CHICAGO — Chicago police officers are used to flooding hot spots on the South Side and West Side neighborhoods to fight the street gang violence that drives most of the mayhem in this city, but this week they have begun to flood another side of the metropolis — the glittering lakefront showpiece of office towers, parks and restaurants.
Thousands of police officers will leave their districts across the city and report for duty downtown to make the city safe for world leaders at the NATO summit, protesters and everybody else just trying to go about their normal business. A swath of the city from McCormick Place convention center on the south to Lincoln Park on the north will get special treatment as some 60 heads of state arrive here to talk about global security issues.
Superintendent Garry McCarthy is trying to walk a fine line to handle whatever may come while not making people feel they're living in a police state. His top aides sent out memos late last week to commanders directing officers to appear as non-threatening as possible.
Officers were to report for duty in simple uniform pants — no commando style cargo pants. They were told to bring their helmets and batons just in case, but to be wearing their formal "crown caps."
"As the event nears, we'll be ramping up piecemeal. You'll be seeing more officers basically on a daily basis. And we're very confident that we're going to have a safe event and we're going to achieve our goals," McCarthy said at a briefing for business leaders late last week. He said his department's main objectives are to "protect free speech, First Amendment rights, while at the same time ensure criminal activity is dealt with swiftly."
Jeff Cramer, a former federal prosecutor who now manages the Chicago office of global security consultancy Kroll International, said many business clients are telling employees to stay home. But Cramer said he doesn't think Chicago will turn into a "ghost town" during the summit.
That said, the appearance of fence and concrete barricades, large numbers of armed personnel and long motorcades of black vehicles snaking through the streets could be halting for some.
"For most people it's going to be more visceral. It's going to be seeing law enforcement in a quantity that we're just not used to," he said.
As early as last week, Chicago police began to have a higher visibility on downtown streets, especially larger bicycle patrols, with officers in small clusters positioned around the Loop and along Michigan Avenue. On Tuesday it was more of the same, with officers more visible at key corners and patrolling on bikes, which have become a key tool for police in crowd control at recent smaller protests.
Detectives, who typically have a business attire dress code but are donning uniforms this week, have been told they likely will be assigned to the outer layers of dignitary protection, near McCormick Place where leaders will meet and the nearby Museum campus or hotels where they will congregate.
McCarthy said the department would stay fully staffed by moving from three eight-hour shifts to two 12-hour shifts, allowing the department to fully cover whole days with a third fewer officers. That third of the force will be shifted downtown for summit duty.
"It's going to cost us a little bit of money, but at the end of the day, we anticipate that we're going to be able to maintain our enforcement efforts in the neighborhood while maintaining safety downtown," McCarthy said Tuesday.
Hundreds of members of the Illinois National Guard will be in the city in dress uniforms, used to chauffeur some delegation staff and dignitaries around the city in dozens of civilian vehicles, many of which could be seen cued up in the area of McCormick Place this week. Other members of the Guard are on training maneuvers in Marseilles, an Illinois River town about 100 miles south of Chicago, but could be called up if authorities needed reinforcements, said April Hawes, a Guard spokeswoman.
Chicago will also get some help from Illinois State Police, Cook County Sheriff's police, and several downstate departments , as well as members of the Milwaukee and Philadelphia police departments, and officers from Charlotte, N.C., which is tuning up to host the Democratic National Convention this summer. These officers will be under Chicago command, and typically will be used in secondary roles protecting venues and helping with transportation issues.
While Chicago police officers will be the face of security in the coming week, decisions made by the U.S. Secret Service are dictating much of how the NATO summit affects city life. The agency is responsible for protecting dignitaries from more than 50 countries, including running as many as 100 motorcades from hotels all over downtown to McCormick Place, restaurants and other locations.
The Secret Service made the decision on what is likely to be the biggest disruption to the city _ a transportation plan that closes both Interstate 55 and Lake Shore Drive around McCormick Place, alters Metra operations and calls for "rolling closures" of the Kennedy Expressway while motorcades shuttle world leaders to and from O'Hare International Airport.
The main objective of the Secret Service is to create a safe bubble around President Barack Obama and the foreign delegates under their protection. How it all looks to the people who actually live here is a secondary concern.
"You'll see obvious measures in place: human capital _ what the Secret Service has been doing for over 150 years. And you'll see some subtle security measures put in place, technological advances, things of that nature," Frank Benedetto, head of the Secret Service's Chicago field office, said at the business briefing last week.
Authorities will strive for an environment that is "as close to normal as possible and practical, given the magnitude of the event," Benedetto said.
While the larger motorcades may cause ripple effect disruptions in traffic, much of the effect they have will be on pedestrians waiting to cross streets. Benedetto said many Chicagoans probably will recall times they had to wait on the curb downtown after Obama was elected president and came back to his hometown.
"Saturday you'll start to see a lot of motorcades," Benedetto said. "It's the accordion effect. So it sounds intimidating, upward of 100 motorcades, but not every motorcade is President Obama's motorcade."
Former Secret Service leaders who have been involved in moving Obama around in priors years have said Chicago's grid street system comes in handy for such movements, and that each motorcade is given a primary route and an alternate route, as well as predetermined paths to hospitals, helicopter landing areas and safe houses. Those details are closely held by NATO planners.
In recent days, NATO planners put a fleet of several hundred identical vehicles — black Chrysler 300s and Chrysler minivans, as well as white Ford E-350 passenger vans — in the south parking lot at McCormick Place.
Benedetto said heads of state from smaller countries, or their Cabinet officials, may be out for meals at different times on Saturday and Sunday, and their smaller motorcades may be less disruptive, he said. Also, authorities have said that hotels hosting heads of state will remain open for business to others, and the Secret Service and police presence at them will be as discreet as possible. When dignitaries venture outside, it will be a different story.
"They have to eat dinner. They have to get back to their hotels, which are throughout the city," Benedetto said. "And it's a back-and-forth process from the hotels to McCormick Place. I thank everyone in advance for their patience."
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his aides have said for months that such inconveniences pale in comparison to the windfall of attention, prestige and future revenue for the city. But if protests get out of hand, or even if gridlock caused by road closings and motorcades bring misery to commuters, it will be Emanuel and McCarthy — not the federal government — who will hear about it.
"CPD owns this, one way or another," said policing expert Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. "Everybody else leaves and goes back to Washington, or wherever they came from. But Garry McCarthy and the Chicago Police Department have to deal with whatever happens."
(Tribune reporter Ryan Haggerty contributed to this story.)