Crime & Law

After 6 Years, CPD Now in Compliance With 16% of Consent Decree: Monitors

The Chicago Police Department has fully complied with 16% of the court order that requires CPD to stop routinely violating Black and Latino residents’ constitutional rights by the end of 2024, according to the court-appointed monitoring team charged with keep track of reform efforts.

The 7-percentage point jump in the level of full compliance with the consent decree reached between July and December 2024 is the largest increase in the nearly six years that the federal court order has been in effect. The last report from the monitors found CPD had fully complied with just 9% of the consent decree.

The report released Friday by the monitors is the first since WTTW News and ProPublica reported that the reform effort was at a tipping point, with advocates for police reform losing faith in the process and increasingly concerned the opportunity for lasting reform is slipping away.

The department is in preliminary compliance with approximately 34% of the consent decree’s requirements and secondary compliance with another 42% of the requirements, according to the 11th semiannual report from the team led by attorney Maggie Hickey.

“The CPD appears to be gaining momentum, and critical opportunities for improvement are now within reach,” Hickey wrote to U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer. “CPD’s ability to demonstrate increased compliance in the eleventh reporting period—particularly in the use of force section of the consent decree—is encouraging.”

Read the full report.

In addition to making “significant progress” in efforts to fully comply with the consent decree, Hickey praised CPD for meeting the test posed by the days of sustained protests that swirled around the Democratic National Convention in August.

“CPD was better prepared for the DNC than they would have been before the Consent Decree in February 2019,” Hickey wrote. “At various events throughout the DNC week, the (monitors) observed CPD officers remain professional and disciplined, exemplifying the training each officer received leading up to the DNC. While working long shifts and often being subject to verbal taunts, we observed officers remain professional, de-escalate tensions, support each other, and work together to identify, solve, and prevent problems.”

The convention was the first time CPD’s new mass arrest policy, crafted specifically for the DNC and revised after fierce pushback from police reform groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, was implemented.

“This increase in compliance represents the extensive work being done at CPD to implement transformative reforms across every level of the department,” Supt. Larry Snelling said in a statement. “We are a department in transformation, and we will continue to build upon the foundation that has been set to achieve cultural change.”

Several times leading up to the release of the monitors’ report, Johnson told reporters CPD was in full compliance with 16% of the court order, publicly revealing the finding in advance of their court-ordered report.

Alexandra Block of the ACLU, which sued the city to force it to agree to federal court oversight, said she was “hopeful that the monitor’s optimism about momentum toward compliance will prove true.”

“It is hardly a moment for celebration that CPD has reached 16% compliance after 6 years,” Block said in a statement.

Despite the monitors’ upbeat assessment of CPD’s reform efforts, they warned significant work remains to be done, including what it called a “long-overdue suicide prevention initiative.”

A 34-year-old Chicago Police officer died of a gunshot wound inside the Near North (18th) Police District Thursday. Snelling said in a memo that the officer died by suicide, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

In addition, the monitors said CPD “must also work to establish consistent oversight of its traffic-stop policies and practices to ensure that they are promoting community and officer safety through transparent and reliable data collection.”

CPD told state officials that officers made 293,000 traffic stops in 2024. CPD made an additional 210,622 traffic stops that were not documented, as first reported by WTTW News.

Snelling agreed 10 months ago to allow a federal court order requiring the Chicago Police Department to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers, known as the consent decree, to expand to include traffic stops. However, no final agreement has been reached, despite dozens of meetings, sources told WTTW News.

The monitoring team found evidence to suggest a direct correlation between a significant increase in the rate of reported traffic stops by police officers as the number of pedestrian stops dropped, according to a June 2023 report.

Focus on Use of Force

The consent decree is divided into 11 sections, each with dozens of requirements for CPD to meet.

CPD made the most progress in the section dedicated to changing how officers use force against members of the public, reaching full compliance with 18 requirements between July and December 2024.

For the first time in six years, CPD is complying with a requirement that officials report all use of force incidents, according to the monitors’ report. CPD is also now reviewing all foot pursuit policies, according to the report.

But there is little evidence that most of those accomplishments are meaningful, and reflect efforts to add forms, meet data collection requirements and establish processes for supervisory review, according to the ACLU’s Block.

“It is critical that we pierce the compliance claims and closely examine what is happening on the streets of Chicago,” Block said.

Between 2023 and 2024, there was a 47% increase in the use of force by officers, and supervisors corrected officers in only 3% of the time when CPD flagged policy violations, Block said, citing department data.

“A clear goal of the consent decree was to reduce the instances in which force would be used against community members,” Block said. “It is hardly compliance to see a stark increase in the use of force.”

Since the beginning of the year, Chicago police officers have shot six people, killing three, records show.

In all of 2024, Chicago police officers shot 12 people, killing six, records show.

Big Tasks Remain

Many of the tasks CPD has yet to complete require the department to be restructured, to allow officers to work with residents to address threats to public safety as part of a reimagined system of community policing.

That plan has yet to be completed.

In addition, a mandatory study of where officers are assigned throughout the city and whether changes would help thwart crime began in November and remains ongoing.

And CPD has yet to implement a system to alert police brass about which officers have been accused of misconduct more than once and might need counseling, retraining or discipline.

That system requires the department to launch a new records management system, parts of which will take another year to complete, according to the report.

And they have failed to move forward with a plan to alert police brass about which officers have been accused of misconduct more than once and might need counseling, retraining or discipline.

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]

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