The Chicago Police Department’s Counterterrorism Chief Larry Snelling and Angel Novalez, CPD’s head of Constitutional Policing and Reform, will compete with Shon Barnes, police chief in Madison, Wisconsin, for the right to become Chicago’s $260,004-a-year top cop.

The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability on Thursday concluded its four-month, nationwide search with a unanimous vote to send the names of Snelling, Novalez and Barnes to Mayor Brandon Johnson.

Thursday’s vote starts the 30-day clock for Johnson to choose one of the three finalists — or reject all three and order the interim civilian oversight panel to launch a second nationwide search to come up with three more.

Johnson has expressed a strong desire to choose Interim Supt. Fred Waller’s replacement from inside the department — or at least select someone with CPD experience. He views an insider as pivotal to boosting morale among the rank-and-file that hit bottom under former Supt. David Brown, the former Dallas police chief who resigned on the day after then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for a second term.

If boosting police morale is a priority, Snelling could emerge as a favorite.

He is pretty much beloved among the rank-and-file and reportedly wowed commission members with his humility.

Snelling was promoted from deputy chief of the Area 2 detective division to chief of counterterrorism after the surprise resignation of Ernest Cato III, a semi-finalist in this year’s search who didn’t make it to the top three.

Over his more than three decades with the department, Snelling has also served as the commander of the notoriously violent Englewood District and as a sergeant for recruit training at the police academy.

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He notably designed the latest version of CPD’s training model on use of force, an integral part of the consent decree outlining the terms of federal court oversight of the department.

Snelling was also a lead trainer ahead of the 2012 NATO Summit, when CPD was widely-praised for defusing a potentially volatile confrontation with Black Bloc protesters near McCormick Place with a non-confrontational approach.

Snelling’s role in that widely-praised performance shows his expertise in constitutional policing. That’s crucial for a department struggling to implement sweeping court-ordered reforms. The most recent report from a federal monitor shows CPD has fully implemented less than 10% of those mandates. However, he has also been suspended at least twice over his long career. A database compiled by the Invisible Institute shows a use-of-force complaint against Snelling in 1994 triggered a two-day suspension. The following year, Snelling served a five-day suspension for conduct unbecoming. Details of both incidents were not known.

If Johnson’s top priority is to speed consent decree compliance to re-build shattered trust between citizens and police in Black and Brown communities, he may be drawn to Novalez.

Novalez currently is tasked with creating and implementing policies to meet the demands of that consent decree, which was put in place in response to the police killing of Laquan McDonald. Before that, he was the deputy chief of the Office of Community Policing, overseeing the expansion of the department’s Civil Rights Unit and Neighborhood Policing Initiative Programs. Novalez was placed in charge of community policing two weeks after civil unrest triggered by the murder of George Floyd that devolved into two devastating rounds of looting.

Two years ago, a program that encourages district coordination officers to engage with residents on a personal level expanded to 10 districts, as Grand Crossing, Englewood and Gresham were added.

“Rather minor or involved, we want some participation from the community because that will help us build some accountability. Also, it gives people a sense of ownership of their own geography,” Novalez said at a news conference on the expansion.

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Nevertheless, a report released last month by Northwestern University researchers concluded the nearly-four-year-old Neighborhood Policing Initiative has fallen short of its goal of strengthening CPD’s relationship with the community and reducing crime.

Last year, Novalez testified before a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the surge in assault-style weapons Chicago police officers recovered after those weapons had been used to commit crimes. “What we are seeing is an increase in firepower. … We are seeing more assault-style weapons being used. It is incredibly scary for our officers,” Novalez said on that day.

The dark horse in the competition to become Chicago’s next police superintendent is Shon Barnes.

He is the only outsider among the finalists, which could be viewed as almost disqualifying after Brown’s disastrous tenure. Still, Barnes has a clear connection to Chicago law enforcement.

Before being hired in 2021 as police chief in Madison, Wisconsin, with a population of less than 270,000 people, he worked as the director of training and development at COPA. That agency, charged with investigating serious misconduct allegations, is widely viewed by rank-and-file officers and their union as a kangaroo court.

Barnes earned his police stripes as deputy chief in Salisbury, North Carolina, after 17 years in the Greensboro Police Department, where he rose to captain.

In Madison, Barnes was accused of making sexually inappropriate comments to one of his officers during an exit interview. After a thorough investigation, Madison’s Department of Civil Rights cleared Barnes of the woman’s allegations.

The department found no evidence that Barnes violated the city’s policy against sexual harassment and discrimination. The Madison mayor’s chief of staff subsequently apologized that “city staff inadvertently confirmed details about the complaint, which was harmful to both parties.”

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During his brief stint at COPA, Barnes served under chief administrator Sydney Roberts. She was forced out in May 2021 after Lightfoot publicly ridiculed the slow pace of COPA investigations.

Commission President Anthony Driver said the commission sought out candidates with the rare combination of experience and skill to “increase public safety, deliver systemwide reform, support officer wellness and build and cultivate deep and lasting trust” in Chicago neighborhoods.

To guarantee public input and cast the broadest possible net, the commission held seven public forums and gathered survey responses from 250 civilians and 270 police personnel. Driver and his colleagues also spent hours listening to the concerns of rank-and-file police officers who belong to the Fraternal Order of Police. They also met with leaders of the police sergeants and lieutenants associations.

Input was received from past and present police brass in Chicago and across the nation, other law enforcement experts and academics, outreach workers and members of religious, social service, labor, legal aid and business organizations.

“We wanted to ensure that the selection process was shaped by community input, reflecting a wide range of perspectives We are grateful for the valuable feedback and insights we received from the diverse range or stakeholders,” Driver was quoted as saying in a news release announcing Thursday’s meeting.

The “extensive and thorough search process ... is a testament to our commitment to finding the most qualified candidates who can effectively lead the Chicago Police Department and address the evolving needs of our city,” Commissioner Remel Terry was quoted as saying in the news release.

Sources close to the selection process said all three finalists impressed commission members with their humility, a pivotal quality for any big-city superintendent.

Snelling, Novalez and Barnes used “we” — not “I” — during interviews with the panel, well aware teamwork is needed to deliver Chicago from violent crime and rebuild public trust.

All were described as “deeply knowledgeable” and had done their homework, devising specific plans and crime-fighting strategies. That seemed to be lacking under Brown, who, some critics say, lurched from one strategy to another.

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Former longtime Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck held down the fort at CPD after Lightfoot fired Eddie Johnson.

He advised the commission to ask candidates from inside the department what real evidence they could show to prove they could rise above being an insider and the baggage that comes with it.

Beck advised the commission to turn the question on its ear for candidates like Barnes with no CPD experience. What evidence could he produce to show his ability to rise above the limitations of being an outsider?

Sources said commission members came away “thinking Barnes can crush it” if only Johnson were willing to roll the dice and risk alienating a demoralized rank-and-file that despised David Brown and never believed the Dallas transplant understood Chicago or had their backs.

If the strength of a candidate’s response during the lengthy, in-depth interviews were the overriding criteria, Barnes might even be the hands-down choice. He was described as a potentially “transformative” police leader.

During a February 2021 interview with a Madison TV station, Barnes was asked about defunding the police, a concept that Mayor Brandon Johnson had a history of supporting before distancing himself from it during the mayoral campaign.

Barnes responded that “defund that police” has “different meanings, depending on who you ask” and that it is “more about government in general than it is about the police department.”

“There are certain segments of our community that hasn’t seen government work for them the way it’s worked for other people. They’re looking for those same resources. And they see de-fund the police as a way of getting those resources,” Barnes told Spectrum News on that day.

“But I believe we can do both. We can still have a police department that’s funded to a level that it needs to keep our community safe. And we can prioritize some of the social service needs that we need to make our community safe.”

Barnes also said eliminating racial disparities in policing is “very important to me” after working on a racial disparity study for his doctoral dissertation.

More important, though, is understanding how to collect and analyze data and present “the most accurate view of what the result looks like, good or bad” in Madison, a predominantly white college town.

“If we have room for improvement, I won’t hide that from our citizens. I will let them know. But in the meantime, we need to make sure how our strategies and initiatives are affecting our community. We need to be able to test for that regularly. And if we see a disparity start to creep up, we need to change our strategy. The ends sometimes always don’t justify the means,” he said.

As impressive as Barnes’ was, the disadvantages of being an outsider in a city like Chicago and an organization like CPD that eats outsiders for breakfast cannot be overstated.

“So many people would probably not have his back on Day One,” a source said of Barnes.

If Johnson is more interested in making a “safe choice,” Snelling is probably the best bet. He was described as a “vast improvement” over Brown with tremendous potential to rebuild police morale.

The best of both worlds might be to choose Snelling and convince the new superintendent to assemble a team of rivals that includes the younger Barnes as a top deputy or even first deputy with Novalez in another high-ranking role.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times