Even if everything goes according to plan, the first day of the G-8summit will be a very trying Saturday in May for the Chicago Police Department.
At least two major demonstrations are planned for downtown, and organizers of both want to send crowds of marchers down Michigan Avenue in the middle of the day. And those are just the ones police know about because demonstration leaders sought city permits.
Police officials have estimated that 2,000 to 10,000 demonstrators may show up in search of a global spotlight during the three days of the overlapping Group of Eight and North Atlantic Treaty Organization meetings, but some experts believe the crowds could swell to multiples of that range.
Whatever the numbers on May 19-21, police have to be ready to handle it without missing a beat on their usual priorities.
While the department has remained secretive about its plans, police officials said training for the summits has been far more extensive than for the last such event in town.
In 2002, to prepare for the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue summit, which drew protests against globalization, the department’s tactical and other specialized officers trained for just eight hours, said Brian Murphy, chief of the Bureau of Organizational Development.
For G-8 and NATO, the same group of specialized officers is going through five days of training designed “specifically for those front and center” officers, Murphy said.
In recent months, the department sent officers to a Department of Homeland Security facility in Alabama to be trained as instructors so they could come back to Chicago and teach thousands of officers a three-day crowd-control program. The department has added two days of training.
The Police Department refused to provide numbers, but police sources familiar with the planning said the department has so far sent about 8,400 of its roughly 12,000 sworn officers through some form of crowd-control training.
To date, about 2,400 officers drawn mostly from tactical and gang units have completed the training designed to prepare them for the front lines of crowd control. Those officers would likely be outfitted in the black body armor that police call “turtle suits.”
An additional 6,000 officers have taken a less intensive program of up to two days to make them ready to be responders working downtown during the summits, dressed in more traditional uniforms, sources said.
No one needs to tell Superintendent Garry McCarthy that his reputation is riding on the May summits. The former New York police deputy commissioner touted his experience handling high-profile events and terrorism threats when Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel hired him away from the Newark Police Department.
Like Emanuel, McCarthy is predicting a well-managed weekend, playing down the potential for scenes like the widespread rioting at the 1999 World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle or, in January, the Occupy demonstration in Oakland, Calif., that resulted in damage to City Hall and about 400 arrests.
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“What we have to do is protect the First Amendment rights of the persons who want to come here and peacefully express their First Amendment right to free speech,” McCarthy said recently. “We do this on a constant basis. We do it all the time, by the way.”
Noting the frequency of the dignitary visits to the United Nations, and his role in protecting the 2004 Republican National Convention, McCarthy said, “This isn’t the first time I’ve been involved in this type of event.”
But with two summits in President Barack Obama’s hometown at the same time, and the expectation that the weekend could be a major rejuvenation point for the Occupy movement, Chicago police understand the stakes are high.
“They know this is a defining moment,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington. “What McCarthy has going for him is his experience in New York.”
Some in the department think McCarthy and Emanuel are being naive about the threat for mayhem. They believe they’re not being given sufficient training, and they fear that if demonstrations turn violent, they’ll be blamed for whatever happens, according to several officers who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak for the department.
Officers “are terrified they’re going to get caught on camera doing something that looks wrong,” said one veteran supervisor.
Some officers scoffed at one piece of the training — a 4-inch-by-4-inch flip booklet of hand signals that could be used in crowd-control formations. For example, a police leader holding both arms out at his side is telling squads of about six officers to form a line.
But some of the signals appear confusing, one officer said, and are unlikely to be useful in the confusion of a violent protest.
Fraternal Order of Police President Michael Shields agreed with the criticism of the pamphlet. He also voiced a complaint among officers that the summits have little upside for the department but the potential to cost the city millions. He pointed to the recent $6.2 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by people arrested in a 2003 Iraq War demonstration.
“My concern is the lawsuits,” Shields said. “We’re going to be told this is how much (the summits) will cost, but we’ll be paying for the lawsuits for years to come.”
Murphy said negative comments from union officials and anonymous voices on police blogs don’t jibe with the response police leaders have seen. The department surveyed officers before and after they went through training, he said, and 96 percent “said they’ve improved their ability to deal with the situation based on the training.”
While refusing to discuss details of deployment numbers or the expected costs of policing the summits, police officials have promised the department will have sufficient resources to handle any situation that arises, whether downtown at the summit locations or out in the neighborhoods most plagued by gang violence.
William Bratton, who ran the Los Angeles and New York police departments and now heads the global private investigation firm Kroll, said Chicago’s very large police force is an advantage.
“The problem that Oakland and some of the other departments around the country have been having is that they’re so small, then when something blows up they have to go to mutual aid very quickly, and have police forces coming in that have not trained with them and operate differently,” Bratton said.
Chicago police have not detailed any plans for help from other departments, but law enforcement sources said city police may rely on help from State Police, Cook County sheriff’s officers and outlying suburbs.
McCarthy also plans to maintain calm by relying on the measured approach police took with Occupy Chicago demonstrations last fall. Officers gave demonstrators clear opportunities to disperse before being arrested as an act of civil disobedience.
But most law enforcement and security experts expect the summits to be much more difficult to handle. Several organizers in the Occupy movement across the country say they expect large groups from their areas to make the trip, calling Chicago a main event in the protest movement this year.
The Occupy movement, which seeks to represent the interests of mainstream working Americans, has placed a high value on avoiding property damage and violent conflict with police. But the demonstrations are likely to also attract “black bloc” protesters known for confrontational tactics that include damaging property.
Comparing the Occupy protesters to the mix of demonstrators attracted by global economic and security meetings would be foolhardy, Shields said.
“They’re like night and day,” he said. “Occupy is like kid’s stuff compared to what I think the G-8 and NATO are going to attract.”
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