Politics
40% of Jobs Charged with Implementing Chicago’s Court-Ordered Police Reforms Are Vacant, Records Show
(WTTW News)
Nearly 180 positions charged with implementing a court order that requires the Chicago Police Department to stop routinely violating Black and Latino residents’ constitutional rights are vacant, according to records obtained by WTTW News.
Of 439 positions in the Chicago Police Department specifically charged with implementing the court order known as the consent decree, 179 positions, or 40%, were empty at the beginning of December, according to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by WTTW News.
Between August and December, Chicago officials filled approximately 30 positions charged with implementing the consent decree, records show.
“The city remains committed to filling consent decree-related positions as quickly as possible to continue to make progress on consent decree compliance,” said Cassio Mendoza, a spokesperson for Mayor Brandon Johnson.
CPD is in the process of interviewing candidates to fill approximately 130 consent decree positions, Mendoza said. An additional 30 candidates have been selected to be placed into vacant positions charged with implementing the consent decree, Mendoza said.
Johnson’s proposed spending plan for 2026 identifies 605 positions that would be charged with ensuring constitutional policing and reform, at a cost to taxpayers of $123.3 million, including the 439 positions charged with implementing the consent decree, officials said. That accounts for 6% of CPD’s $2.1 billion proposed budget, records show.
In 2025, CPD devoted 9% of its budget, including 665 positions, accounting for $203.5 million to constitutional policing and reform, records show.
The funds set aside in the city’s 2025 budget for constitutional policing and reform included a $75 million grant from the federal government to CPD to provide security around the Democratic National Convention in August 2025, a mayoral spokesperson said.
City officials used $16.6 million from that grant to cover personnel costs during the four-day convention and an additional $11 million to purchase a helicopter, records show.
Budget Director Annette Guzman told WTTW News that those funds were appropriately labeled as constitutional policing expenses.
While officials said Johnson has not proposed to cut any positions charged with implementing the consent decree, city officials did not answer detailed questions from WTTW News about why 60 fewer officers would be assigned to constitutional policing and reform efforts in 2026 than in 2025.
The amount of money set aside for constitutional policing and reform efforts will drop by $80 million between 2025 and 2026, records show.
The bulk of that drop was caused by the expiration of the federal grant tied to the need for security at the Democratic National Convention, Guzman said.
In all, CPD’s budget is set to swell to $2.1 billion in 2026, increasing by $37.9 million to cover the cost of salary increases required by agreements with unions representing members. The department will have 14 fewer positions in 2026 than this year, but no one will be laid off, records show.
Johnson has promised to veto any spending plan approved by the Chicago City Council that cuts the police budget, which accounts for one-third of the city’s discretionary spending.
Under the terms of a federal court order known as the consent decree, CPD must change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers.
Johnson’s proposed 2026 spending plan earmarks $15.4 million specifically to implement the consent decree, records show. In 2025, the city set aside $16.4 million for the consent decree, records show.
Six and a half years after the consent decree was implemented, CPD had fully complied with 22% of its requirements by the end of June, according to the court-appointed monitoring team charged with keeping track of reform efforts.
City officials have failed every year since the consent decree was finalized in early 2019 to spend all of that money, according to a WTTW News analysis that compared what the city earmarked for the reform push in its annual budgets with what the city actually spent, as documented by the city’s annual financial reports from 2020 through 2024.
In 2024, those audited reports detailed at least $12.4 million in direct spending on the consent decree across five departments: CPD, the Finance Department, the Office of Public Safety Administration, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
CPD spent just $4.3 million directly on the consent decree in 2024, even though the city’s budget called for CPD to spend $7.9 million on the consent decree, according to the 2024 report.
CPD spent $8 million on the consent decree in 2023, according to the city’s 2023 annual certified financial report.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
