James Conlisk News Today

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s appointment of Larry Snelling as Chicago Police superintendent prompted a peek into this reporter’s aging notepad, a flashback to 14 or so former Chicago top cops I’ve known or covered since 1967.

Spring of 1973 was a busy season for Renault Robinson, who spoke at a conference on “Community Control of Police” and, not incidentally, walked a beat in the alley behind Chicago’s police headquarters in the South Loop. “This is retaliation,” Robinson told a Tribune reporter about his assignment. “No one had this job before me.” Robinson, who headed the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League, had ...

The goal of Chicago’s new elected police district councils is straightforward: Make the city safer by creating stronger, two-way bonds between police and the communities they patrol.