- For months, Chicago police have said they would not deploy officers in riot gear to deal with NATO protesters.
In this Intelligence Report: Thursday's demonstrations are providing a better look at precisely how Chicago police are prepared for the possibility of civil disorder.
Several protest venues Thursday were calm on all both sides, and Chicago police certainly appeared to be following through on their pledge not to aggravate protesters by showing up in black turtle suits and riot helmets.
But what happens if demonstrations go violent, if the police in regular uniforms cannot control crowds? The answer was a few blocks away.
Then they reveal staging locations, vehicle descriptions and possible response times to anyone reading. We catch a lot of flack sometimes for stuff we publish, but we aren't posting stuff like Channel 7 is. We delete dozens of things like that every single day. The stuff that does make it through, more often than not, is accompanied by links to the media outlet reporting it. Our "scoops" as it were, are few and far between. Some of them end up big, but there aren't as many as people think there are.