Politics
CPD Brass Missed Deadline to Detail How Many Times Officers Used Force Against Chicagoans in 2025: Records
(WTTW News)
Chicago police leaders failed to publicly account for all of the times officers used force against members of the public in 2025, missing a deadline set by the federal court order requiring officers to stop routinely violating Black and Latino residents’ constitutional rights.
That missed deadline comes as CPD officials acknowledged, again, that the number of times officers used force against members of the public “continues to trend upward,” according to the report.
2025 was the deadliest year for police violence since 2021, according to WTTW News’ analysis of data released by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. Officers shot 22 people last year, killing nine, according to the analysis.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office told the federal judge overseeing the consent decree — which is now more than seven years old but only 25% fully complete — that the increase merits a “full-scale review.”
Even though CPD had six months to publish its report detailing every time officers used force against a member of the public between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, it could only produce complete data through Sept. 30 by the June 30 deadline, according to the required reports based on data from CPD’s Tactical Review and Evaluation Division, which CPD refers to as TRED.
“TRED was not able to finish reviewing all 2025 incidents in time for the remaining months to be included in this report,” according to the report. “As a result, the report reflects only the portion of the year for which reviews were fully completed, from January through September.”
CPD officials offered no explanation for the missed deadline in its annual use of force report for 2025. However, CPD has struggled for years to review the reports officers are required to file after they use force against a member of the public in a timely manner. Officials have repeatedly promised U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, who is overseeing the reform effort, that they are working diligently to clear that backlog.
CPD’s failure to analyze officers’ decisions to use force in the last quarter of 2025, makes “it very difficult to compare year over year,” Alexandra Block, of the American Civil Liberties Union, told Pallmeyer during a hearing held earlier this month.
The ACLU is 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. That oversight began in 2019.
“Reported violence by CPD continues to increase, not decrease,” Block said. “After skyrocketing nearly 75% between 2021 and 2024, the total number of force reports increased again by an additional 9% during the first three quarters of 2025.”
The coalition of police reform groups that forced the city to agree to federal court oversight told Pallmeyer in September that the number of times officers have shot, Tased, struck and choked a member of the public violates the consent decree.
Representatives of CPD did not respond to questions from WTTW News about the lack of complete data for 2025.
CPD gave no deadline for the complete data from 2025 to be released.
“TRED expects to complete all remaining 2025 reviews during 2026,” according to the report. “Once these reviews are finalized, TRED will provide a full year comparison in the first TRED semiannual report that follows completion of the 2025 review cycle.“
The next use of force report, which is required to detail every time an officer uses force against a member of the public during the first half of 2026, must be released on Dec. 31, records show.
Representatives of Mayor Brandon Johnson declined to comment. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from WTTW News.
During a September 2025 federal court hearing about the consent decree, Assistant Attorney General Mike Tresnowski pressed CPD to do an effective job reviewing when officers use force against 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.
CPD was able to account for all of the times officers used the highest level of force against a member of the public because those instances must be reviewed separately by CPD’s Force Review Board, according to the report.
That includes all incidents that resulted in a death or hospitalization as well as when an officer fires their gun, strikes a person’s head or neck with an impact weapon or uses a chokehold or other restraint that could result in suffocation.
In 2025, CPD officers used the highest level of force against a member of the public 47 times, according to the report. Approximately 65% involved Black Chicagoans, records show. Less than 30% of the city’s population is Black.
All but six of those incidents involved gunshots fired by a police officer, according to the report.
Chicago police officers were shot, or had shots fired at them, 28 times in 2025, the fewest since 2019, according to the report. By comparison, 58 officers were shot or shot at in 2024, according to the report.
Officers used the highest level of force 59 times in 2024, according to CPD’s annual report.
Chicago police officers used some level of force against members of the public 2,583 times during the first nine months of 2025, an increase of nearly 8% as compared with the same period in 2024, records show.
In addition, CPD officers pointed their guns at individuals 3,255 times between Jan. 1, 2025, and Sept. 30, an increase of approximately 3% as compared with the same period during the previous year, according to the report.
That means CPD officers pointed a gun at a person, on average, 12 times every day during the first nine months of 2025, according to the report.
In more than 71% of those incidents, the person that an officer pointed their weapon at did not have a gun, according to the report.
The number of times Chicago police officers pointed their guns at people increased 44% between 2022 and 2024, records show.
Chicago’s homicide rate dropped by approximately 29% in 2025, as compared with 2024, according to Chicago Police Department data. The city’s overall violent crime rate decreased by nearly 23%, according to CPD data.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
