contributed.

scharles@chicagotribune.com