Investigations
The Number of Times CPD Officers Pointed Their Guns at People Increased 44% from 2022 to 2024: Data
Chicago police officers pointed their guns at individuals 4,209 times in 2024, an increase of nearly 44% since 2022, according to Chicago Police Department data shared with the federal judge overseeing the ongoing effort to reform the department.
That means CPD officers pointed a gun at a person, on average, more than 11 times every day in 2024. In more than 54% of those incidents, the person that an officer pointed their weapon at did not have a gun, according to a CPD annual report on officers’ use of force.
Between 2023 and 2024, the number of times on-duty officers pointed a gun at an individual jumped 13%, according to data that must be reported publicly under the terms of the federal court order requiring CPD to stop routinely violating residents’ constitutional rights.
There have been no documented instances of “unjustified or unreasonable” firearm pointing incidents, as CPD officially refers to officers’ decision to point their service weapon at a member of the public while issuing a command, Deputy Chief Ralph Cruz, of the Chicago Police Department’s Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform, told U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer during a July hearing about the city’s progress in complying with the court order known as the consent decree, which requires CPD to overhaul the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers.
Representatives of CPD did not respond to detailed questions from WTTW News about the increase in the number of times officers have pointed their guns, and whether it has contributed to an increase in the number of people shot and killed by CPD officers in 2025.
In 2024, CPD officers shot 12 people, killing six, records show. In 2023, officers shot 17 people, killing three. In 2022, officers shot 17 people, killing two, records show.
CPD has yet to release its 2025 mid-year report documenting officers’ use of force. CPD officers shot 16 people, killing eight, between Jan. 1 and Sept. 6, records show.
The number of times Chicago police officers used any kind of force against members of the public increased 47% between 2023 and 2024, as documented by the number of Tactical Response Reports filed by officers, according to the most recent report filed by the independent monitoring team charged with keeping track of the city’s compliance with the consent decree.
Supervisors corrected officers only 3% of the time when CPD flagged policy violations when reviewing those reports, according to the monitors’ report.
CPD brass “agreed to conduct a detailed analysis of the potential cause or causes of the increase,” according to the monitors. The team’s next report, covering the first six months of 2025, is due in October.
The monitors asked CPD for data and “any insight on the historical trends” as it works to determine whether that increase reflects increased reporting, as required by the consent decree, or an increase in the number of times officers used force against Chicagoans and visitors to the city.
It has been more than six years since the consent decree took effect, with city officials promising it would put an end to decades of police scandals sparked by misconduct and brutality. By the end of 2024, CPD had fully complied with just 16% of the consent decree, according to the monitors.
Changing the Evaluation Process
Even as the number of times an officer has pointed a gun at an individual has risen significantly since 2022, CPD leaders are in the process of materially changing the way those incidents are evaluated amid a crushing backlog of reports documenting officers’ use of force against members of the public.
Representatives of the Illinois attorney general’s office and the coalition of reform groups that forced the city to agree to federal court oversight told Pallmeyer they are concerned that policy — which is now in effect in 13 of the city’s 22 police districts and is set to expand citywide early next year — could lead to “quality control” problems and subject more Chicagoans to violence during encounters with officers.
The consent decree requires supervisors to review all reported instances in which an officer uses force that causes an injury or results in a complaint of injury, including when they point a firearm at a person, use a Taser or OC spray while issuing an order, records show.
Those reports are supposed to be reviewed by officers and staff members in CPD’s Tactical Review and Evaluation Division, often referred to as TRED, in an effort to identify trends and make recommendations for changes, according to the court order.
But CPD officials have fallen significantly behind on completing those reviews because of “insufficient staffing levels,” according to the monitors’ latest report.
In an attempt to reduce the massive backlog, CPD plans to give captains in each of the department’s 22 police districts the authority to review whether their officers followed department policy when they pointed their weapons at members of the public, rather than the highly trained officers assigned to TRED.
After specialized training, captains participating in the pilot program are authorized to review all firearm-pointing incidents in their districts that do not involve a separate use of force or foot pursuit, records show.
That pilot program has been successful, Cruz told the judge, allowing captains to review each firearm-pointing incident within two weeks and “if there’s an issue, they’re able to get on that quickly and address it before it’s a bigger issue.”
“The captains like that they were able to talk to their members, and they can see what they’re doing well and what they needed to get help with,” Cruz said, according to a transcript of the hearing, published by the monitors.
What the Policy Says
CPD policy allows officers to point a gun at someone when it is “objectively reasonable to do so under the totality of the circumstances faced by the member on the scene” and must stop pointing the gun “immediately” after they recognize it is no longer “objectively reasonable.”
The officer must immediately notify the Office of Emergency Management and Communications that they pointed their gun at someone and document it, just as they would if they made an arrest or conducted an investigatory stop.
Officers filed 4,986 firearm incident reports, but 777 of those incidents were not required to be reported, according to CPD data. Officers do not have to report when they unholster their gun, or hold it pointed to the floor while holding it at their side or close to their chest, Cruz said.
Although CPD began documenting every time an officer pointed a gun at a member of the public in 2020, it was not until 2022 that CPD began distinguishing between reports that an officer pointed their weapon at a member of the public and verified instances of firearm pointing, records show.
Assistant Attorney General Mike Tresnowski told Pallmeyer his office is closely monitoring the number of times CPD officers point their guns at members of the public.
“Our office notes that one way to reduce a backlog … is to reduce overall generally the number of uses of force and firearm pointings by officers,” Tresnowski said.
While the attorney general’s office agrees with CPD brass that the pilot program to allow captains to review firearm pointing incidents has “shown promise,” officials are worried about efforts to expand it citywide, Tresnowski said.
“The attorney general’s concern with the plan as we will monitor as it goes from pilot to a program is that with decentralization, there is a risk that quality control could become an issue,” Tresnowski said. “Some districts may review firearm-pointing incidents quickly, some slowly. Some officers may receive detailed or lengthy feedback, some may receive less. Different supervisors may be more likely to identify certain policy violations.”
That raises the risk that “some reviews could be done hastily,” increasing the chances that a Chicagoan would be subjected to a unreasonable firearm-pointing incident, Tresnowski said, pledging to work with CPD to develop “quality control systems as the pilot is rolled out into a citywide program.”
Reaction to the Rise
Jessica Gingold, an attorney who represented the coalition of police reform groups that sued the city to force it to enter into the consent decree, called the increase in the number of firearm pointing incidents “very concerning” and an issue that “cries out for more accountability, not less.”
“Pointing a gun at a person is a forceful and threatening action that causes long-lasting trauma and terror,” Gingold said. “It makes the victim fear for their life. And those victims are forever impacted, especially those individuals with disabilities and children, some who have been as young as 3 and 4 years old.”
CPD should be transparent about why the number of firearm-pointing incidents are increasing, Gingold said.
“We need not only the conclusion that has been reached, that the firearm-pointing incident was deemed reasonable or unreasonable, we also need the data around these incidences,” Gingold said. “We need transparency about what criteria is being used to make that determination that a firearm-pointing incident was objectively reasonable.”
Former Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan insisted during negotiations with former Mayor Rahm Emanuel that the consent decree include a provision that required officers to document every time they pointed their gun at a member of the public.
Emanuel argued that provision would be too onerous for officers, but relented in the face of the attorney general’s determination to include it in the consent decree.
The independent monitoring team has long been critical of CPD’s ability to assign enough staff members to review every time an officer uses force against members of the public.
CPD has not reached preliminary or secondary compliance, much less full compliance, with the requirement that the Tactical Review and Evaluation Division has sufficient resources to meet its responsibility to identify trends in those incidents across units or the department and make recommendations for changes in CPD tactics, policy or training, according to the most recent report from the monitors.
The backlog “frustrates” the purpose of the consent decree, according to that report.
“Any feedback it provides to officers may relate to incidents of which the officer has little memory, and any trends it detects will be outdated,” according to the report, which calls the review a “critical component of CPD’s reform efforts.”
To reduce that backlog, the judge agreed to allow the city to stop reviewing a random sample of reports about incidents where officers used force to overcome the active resistance of a subject but did not cause an injury or prompt a complaint of injury during the first six months of 2025.
During that moratorium, the superintendent agreed to hire additional employees to review those reports and reduce the “overall backlog.”
More than 200 positions charged with implementing the consent decree were vacant as of August, with another 226 positions unaccounted for, according to records obtained by WTTW News.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
