With a Sunday deadline for selecting a new Chicago police superintendent, mayor closes in on crucial final choice

Mayor Brandon Johnson faces a Sunday deadline to make one of the most consequential decisions of his time leading the city so far: who to select as the next permanent superintendent of the Chicago Police Department.

Aside from the mayor, a big city’s top cop is often the most public member of local government. Their ability to lead a bureaucracy — in Chicago, it’s the largest city department with more than 11,000 men and women who deal with the city’s toughest issues — often comes to help define a mayor’s tenure.

Johnson is expected to announce Sunday his selection from the three finalists submitted to him last month: CPD Chief of Counterterrorism Larry Snelling, CPD Chief of Constitutional Policing and Reform Angel Novalez, and Shon Barnes, the chief of police in Madison, Wisconsin. An introductory news conference could come the following day.

Snelling, a South Side native who joined CPD in 1992, is considered by many department members, supervisors and close CPD observers to be the most likely choice.

But whoever is ultimately selected for the job will face an uphill climb.

“I think Chicago has three major challenges,” said Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based police think tank. “Number one: violent crime, no question about it. The next superintendent needs to know how to deal with violent crime. Number two: hiring cops. Chicago, like many cities, is facing a staffing crisis. Motivating his current employees to encourage others to become cops, that is huge. If you can’t staff the CPD, you can’t deal with violent crime, you can’t deal with community services. Number three: the consent decree. It isn’t going away. It has to be taken seriously. It has to be implemented.”

And there won’t be much of a honeymoon, Wexler added.

“Whoever comes into Chicago needs to hit the ground running and needs to hit all three challenges head on,” he said.

Data from the city’s Office of Inspector General show that CPD ranks have shrunk by about 1,500 officers since 2019. As of this month, the Police Department counted about 11,700 sworn officers, according to the OIG.

Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor and police accountability expert, said that the next CPD superintendent should take concrete steps to transform the department’s culture by further prioritizing transparency and accountability.

“We can’t forget that CPD’s problematic culture is the reason why we’re under a consent decree, a civil rights consent decree, in Chicago in the first place (and) why the department has been so ineffective in solving violent crime, so ineffective in making us safe,” Futterman said.

Snelling, 54, has quickly climbed CPD’s ranks in recent years.

He was promoted last October to chief of the Bureau of Counterterrorism, which oversees the narcotics and gang divisions as well as SWAT teams.

Before that, he was a tactical officer, lieutenant and then commander of the Englewood District. Snelling oversaw the district during the fraught summer of 2020, when civil unrest gripped cities across the country following George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

Considered one of the department’s use-of-force experts, Snelling was previously assigned to CPD’s training academy. He also testified about the importance of accuracy in officers’ incident reports; that was part of Chicago Police Board proceedings against four officers accused of exaggerating the circumstances that led up to the fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald in 2014.

Novalez was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Chicago with his family in the 1970s. He joined CPD in 2001 and was previously assigned to the Near West District, the training academy, Area 4 and the Grand Central District on the Northwest Side. After he was shot in the line of duty, Novalez quickly rose through the ranks to oversee much of CPD’s community-building efforts, including the CAPS program.

He now serves as chief of the Office of Constitutional Policing, which works to develop and implement internal department policies that adhere to the city’s consent decree, though compliance has been slow.

Barnes was hired as the chief of police in Madison in 2021, and he was previously the director of training and professional development for the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, the body that investigates use-of-force incidents by CPD officers. He also held supervisory positions in two police departments in North Carolina.

Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s hand-picked choice for superintendent, David Brown, came to Chicago from Dallas and faced criticism that he was in over his head. His aloof style alienated him from the community and the rank and file. When he was asked about his lack of visibility at a City Council committee, Brown blamed it on COVID-19. That left Lightfoot as the main public face on crime, allowing critics to tag her with the city’s problems.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s first superintendent, Garry McCarthy, came to Chicago after stints in New York and Newark, New Jersey. His brash East Coast persona rubbed some the wrong way but he presided over a time of decreasing violent crime and earned respect within the department. Emanuel fired him amid fallout over the Laquan McDonald police murder and accusations of a City Hall cover-up, then replaced him with Eddie Johnson, a lower-ranking official who never applied for the job.

While Eddie Johnson wasn’t a visionary police leader, the Chicago native and CPD lifer had respect among rank-and-file cops and also community leaders. Lightfoot fired him, though, in late 2019 after she said Johnson misled her about the circumstances of a drunken driving episode near his home in Bridgeport earlier that year.

As a progressive, Mayor Johnson campaigned on a platform that policing needs to be reformed and the city can’t address all its problems by simply arresting people. He entered office facing public concerns about high crime and took over a department struggling with low morale, often stoked by combative police union President John Catanzara, who warned that hundreds of officers would quit if he were elected.

That prediction hasn’t panned out, but Johnson has aimed his words and actions at assuaging department members. Last month, shortly before the three finalists were announced, Catanzara offered praise for the new process to narrow down superintendent candidates.

“This process is 100 times better than what it was when the police board was conducting it,” Catanzara told members of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability last month.

Johnson’s selection of former CPD Chief of Patrol Fred Waller as interim superintendent was an important move as Waller is a city cop who has worked the same streets as his subordinates.

While Johnson said he would give a fair shake to Barnes, he has also said he wants to select someone who knows the city of Chicago well. His expected selection of Snelling or even Novalez would represent a continuation of his efforts to rebuild morale that started with Waller, who he recently praised for building “unprecedented” morale.

That’s important, Northwest Side Ald. Nick Sposato said, “after the last deal didn’t work out” with Brown and police officers.

“They’re our guys and they’re both tremendously respected and loved by the rank and file,” Sposato said. “That’s very important to have a boss, a leader that’s respected and loved.”