Chicago Pride Parade safety plan involves heavy police presence day and night

Chicago's Lake View neighborhood will see a heavier police presence during the Pride Parade on Sunday, but the Chicago Police Department also is planning for the after-hours celebrations.

Parade organizers also made several changes this year aimed at reducing the LGBTQ+ celebration’s strain on city resources.

The department also is staffing officers in the late-night hours after the celebration, which has seen large crowds taking over streets and some violent crime in recent years, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling said during a news conference Friday at the Center on Halsted announcing the safety plan. Officers' days off on Sunday have been canceled.

“We’ve seen this parade in the past, and people just go there to have a good time and the parade goes off well,” Snelling said. “However, what we’re concerned about more than anything else is what occurs late into the night after the parade.”

The Sun-Times reported last year that teenagers had taken over the streets near the Belmont CTA Station in Lake View, dancing on top of cars, vans, CTA buses and police squad cars. In 2022, three people were shot and another three were stabbed in Lake View in the late hours after that year’s parade, according to a report from Block Club Chicago.

“I’m here to tell you right now that’s not going to be tolerated,” Snelling said. “We will put an end to that, and if arrests need to be made, we will do that.”

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security recently warned of a heightened threat of terrorism during Pride Month gatherings.

“We’re working with not only local partners but our federal partners and making sure that we’re looking at every threat,” Snelling said. “We take them all seriously, we do our research and we put plans in place to make sure that none of those threats can be carried out.”

These precautions follow a series of changes the city has imposed on this year’s Pride Parade in an effort to make the large-scale celebration more manageable for departments like Chicago Police, the CTA and the Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

Among the changes:

• Shifting the parade’s starting time one hour earlier to 11 a.m.
• Removing a few blocks from the start of the parade, which now begins at West Sheridan Road and Broadway in Lake View.
• Capping the parade’s number of entries at 150 groups so that it doesn’t last as long as in previous years. Last year’s parade, which saw a brief rain delay, wrapped about four hours after it stepped off.

“For us as the Chicago Police Department, the concern is … the breaks in the parade,” Snelling said. “The earlier start time will be helpful to get fresh officers into those locations [and] to switch our officers who have been there for a long period of time, already working the parade itself. And then we’ll have officers who are fresh to respond later on throughout the night.”

Ald. Bennett Lawson (44th), who is one of nine openly LGBTQ+ members of the City Council and whose ward encompasses the parade route, has been heavily involved in conversations about changes in the parade, which he said are about “keeping people safe the entire day.”

“It’s a very long day in Lake View for those of us that do the whole day especially, and it has to be safe from the first arrivals to the very late night,” Lawson said. “I really believe we’re ready for an incredible weekend once again in Lake View.”