Chicago’s community-led public safety commission sent its three top picks for police superintendent late Thursdsay to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who must now decide who will lead the long-troubled department as it works through high crime, endemic street violence, low morale and court-ordered reforms.
The three finalists selected by the commission are Chicago Police Department Chief Larry Snelling, CPD Chief Angel Novalez and Shon Barnes, the chief of police in Madison, Wisconsin.
Johnson’s permanent superintendent will succeed former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s hand-picked top cop, David Brown, who came to Chicago from Dallas and oversaw a period of high crime while being criticized as out of his league. Who leads the Police Department, and whether they’re successful, will have major implications for the city, which is still reeling from 2020′s civil unrest and subsequent crime spikes, even as shooting and homicide totals have fallen from highs not seen in two decades.
While reducing street violence and arresting criminals will be front and center, the next police superintendent will also need to rebuild trust with community members who have experienced unconstitutional policing and are eager to see a more respectful approach to residents. The selection process itself is a nod in that direction, as Lightfoot joined activists in 2021 to create the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability to oversee the recommendation process in hopes of building public trust and community relationships.
This is the commission’s first time leading the selection process, which began in March after Brown announced one day after Lightfoot lost her reelection bid that he was stepping down.
Although Johnson campaigned on the need to address root causes of crime, the police superintendent will be responsible for addressing violence in the near term, and the mayor’s political success will depend greatly on his administration’s handling of public safety. All three finalists have ties to Chicago, a departure from Brown, whose status as an out-of-towner rankled the rank and file as well as some residents and stakeholders.
Here’s a look the candidates:
- A lifelong South Sider, Larry Snelling joined the CPD in 1992. 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.
- Angel Novalez was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Chicago with his family in the 1970s. He joined the Police Department 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 the CPD’s compliance has been slow.
- Of the three finalists, Shon Barnes has the fewest direct connections to Chicago and the CPD. Before he was hired as the chief of police in Madison in 2021, Barnes was 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. Prior to his time at COPA, Barnes was the deputy chief of police in Salisbury, North Carolina, and a captain in the Greensboro, North Carolina, police department.
Johnson now has 30 days either to choose one of the three finalists, who’d then need approval from the City Council, or order the commission to start the application process over again.
The new mayor called Thursday’s announcement “an important milestone” in the search. In a written statement, Johnson thanked the applicants and the commission and said he’s “confident that Chicago’s next superintendent will inspire trust, foster collaboration, and lead with integrity.”
Like so many of his predecessors, the next CPD superintendent will be faced with entrenched violent crime, largely concentrated in the city’s most underserved neighborhoods; poor officer morale; and a host of consent decree obligations that, to this point, the department has largely failed to meet.
Throughout April and May, the community public safety commission hosted seven public meetings across the city to solicit feedback from residents about what qualities they want in the next leader of the CPD. The tenor of each meeting varied by location, but one characteristic received near-universal support: The next superintendent should come from within the CPD and have strong ties to Chicago.
There were 54 applicants for the job. Thirty-two of them — including Snelling and Novalez — had experience working within the CPD.
The commission’s president, Anthony Driver Jr., repeatedly told meeting attendees that their comments and questions would be posed to the candidates who advanced to the interview stage.
As the interview process continued in late June, 19 members of the City Council released a letter declaring their “disappointment and dismay” at the commission’s decision to not offer a follow-up interview to Brian McDermott, CPD’s chief of patrol and a 28-year department veteran.
“The consequences are the old ‘Chicago Way,’ where we’ve seen time and time again where you have a very clout-heavy city, where people do favors for folks and people get positions through political influence, and it hasn’t worked,” Driver later said of the letter. “Our city has done this, has operated in the same way for decades, and we have not had good results.”
Before the finalists were announced, John Catanzara, the local president of the Fraternal Order of Police who was a frequent critic of former Superintendent Brown, thanked the commission for including rank-and-file officers in the search process.
“This process is 100 times better than what it was when the police board was conducting it,” Catanzara said. “It is much more fair and inclusive and I want to just say ‘Thank you’ on behalf of the 17,000 members I represent in the FOP for giving our members a voice in this process and explaining to you what is important to them in the boss who’s going to lead them forward.”
The process for selecting a permanent superintendent was previously spearheaded by the Chicago Police Board, the nine-person body that doles out punishments in the most severe cases of police misconduct. In previous searches, members of the board — all of whom were appointed by the mayor — would submit three finalists for the mayor to choose from.
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In early 2016, as the city was still reeling from the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel disregarded the three finalists compiled by the police board, which was led at the time by future mayor Lori Lightfoot. Emanuel ultimately selected Eddie Johnson, CPD’s chief of patrol, even though Johnson never applied for the job. Murders and nonfatal shootings steadily declined over the next few years, but Lightfoot fired Johnson in late 2019 following an embarrassing incident in which he was found asleep in his car near his home in Bridgeport.
After the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in April 2020, the police board presented Lightfoot with three finalists for the permanent job: Brown, the retired Dallas police chief; Kristen Ziman, the chief of police in Aurora; and Ernest Cato III, a CPD veteran who at the time was a deputy chief.
Lightfoot selected Brown for the job a day after the police board named its finalists. His introductory news conference was held a few hours after the CPD announced its first officer death due to the coronavirus.
Brown’s tenure was hallmarked by a spike in violent crime, especially carjackings, as well as widespread civil unrest and low officer morale. Brown announced his resignation one day after Lightfoot failed to qualify for the runoff election.
After he was sworn in as mayor, Brandon Johnson selected Fred Waller, CPD’s chief of patrol under Eddie Johnson, to serve as interim superintendent. Waller, who remained popular with officers and department supervisors after his retirement in 2020, did not apply for the permanent job.
The superintendent search process changed drastically two years ago when a new city ordinance wrested authority from the police board and handed it to the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability. What’s more, the new law also created 66 new district councilor positions — three for each of the CPD’s 22 patrol districts. Those district councilors serve as liaisons between the district’s officers and residents, but they will also play a larger role in future CPD superintendent searches.
“This is a great moment because now the people — the people — have a democratic option to say who polices their communities and how their communities are policed,” Frank Chapman, a longtime police reform activist and director of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression, said after the first class of district councilors was sworn in earlier this summer. “That’s the first time in the history of this country that this has happened, here in Chicago. And the reason why it happened here in Chicago is because we have so many great challenges.”
