Investigations
Chicago Spent $231.2M to Resolve Police Misconduct Lawsuits in 7 Months, Nearly Triple Year’s Budget: Records
(WTTW News)
Chicago taxpayers have spent at least $231.2 million to resolve lawsuits alleging Chicago police officers committed a wide range of misconduct — including wrongful convictions and improper pursuits — this year, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.
Even as the financial toll of decades of police misconduct is likely to grow in the coming months, Chicago exhausted its annual budget of $82.2 million months ago and had spent nearly triple that amount by July 31, according to WTTW News’ analysis of reports released by the Chicago Department of Law.
Chicago taxpayers spent a total of $107.5 million to resolve police misconduct lawsuits in 2024, 43% more than in 2023, according to the analysis.
Facing a deficit of $1.15 billion in 2026, city officials have yet to disclose to the City Council or members of the public how the city will cover the mounting cost of police misconduct lawsuits.
Since 2019, while the Chicago Police Department has been subject to a federal court order to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers, taxpayers have spent at least $703.6 million to resolve police misconduct lawsuits, according to the WTTW News analysis.
WTTW News’ analysis of settlements and verdicts reached during the first seven months of 2025 included all cases identified by the Chicago Law Department as caused by some form of police misconduct, including false arrest, excessive force, extended detention, malicious prosecution and illegal search or seizure that resulted in a jury verdict against the city or that the Chicago City Council agreed to resolve with a payment.
It does not include cases involving motor vehicle collisions other than crashes caused by pursuits launched by officers.
Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson Lowry told WTTW News in July that she has directed the Law Department to take a more aggressive approach to resolving lawsuits than her predecessors to save taxpayers’ money.
“It costs the city an extra $100,000 on average for certain categories of cases for each year that the can is kicked down the road,” Richardson-Lowry said. “It’s certainly not my approach. We must meet it head-on. Yes, it is true that there are more of them and, yes, it is true that it costs more to do that in the short run. But it is also true that the savings are significant in the long run. So, we’re on that course. We will continue to look for opportunities to settle. We try cases where we must. What it means for the taxpayer is they benefit in the end because in the long term we’re not spending as much of the city’s resources.”
Between Jan. 1 and July 31, city officials resolved at least 79 lawsuits alleging police misconduct, according to WTTW News’ data analysis.
The largest payment by taxpayers for a single incident — $25 million — went to the family of a St. Louis man who was struck by a driver being chased by Chicago police and lost both legs.
In that case, the settlement approved by the City Council was for a total of $32 million, with $20 million to come directly from Chicago taxpayers and another $12 million to come from the city’s insurance carrier, records show.
The city actually paid out $25 million and is seeking to be reimbursed by its insurance company for the additional $5 million it paid to Bryce and Amy Summary, said Kristen Cabanban, a spokesperson for the Department of Law.
In all, nine cases alleging Chicagoans were hit or killed during a police chase that violated department policy cost taxpayers more than $75 million to resolve between Jan. 1 and July 31, according to WTTW News’ analysis.
Wrongful convictions have long been the most expensive kind of police misconduct in Chicago, and that continued into 2025, according to the analysis.
Between Jan. 1 and July 31, taxpayers spent $145.7 million to resolve lawsuits filed by Chicagoans convicted and imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, records show.
In one case, Chicago taxpayers paid a total of $48 million to three men who were wrongfully convicted of setting a 1986 apartment fire that killed two brothers and who spent a combined 102 years in prison, records show.
The cost of resolving police misconduct lawsuits has become a frequent source of political heartburn for members of the Chicago City Council, who are divided along ideological lines about the cause of the escalating costs. The City Council must ratify all settlements of more than $100,000.
More conservative alderpeople say the city’s lawyers and their colleagues are too eager to settle cases before trial. According to the alderpeople, that encourages those guilty of criminal wrongdoing to sue the city in the hopes of an easy payday.
However, progressive members of the City Council see the expense as perhaps the most visible cost of the fact that city officials have yet to put an end to the decades of scandals, misconduct and brutality that have engulfed the Chicago Police Department.
Despite the fact that the federal court order requiring CPD to reform itself — known as the consent decree — is more than six and a half years old, CPD has fully met just 16% of its requirements, according to the most recent report by the team monitoring the city’s compliance with the reform push.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
