CHICAGO — The search for the next leader of the Chicago Police Department entered a new phase last week as the city agency responsible for vetting candidates retained an executive search firm to winnow down future applicants.

Despite a plea from a police oversight commissioner to amend a city ordinance, Mayor Brandon Johnson is expected to have three finalists to choose from before Thanksgiving, just three months ahead of Chicago’s next mayoral election.

The selection process — the second to be headed by the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability — is unfolding as the city grapples with an unwelcome uptick in gun violence in the waning days of summer. Though the overall number of killings across the city has increased only slightly in 2026 — CPD recorded 271 homicides through Aug. 16, compared with 262 the year before — police data show a sharp rise in killings in a few South and West side neighborhoods that have long been afflicted by poverty and gun violence.

The CCPSA’s schedule was set last month with the retirement of former Superintendent Larry Snelling on July 15 after three years at the helm. Johnson has once again selected longtime CPD supervisor Fred Waller to serve as interim superintendent, and Snelling promoted Antoinette Ursitti to first deputy superintendent shortly before he stepped down.

City ordinance dictates that the CCPSA has 120 days from then — Nov. 12 — to submit three finalists to Johnson, with his selection to face a confirmation vote by the City Council. If none of those finalists are to his liking, Johnson can direct the process to begin again.

Two weeks after Snelling’s retirement, CCPSA Commissioner Anthony Driver Jr. wrote to the City Council urging alders to amend city ordinance to give the CCPSA more time to vet candidates amid uncertainty of the coming election.

Johnson so far has deflected when asked whether he was committing to seek another term.

“I respectfully believe this timeline deserves thoughtful reconsideration,” Driver wrote in July. “This is not a political argument, nor is it an indictment of the current mayor, civilian oversight, or the ordinance itself.”

Speaking with the Tribune last week, Driver said discussions with aldermen about extending the deadline had fizzled.

Ald. Ray López, 15th, said, “I don’t think there’s an appetite to amend the law to give an extended deadline. Actually, I think quite the opposite.”

“We already are going to have a hard enough time trying to recruit candidates in light of the fact that there’s no guarantee that, one, this administration’s going to continue, or, two, that a new administration would keep whomever is selected by this process,” López told the Tribune.

The mayor’s office declined to comment on the ongoing search. Earlier this month, when asked about a possible amendment to the CCPSA ordinance, Johnson said, “unless there’s an appetite to change the law, I believe people should adhere to the law.”

A representative for the CCPSA confirmed that the body last week selected Ralph Andersen & Associates, a California-based executive search firm, to narrow the candidate pool. The terms of the firm’s contract were not immediately known, but media reports show Ralph Andersen & Associates has previously worked to find chiefs of police in Oakland, San Francisco and New Haven, Connecticut.

In the meantime, CCPSA is hosting listening sessions across the city to, once again, solicit feedback from city residents about what they would like to see in the city’s next superintendent. The first such meeting was held last week at Malcolm X College where several speakers railed against CPD’s response to the incursion of federal immigration authorities last year. Four more listening sessions are scheduled in the coming weeks.

During the last superintendent search in 2023, CCPSA received 54 applications and, ultimately, interviewed 16 candidates. From those, three finalists were selected: Snelling, CPD Chief Angel Novalez and Shon Barnes, the former chief of police in Madison, Wisconsin, and, more recently, Seattle.

Snelling was unanimously approved by the City Council in September 2023 and was widely seen as Johnson’s most effective appointment, having overseen a steady reduction in violence while navigating the city’s consent decree obligations.

Throughout his tenure, Snelling has often led from the front, though he was quick to offer praise to CPD’s rank-and-file officers and his deputies at police headquarters.

In an interview with the Tribune shortly before his retirement, Snelling said that whoever holds the job next would be well-served by a similar philosophy.

“It can’t just be about the job or you. It has to be about everyone else,” Snelling said last month. “You have to have compassion for your workforce. You have to see them as people and not just employees. You have to understand something about their human nature, so that when you show them connection, when you show them (care), when you show them respect and empathy, they can then apply that to the people that they’re coming in contact with.”

The city’s next police leader will face many of the same challenges as Snelling: entrenched gun violence, improving police-community relationships and compliance with the ongoing federal consent decree.

The makeup of CPD’s workforce has shifted in recent years, too.

A Tribune analysis of city employment data found that, by the end of 2026, Latino officers will account for the largest racial group in the department. It will be the first time in the city’s history that white officers will not hold the plurality.

CPD has only had one Latino superintendent, Matt Rodríguez, who led the department from 1992 to 1997.

Snelling did not court public confrontations, though he did not shy away, either. His willingness to engage with almost anyone won him admirers across the city.

Speaking at the City Club of Chicago in 2024, Snelling said: “I like a good fight, I’m just going to be honest with you. It keeps you on your toes.”

Snelling’s departure from CPD last month was the least eventful of any superintendent in more than a decade.

Snelling’s predecessor, David Brown, was deeply unpopular among rank-and-file officers. He tendered his resignation in March 2023, just a day after then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot failed to qualify for a runoff election.

Brown took the place of Eddie Johnson, the superintendent selected by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2016 in the wake of the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video. Johnson oversaw declines in shootings and a renewed focus on community partnerships, but an embarrassing drunken-driving incident ultimately led to his unceremonious firing after Lightfoot publicly accused him of lying to her.

Before Johnson, CPD was led by Garry McCarthy, whom Emanuel fired just days after the McDonald video was made public and the city was embroiled in protests.

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