Chicago’s top law-enforcement official warned that protesters will not be allowed to violently riot during next week’s Democratic National Convention, as anti-Israel demonstrators prepare to protest over the war in Gaza outside the venue.
“We’re not going to allow you to riot,” Chicago Police Department superintendent Larry Snelling told business leaders and elected officials in the crowd at a downtown event on Monday. “Protesting and rioting are two different things. You have the right to protest, but there will be no rioting tolerated.”
The superintendent’s public-safety assurances come weeks after the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis., where police arrested a gunman on July 15, and fatally shot a man equipped with knives the following day. The RNC’s security presence was strong, given the failed attempt on former president Donald Trump’s life at a campaign rally days earlier. The DNC will face its own security issues in the form of anti-Israel protests. The four-day event kicks off on Monday.
Snelling said officers will intervene the “moment” that DNC protests turn violent.
“I’m not going to wait until it gets out of control and then try to bring it back in,” he said. “The moment it starts, you put an end to it quickly. . . . So we will not allow people to come here and destroy this city.”
Like many other progressive cities, Chicago faced widespread rioting in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn.
Snelling made it clear that he won’t let a similar type of unrest happen next week, telling reporters that police will crack down on “violent actors” and vandals. Law enforcement will also handle protesters who diverge from their approved routes on a “case-by-case” basis, he added.
The last time that the DNC experienced protest violence was in 1968, also in Chicago, amid U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Anti-war activists took issue with the foreign conflict as Democratic vice president Hubert Humphrey, who won the presidential nomination that year, supported the war. The weeklong protests sparked tensions between police and demonstrators, leading to the death of one civilian and hundreds of injuries.
Snelling insisted that officers are prepared for any upheaval that comes next week, noting they have received more training for the DNC than the 2012 NATO summit.
“All of the things that worked there, we utilized that, we worked it up, we sharpened the saw to make that better,” he said. “But we also looked at things that we know that we could’ve done better, and we’ve taken corrective action with that.”
Officers are expected to receive twelve hours of training ahead of the Democratic Party’s nominating convention, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. It remains unclear if the training has occurred yet.