A MARTÍNEZ, BYLINE: National party conventions are scripted affairs inside the convention hall. Outside, well, events can be less predictable. This week, Democrats gather in Chicago, along with thousands of protesters, and there's a fear of a repeat of 1968, when police and anti-war protesters clashed in the streets, not to mention this spring's protests on college campuses. As NPR's Martin Kaste reports, police in Chicago say they'll support peaceful protests, but they're also preparing for trouble.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Chicago police are not too worried about the big protests, such as the permitted marches. But they are watching for actions by smaller groups that might split off to do something such as block a freeway, as happened last week in Los Angeles, or vandalize monuments, as a group of protesters did in front of Union Station in Washington, D.C., in July. And then there's this scene a few days ago in New York, captured in a video posted online - Gaza war protesters swarming a restaurant where Democrats had gathered after a Harris-Walz fundraiser, and the police making arrests.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Let her go.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Back off. Let her go.
KASTE: Chicago's police superintendent, Larry Snelling, has drawn this line.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LARRY SNELLING: We want people to exercise their First Amendment rights. We will protect them while they're doing that, but we will not guarantee someone that we're not going to make arrests if they start to act violently or commit crimes.
KASTE: The department's strategy is to try to be everywhere. Officers were not allowed to take vacation this week, and their numbers have been bolstered by police from outside agencies.
(SOUNDBITE OF METAL CLANKING)
KASTE: As the traffic barriers went up around the DNC's main site, the United Center, officers arrived by the busload, a contingent of U.S. Capitol police in riot gear mustered in a parking lot, and a peloton of bicycle cops familiarized themselves with the official protest route. That route could become a flash point because it's less than half the length that the organizers had requested.
HATEM ABUDAYYEH: The powers at be are going to have to understand, when they see the crowd, that 1.1-mile route is not going to be sufficient.
KASTE: Hatem Abudayyeh is national chair of the United States Palestinian Community Network, and spokesman for the Coalition to March on the DNC. He was asked yesterday if marchers would defy the city and depart from the permitted route.
ABUDAYYEH: Listen, we have a philosophy in Chicago that the numbers dictate what the route is. That's the way to answer that.
KASTE: And he said the only worry about violence should focus on what the police might do.
ABUDAYYEH: We don't need them for safety. We don't need them for protection. We don't need them for security. We protect ourselves. We secure ourselves. We keep us safe.
KASTE: The police department here does not have a great track record with protests, according to Chicago's inspector general, Deborah Witzburg, and she's not talking about 1968. It was after the protests of 2020 that her office issued a report that faulted Chicago police for being unprepared, mishandling mass arrests and poor accountability.
DEBORAH WITZBURG: There were tremendous obstacles to holding individual members of the police department accountable if they did something wrong, because there were no clear records about who was deployed where, and there was very poor body-worn camera coverage, etc.
KASTE: Her office says some of these systems have improved, but she's still worried about unclear departmental rules for when the police may use tools such as pepper spray and tactics such as encircling, or kettling, the crowds. She says, she's worried that in practice, the officers won't know how to balance public safety with the protesters' right to free speech.
WITZBURG: Striking that balance will be critically important to any response that looks like a success by CPD, and I think it's really hard.
KASTE: But she says it's also essential, especially for a department with a troubled history that's trying to rebuild public trust.
Martin Kaste, NPR News, Chicago.
(SOUNDBITE OF HERMANOS GUTIERREZ'S "HOY COMO AYER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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