Editorial: In a tense DNC week, Larry Snelling and his men and women in blue have been a credit to Chicago

Some have said that a legendarily fractious Democratic Party managing a political convention without much drama was the biggest surprise of the week. We’ll offer up a different suggestion for that honor.

Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling and his officers have done masterful work allowing protesters to have their say on the streets of Chicago while protecting people and property from those bent on something more than exercising their First Amendment rights. He — and all the men and women in blue who put their extensive training preparing for this week to use — deserve our thanks.

At a time when the job of keeping Chicago as safe as possible comes with too much disrespect and downright malevolence, Chicago’s cops conducted themselves with aplomb, using common sense to allow peaceful protesters to assemble even if they didn’t have permits while arresting those threatening and potentially harming people Tuesday at the Israeli consulate.

Turns out it wasn’t Chicago’s 1996 DNC and its Macarena-infused festivities that exorcised the demons of 1968. At least as we write (as the final night of the convention is underway), 2024 appears to have done the job once and for all. We’re hoping by the time you read this, nothing substantial will have changed.

Chicago police, faced with a sizable revolt against U.S. involvement in a foreign war as they were 56 years ago, have brought credit to the city and its residents. To be clear, we’re not saying the challenge this year was on a par with ’68. The number of protesters were well below what organizers predicted, and the foreign conflict at issue doesn’t entail American soldiers putting their lives at risk in a faraway land.

But this event was the biggest 1968-like challenge for the Police Department since Richard J. Daley’s shame, and both Mayor Brandon Johnson and Snelling deserve credit for preparing for the task and effectively executing the plan.

Indeed, the self-described “militant” group of protesters that threatened the Israeli consulate , resulting in more than 50 arrests, made clear their intentions of provoking the police into overreacting with their chant, “Make it great like ’68.” Snelling responded in a measured but forceful way.

“That’s what they brought here to Chicago,” he said. “It’s 2024. And the Chicago Police Department proved that. So let’s get off of 1968. … This is 2024.”

Each night this week, both around the United Center and throughout downtown Chicago, we’ve seen calm, professionalism and, when need be, the willingness to act when dissent no longer is peaceful. Proportionality is all that can be asked of our cops when emotions are high and there’s public anger being expressed on the streets: Do what’s necessary to protect the public and keep the peace. No more.

The police performance isn’t all that catches our attention. Snelling has shown Chicagoans in tangible, visible ways what being a leader means. He’s been out on the streets with his rank and file. He’s kept the media and the public apprised of arrests and injuries in a timely way. And his unflappable, straightforward manner has made skittish residents — and, let’s face it, genuinely nervous politicians — feel much more confident and calm as the week went on than many expected to feel.

Democrats are breathing a weekslong sigh of relief that they’re not having to prop up their unpopular and aged president for a reelection bid that was unwise from the start. Chicagoans are breathing a dayslong sigh of relief that the city not only has withstood the potential for violence and vandalism; it has been shown off to the rest of the country and the world in the positive light it deserves.

Pro-Palestinian activists march on Lake Street during the third day of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 21, 2024. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

Deserving praise, too, is the mayor. His appointment of Snelling as police chief is in our eyes far and away the best thing he’s done since taking office 15 months ago.

The ride in Snelling’s first year has been burdensome, to be sure, with violent weekends and killings of children horrifying the public. Those decrying the slow pace of CPD compliance with the wide-ranging federal consent decree struck in the late stages of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s tenure have taken Snelling to task as well. Throughout, Johnson has had his police chief’s back. We see a police chief who isn’t perfect but obviously cares for and loves his city and — critically — takes accountability and doesn’t shrink from hard questions.

One lingering question after the balloon drop and as delegates are catching their planes back home is what will happen to those protesters arrested and accused of going too far and threatening violence or vandalism or unlawfully impeding life in the nation’s third largest city. It will be worth watching how and whether Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who will leave office next year, prosecutes these cases.

She told us back in April that her office’s long-standing policy of not prosecuting protesters accused of violating the law so long as they are “peaceful” would not be in effect for the DNC. So it was a surprise to us to read Foxx telling local publication The Tribe on the eve of the convention the exact opposite. “It’s certainly a policy we will take into the DNC,” she said.

Foxx’s ultra-progressive stance toward criminal justice wore thin on Cook County residents, and she didn’t stand for reelection to a third term. The candidate she endorsed, Clayton Harris III, narrowly lost in the March Democratic primary to Eileen O’Neill Burke, who was critical of Foxx’s tenure and whom we endorsed .

Which of the arrested protesters will Foxx opt to take to court amid her apparent backsliding on her pledge to waive her do-not-prosecute policy for “peaceful” dissenters? We will monitor that and report back.

Those who would seek to cause mayhem rather than openly express their views ought to be held accountable, just as Snelling and his police force routinely are held accountable. But even with a great chief, a police force can’t do it all on its own.

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