Crime & Law
With Larry Snelling’s Retirement as Chicago’s Top Cop, Progress on Court-Ordered Reforms Hangs in Balance
Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling addresses the news media on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. (WTTW News)
When Supt. Larry Snelling took the helm of the Chicago Police Department in the fall of 2023, it was in full compliance with just 6% of the federal court order that requires CPD to stop routinely violating Black and Latino residents’ constitutional rights.
By the time Snelling retires Wednesday, CPD will have fully completed just 25% of the consent decree’s requirements, according to the most recent measurement of the department’s efforts to comply with the court-ordered reforms.
That means it will be up to Snelling’s successor to complete the hundreds of tasks laid out by the nearly seven-and-a-half-year-old court order while making sure the changes stick — and put an end to the decades of scandals, misconduct and brutality that have defined CPD and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Mayor Brandon Johnson often praised Snelling — his pick to lead the department’s 11,600 officers — for his handling of the consent decree, repeatedly telling reporters that the superintendent made more progress in complying with the court order in less than three years than the five other interim and permanent superintendents who led the department between March 2019 and September 2023 combined.
Ensuring CPD complies with the consent decree is “one my most important responsibilities as mayor,” Johnson said.
“It is at the center of our commitment to the people of Chicago to build a police department that is constitutional, accountable, transparent and worthy of the public’s trust,” Johnson said in a statement to WTTW News. “That responsibility belongs not only to me, but to every leader within the Chicago Police Department. I want to thank Supt. Snelling for his commitment to that shared mission.”
Snelling, through CPD spokespeople, did not respond to an invitation from WTTW News to be interviewed for this story.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, whose predecessor sued the city to force it to agree to federal court oversight, said Snelling could have directed a member of his command staff to handle consent decree matters, as his predecessors did, but chose to make it a priority.
“He leaned in, even when he didn’t have to,” Raoul told WTTW News. “He was willing to engage personally in the reform effort.”
If the department’s 65th permanent superintendent does not follow Snelling’s lead, the reform effort could stall, Raoul warned.
“Snelling was a unique leader,” Raoul said, singling out the top cop’s handling of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, which was nearly universally praised.
But even as Raoul lauded Snelling’s leadership, his office told a federal judge that the reform effort has reached a watershed moment, with no clear evidence that the painstakingly crafted policies and rules Snelling helped implement had resulted in meaningful change in a city where police continue to disproportionately use force against Black Chicagoans.
While members of the coalition of police reform groups acknowledged that Snelling made more progress than any other superintendent to fulfill the requirements of the consent decree, they said the impact of the changes implemented by Snelling has been inconsequential.
“I don’t know what’s he’s done except be a fast-talking politician-type guy,” said Crista Noel, founder of Women’s All Point Bulletin, a part of the coalition of community groups dedicated to police reform that sued the city alongside the attorney general’s office to force officials to agree to subject CPD to the oversight by a federal judge.
Both Noel and Arewa Winters, an elected member of the Austin (15th) Police District Council, praised Snelling for meeting regularly with them about the consent decree and the reform push, but said the superintendent offered them only excuses and platitudes instead of action.
“He was a company man,” Winters said. “He did the best he could under the circumstances.”
Winters, who started pushing for police reform after a Chicago police officer shot and killed her 16-year-old nephew, Pierre Loury, in 2016, said she would give Snelling a C-minus for his reform efforts.
A native of Englewood, Snelling was a member of the Chicago Police Department for 34 years, rising through the ranks quickly after the 2014 police murder of Laquan McDonald prompted the federal investigation that led to the consent decree fueled loud demands for new leadership.
The 2017 federal probe found that officers were rarely held accountable for misconduct because of badly broken systems as well as a “code of silence” among officers that allowed them to act with impunity.
Michael Harrington, of Network 49 on the city’s North Side, said Snelling’s major accomplishment was to convince U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, the independent monitoring team and most observers that he was committed to reforming CPD, while avoiding the hard decisions necessary to change CPD’s culture.
“I’m sure Supt. Snelling is a nice guy,” Harrington said. “But he has not been effective in the areas that we need results in.”
Snelling was the first superintendent to regularly attend the monthly hearings into the consent decree convened by Pallmeyer. At the end of most hearings, Snelling delivered a robust and impassioned defense of CPD’s actions despite at times searing criticism from the attorney general’s office and members of the coalition.
Even as Pallmeyer called CPD’s reform efforts “unsatisfying” and “too slow,” she typically ended each session by praising Snelling’s commitment to the consent decree and thanking him for taking time out of his busy schedule to attend the virtual hearings.
The bulk of the progress CPD made on the consent decree during Snelling’s tenure came at the first two levels of compliance: preliminary, which means officials have finalized written policies addressing failures; and secondary, which means a majority of officers have been trained on those new policies.
Those achievements reflect police brass’ “focus on checking those boxes,” rather than changing the way officers are trained, supervised and disciplined, said Alexandra Block, of the American Civil Liberties Union, a part of the coalition working to enforce the consent decree.
CPD has struggled to reach the final level of compliance and prove it can follow those rules over a period of time under the judge’s oversight, records show.
“There has been no effective change on the ground,” Block said. “Despite more than seven years of a consent decree, the racist violence continues.”
Snelling leaves a roadmap for Chicago’s next top cop to make substantive progress on the core requirements of the consent decree, including a plan to craft a system for officers to work with residents to address threats to public safety.
Snelling also oversaw the completion of a mandatory study of where officers are assigned throughout the city and whether changes would help thwart crime. That study found more officers must be assigned to patrol the areas of the city with the most crime and violence — a politically difficult shift.
In addition, a system to alert police brass about which officers have been accused of misconduct more than once and might need counseling, retraining or discipline won’t be ready for at least another year — even after costing taxpayers $2.7 million, records show.
Focus on Use of Force
Ten months ago, the coalition told Pallmeyer that the increase in the number of times officers have shot, Tased, struck or choked a member of the public since 2022 violates the consent decree.
That triggered a series of confidential negotiations designed to resolve those concerns. No progress or changes to the court order have been announced.
In April, the attorney general’s office told Pallmeyer the increase merits a “full-scale review.”
Snelling forcefully pushed back against that call, telling the judge the increase is the result of officers reporting those incidents accurately for the first time because of progress in complying with the consent decree.
“You can’t fix things you don’t acknowledge,” Block said, accusing police brass of “manipulating data to make themselves look better.”
There has been a 98% increase in the use of force against children from 2022 to 2024 and a 42.9% increase in the use of the highest level of force from 2023 to 2024.
Johnson declined to join the attorney general’s office call for that review, telling reporters he was confident Snelling could address the issue.
In all of 2025, officers shot 22 people, killing nine, according to WTTW News’ analysis of city data. Since the start of 2026, officers have shot five people, killing one, records show. It is unclear whether a Chicago police officer shot a fellow officer on July 3 while appending a man who shot him in his bullet-proof vest, or whether that officer was shot by the suspected gunman according to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, better known as COPA.
Snelling will depart CPD at the height of the summer, which is typically the most violent time of year in Chicago, months after the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability demanded that he explain the cause of the increase in the use of force against members of the public.
That board, better known as the CCPSA, launched a nationwide search for Snelling’s replacement and has until Nov. 15 to recommend three finalists to Johnson, who is expected to be in the thick of a push to win reelection on Feb. 23.
Consent Decree Set to Expand to Include Traffic Stops
It will be up to the next superintendent to finalize a new policy governing traffic stops, which have long been a flashpoint in the half-dozen serious efforts to reform CPD, since they put officers in close contact with Chicagoans, often under tense circumstances.
Officer Enrique Martinez was killed during a traffic stop in November, and Officer Ella French was killed during a traffic stop in August 2021.
During a March 2024 traffic stop, four officers fired 96 shots in 41 seconds at Dexter Reed, hitting him 13 times, shortly after he shot and wounded an officer, according to a preliminary investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. Reed had been stopped on suspicion for failing to wear a seat belt, according to COPA’s preliminary investigation.
After Reed’s killing more than two years ago, Snelling agreed to expand the consent decree to include traffic stops.
CPD leaders, city officials and the attorney general’s office have been negotiating behind closed doors for more than a year over whether CPD officers should be banned from making traffic stops based on minor registration or equipment violations that are designed to find evidence of “unrelated” crimes.
Snelling said in April 2025 that police officers must be allowed to continue stopping drivers for improper or expired registration plates or stickers and headlight, taillight and license plate light offenses to ensure that Chicago’s streets do not become more “dangerous for everyone who are driving.”
CPD’s policy acknowledges those stops are designed to find evidence of “unrelated” crimes.
However, the CCPSA endorsed a policy in April 2025 to ban those stops in most cases, finding they “do more harm than good.”
No public progress on finalizing that policy has been announced, nor has Johnson taken a stand on whether the policy should ban traffic stops designed to find evidence of unrelated crimes.
Originally, city officials had until the end of 2024 to comply with the consent decree’s requirements.
The consent decree, which has already expanded three times, is set to expire in 2027.
It is all but certain to be extended, ensuring that it defines the tenure of a sixth superintendent.
“We know there remains important work ahead,” Johnson said, adding that the next superintendent must be a “leader with an unwavering commitment to protecting the civil rights of every Chicagoan — especially Black and Brown communities that have borne the greatest harm from unconstitutional policing — and a demonstrated ability to lead the transformational, court-ordered reforms required by the consent decree.”
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
