Chicago watchdog sounds alarm on police crowd control tactics during Democratic convention

CHICAGO - Police crowd control tactics could cause "escalating tensions" and constitutional violations against lawful demonstrators, the city’s inspector general warned Thursday, sounding the alarm for potential problems at the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

Inspector General Deborah Witzburg highlighted issues with new police directives in an analysis following up on her office’s investigation of the botched police response to protests and unrest in 2020 after the police murder of George Floyd.

The 52-page report comes as activists, irked over being unable to get protest permits, promise to show up and demonstrate in front of President Joe Biden and other party leaders when they arrive in Chicago in August ahead of the convention. The event's planners are hoping for a smooth kickoff to the race for the presidency with none of the blemishes of 1968, when raucous clashes between police and protesters diverted eyes away from the convention and onto TV screens.

The Chicago police “continue to rely on sort of outdated, outmoded principles of crowd management,” Witzburg told USA TODAY Thursday. "There are risks to the First and Fourth Amendment rights of lawful demonstrators in the context of a mass gathering.”

Pitfalls that could arise from the new police tactics, according to the analysis, include allowing for “kettling” - or corralling protesters into an area; the use of pepper spray against passive protesters; and failure to educate cops on the rights of demonstrators, thereby leaving police “ill-equipped to distinguish between lawful and unlawful demonstrators.”

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Chicago’s top cop Larry Snelling pushed back, saying Witzburg’s office failed to adequately investigate how the department had changed its approach to handling protests. 

The analysis was published in response to the mass arrest policies the police department released in February. Those policies would be deployed at the convention. Non-government watchdogs have already sounded the alarm over the policies, asking a judge to put them on ice.

Witzburg said the proposals are not without some merit. “As we look ahead to the Democratic National Convention in August and other mass events, both planned and spontaneous, which will occur in a city as large as Chicago, there are really important signs of progress,” she said. But “there are also some areas of continued concern.”

Improvements to the department’s tactics, according to the inspector general’s office, include simplifying guidance on use of force from 11 directives into a single policy; giving clear direction that the new policies apply when multiple arrests are anticipated amid an ongoing public safety situation; and, in particular, expanding the department’s inventory of body-worn cameras and explicitly instructing officers to activate cameras for arrests.

“Better body-worn camera coverage alone would be a significant and meaningful improvement over the 2020 response,” Witzburg said, adding it allows for greater evidence collection and accountability. “That's an important thing.”

Lack of use of body-worn cameras in 2020 was one of the failures the inspector general’s office slammed the police for in its original scathing report in 2021. The 137-page document said "under-prepared and ill-equipped" police failed to report uses of force, did not wear body cameras, and covered up information over the 10-day period when 1,500 arrests were made.

In the latest round of criticism, the watchdog’s office is also concerned the police department has begun training officers on directives that were not official, which could lead to confusion if they are changed.

Top cop ‘strongly encourages the OIG to undertake a more fulsome review’

In a 6-page response included in the inspector general’s analysis, Chicago’s police superintendent disagreed with the watchdog’s assessment that the police were training on “outdated concepts and tactics,” saying Witzburg's office failed to conduct interviews or observe the trainings.

“The Department strongly encourages the OIG to undertake a more fulsome review of the Department’s efforts,” Snelling wrote, adding the trainings were approved by a court-mandated police reform monitoring team and the Illinois attorney general.

Officers began training on the new policies on March 4 during an 8-hour session, the police chief said. A video training will follow once they are approved and officers will also attend a one-day training with the company they will be assigned to during the convention.

Since November 2023, around 9,500 officers have had at least 16 hours of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) crowd control training, Snelling said. They have also had 24 hours of “Sanctity of Life” trainings that covered de-escalation techniques, the First Amendment and the use of a new taser. 

The trainings were implemented to ensure police were ready for the convention, Snelling said.

The top cop also disagreed that the new policies allow for kettling, or “surrounding and detaining persons without the probable cause to do so.” Instead, officers are taught “encirclement shall only be used to surround those persons who will be arrested.”

He also noted that officers sometimes surround protesters in order to “protect those exercising their First Amendment rights.”

The police department’s crowd control tactics have already been on display over the past year at numerous pro-Palestinian protests around the city, including on the road to O’Hare International Airport where over 50 protesters blocking traffic were arrested and outside the Art Institute of Chicago where complaints allege excessive force was used against student protesters. 

Witzburg has caveated her office’s findings by saying convention protests and the unrest in 2020 are only comparable up to a certain point.

“The DNC is a very, very different enterprise,” she previously told USA TODAY, comparing the months of planning involved to the spontaneous protests in 2020. But “we would be very, very foolish to not apply lessons from the 2020 response to this situation.”

Hatem Abudayyeh, national chair of the United States Palestinian Community Network, was on the streets of Chicago in 2020 and said the response of Chicago cops to a protest in April proved to him not enough has changed. At a demonstration downtown on April 15, Abudayyeh said cops used a kettling technique to sweep up protesters who were complying with police orders.

Abudayyeh has helped organize 40 protests in Chicago since Oct.7 and said the incident in April has scared some people from attending more protests, effectively silencing them.

The longtime organizer promised tens of thousands of people would march on the convention no matter what. But he hopes the city led by Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former activist, will allow them their "constitutional right to protest" by granting them permits . 

“Once they’re granted the permits and we’re able to be in sight and sound, that’s what will make us the most confident,” Abudayyeh said, adding the police should work with the inspector general “instead of doubling down on the mistakes, on bad policies, like it seems as if Snelling has been doing.”