A key member of a Chicago police oversight body urged the City Council Wednesday to postpone the search for a permanent replacement for retired Police Supt. Larry Snelling until after the mayoral election.
As president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, Anthony Driver led the nationwide search that culminated in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s selection of Snelling. Driver stepped down as president to mount what turned out to be a losing race for Congress, but he is still a commission member involved in the search for Snelling’s replacement.
In a letter to City Council members Wednesday, Driver asked that the Nov. 12 deadline for the commission to complete a nationwide search, interview candidates and present the names of three finalists to Johnson be put off until spring — after Chicagoans choose their next mayor.
“My concern is rooted entirely in one objective: ensuring that Chicago attracts the strongest possible pool of candidates for one of the most important public safety positions in the country,” Driver wrote. “At a time when Chicago is experiencing historic reductions in homicides and violent crime, this process is simply too important to get wrong.”
Johnson has not yet decided whether to wage what will almost certainly be an uphill battle for reelection or walk away after a single term.
But he has already rejected the call by his Council opposition to allow the winner of the 2027 mayoral election to select Snelling’s replacement.
”Look, there’s a process. There’s a law that places us on a pretty strict timeline,” Johnson told WBEZ’s Sasha-Ann Simons on the most recent installment of “Ask the Mayor.” “To cut off democracy — and democracy has to wait based upon a political cycle or calendar? I don’t find that to be a reasonable way to govern.
“What is that suggesting? That I’m not going to be here? So we’re making decisions again based upon chance or lots? I’m just going to be very direct here. I find that to be absolutely ridiculous — insulting to the people of Chicago. So we should stop a process based upon someone’s political calendar? That is old-school-style governance, and that’s what got us into this mess. I’m here to clean it up.”
Driver stressed that his call for a delayed timeline is “not a political argument, nor is it an indictment of the current mayor, civilian oversight or the ordinance itself.”
His only purpose in urging the Council to extend the Nov.12 deadline until “next spring after Chicago has certainty regarding its executive leadership” is to convince “the best candidates available” that it’s worth the “professional risk that accompanies a confidential national search.”
“We know that this concern is on the minds of potential candidates. For some of the very leaders we most hope to recruit, the combination may be enough to discourage them from applying at all,” he wrote.
Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th), whose Far Southwest Side ward is home to scores of Chicago police officers, told the Chicago Sun-Times on the day after Snelling’s retirement announcement that it made no sense to let Johnson, whom he called a “lame-duck mayor,” choose the next superintendent before the mayoral election.
Now that Driver, who led the search that produced “the best superintendent we’ve had in the modern era” is saying “let’s pump the brakes,” O’Shea said the Council should “be doing just that.”
“We need to get this right. We need to get the most talented people to apply for this position. Chicago needs it. Chicago deserves it,” O’Shea said Wednesday. “We should slow down this process and make sure that we’re coming up with the best possible candidates to lead the third-largest police department in our country.”
Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara could not be reached. He has previously urged the Council to “override the charter of the Community Commission for Public Safety” and allow Fred Waller to serve as interim superintendent “through the rest of this term until a new mayor is decided.”
Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington D.C. based police think tank, has also warned that the timing of Chicago’s search would be a “challenge for prospective candidates.”
“Let’s just say that for anyone looking to recruit, it’s an extra dimension that they’ll have to deal with — being hired before the mayoral election — that inevitably creates questions about stability.”
If the Council agrees to follow Driver’s suggestion, it wouldn’t be the first time that the search for a new Chicago police superintendent was altered.
In 2016, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel rejected the three finalists presented to him by then-Police Board President Lori Lightfoot. At Emanuel’s request, the City Council then changed the law that required a second nationwide search, allowing Emanuel to appoint Eddie Johnson.