Crime & Law
Chicago Police Department’s Compliance With Consent Decree ‘Too Slow’: Federal Judge
City officials’ efforts to comply with the federal court order requiring the Chicago Police Department to stop routinely violating Black and Latino Chicagoans’ constitutional rights are “too slow,” the federal judge overseeing the reform effort said Saturday.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer’s remarks came at the end of a rare Saturday status hearing in the federal court case designed to give Chicagoans a chance to weigh in on the effort to implement the reforms required by the federal court order known as the consent decree outside of regular working hours.
Pallmeyer, CPD officials and representatives of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul listened for 90 minutes as more than a dozen Chicagoans testified virtually that the reform push that has cost Chicago taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars has not resulted in significant change in their lives or those of their friends and families.
“I share your impatience,” Pallmeyer said. “I do recognize it is too slow.”
Pallmeyer said she was committed to ensuring that the reform push results in “measurable progress in the way people are treated and seen by police officers.”
CPD has fully complied with 22% of the consent decree’s requirements, according to the most recent report from the independent monitoring team charged with keeping track of the progress of reform. The binding court order will mark its seventh anniversary on March 1.
Pallmeyer’s statements represent the first time since December 2024 that she has expressed concerns about the pace of reforms.
Representatives of the coalition of police reform groups that forced the city to agree to federal court oversight renewed their four-month-old request that Pallmeyer find that the significant increase in the number of times CPD officers have used force against Black and Latino Chicagoans violates the consent decree.
Those concerns are shared by Raoul’s office, which told Pallmeyer in November that CPD is at a “crucial point in the consent decree process.”
Members of the coalition also urged Pallmeyer to order CPD to take action after a study commissioned by the department found CPD officers used force disproportionately against Black Chicagoans, even when considering they are more likely to be arrested or suspected of committing a crime in the city.
CPD leadership has taken no action in response to the findings of the court-ordered, first-of-its-kind study that examined four years of data, according to the monitors.
Neither Pallmeyer, nor Supt. Larry Snelling, who attended the hearing, conducted by Zoom, addressed the findings of that study, which was completed in March 2025 but not released publicly until WTTW News published the full study.
The monitoring team — which is made up of lawyers and public safety specialists — has the power to recommend to the judge that the city and CPD be punished for failing to meet the terms of the consent decree. While it has repeatedly highlighted the slow pace of reforms in its reports, the monitoring team has never demanded sanctions, despite pleas from reform groups and members of the public.
Note: This article was published Feb. 21, 2026, and updated with video Feb. 23, 2026.
Video: The consent decree is a court order giving a judge oversight of the Chicago Police Department. WTTW News explains how it is supposed to work in Chicago.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
