Larry Snelling, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s choice to lead the Chicago Police Department, has his hands full as the new superintendent. Snelling is the boss of the nation’s second-largest police department — and almost certainly its most controversial.
That controversy is not new. CPD has been facing criticism for more than 60 years. But public distrust reached new heights in 2015, after the city finally released dashcam footage showing a CPD officer shooting and killing 17-year-old Laquan McDonald the year before. The ensuing public outrage filled the streets with protesters and attracted the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice, which would eventually allege that CPD engaged in a “pattern or practice of unconstitutional use of force.”
That allegation eventually became, through a convoluted series of events, the federal consent decree under which CPD now operates, and implementation of which falls to Snelling. When the decree was implemented in 2019, proponents promised it would bring comprehensive reforms of the Police Department. Four years in, how is it going? As I detail in a recent Manhattan Institute report, the short answer is: not well.
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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Based on a recent issue brief.
Photo By Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
