Big Brain Brandon Johnson choses Larry Snelling as next Chicago PD Chief

Big Brain Brandon has chosen Larry Snelling as the next Chicago PD Superintendent.  NBC Chicago says it formally happens today.

Second City Cop has mixed feelings on Snelling.  Perhaps first and foremost, they criticize the fact that Snelling has never achieved a promotion through an exam score high enough to merit the promotion.  Instead, he’s always been a “merit” pick based upon who you know, who you slept with or who you’re related to.  Here’s a snip from their post.

Experience? He spend no significant time at any rank, certainly not long enough to actually learn each job. He got moved around for another line on the resume for his skyrocketing to the top – without ever passing an exam high enough to get promoted. He was a sergeant just FIVE YEARS AGO. You’re going to tell us he knows the ins-and-outs of a squad car accident investigation, TRRs, Watch Lieutenant duties, Detective protocols and running an Area?…

We still remember Waller helping throw cops under the bus for the Bobby Rush Office debacle via his silence. Those cops were ordered there and no one stuck up for them. We also remember Snelling help strip cops who refused the COVID jab and he wasn’t the only one we remember. Everything that has come out since those days shows cops were correct to assert their bodily autonomy.

Second City Cop did offer some helpful suggestions for the new Superintendent to ignore…

• Manpower – yeah, it’s politics, but Snelling is now the top political apparatchik. If you want to improve morale, agitate on a daily basis for manning the Districts. If that means shutting down the units (and god knows Cook County isn’t prosecuting criminals hard enough), then shut down the units. If the youngsters don’t want to work midnights, and you create all these bullshit little units for them to hide, the District law enforcement is going to suffer

• Time off – again, it’s an offshoot of manpower, but give us back our days off. All of them. There are plenty of cops with new cars, high end habits, nice houses, that will volunteer for the OT. No need to make everyone miserable with these deployment dates.

• Get the training out of the way earlier, like in winter when we aren’t needed on the street all the time. And for god’s sake, trim the Academy fat. Having eight (yes EIGHT) different instructors for a single session – each “instructor” reading a slide show for an hour and then disappearing – isn’t an efficient use of manpower. They could be working midnights in a Beat Car like we all did….or at least we-the-politically-unconnected did.

• Tell the community “No” when you have to. Yeah, you’re a political pawn with political responsibilities, but what’s been going on the past few years is ridiculous. How many oversight agencies do we have right now? Five? Six? It’s too many and it’s made cops incapable of doing anything enforcement related.

Now that Mr. Snelling has achieved ‘Top Cop’ status, he’ll get a change to put his mark on not only the department, but the city and its residents.  The fact that he has never scored high enough to merit a promotion should be a major concern.  But then again, maybe in inept mayor prefers to appoint inept individuals so as to let them outshine his incompetence.