Politics
Chicago Spent $250.8M on Police Overtime in 2025, 151% More Than Its Annual Overtime Budget: Watchdog
(WTTW News)
The city of Chicago spent $250.8 million on overtime for members of the Chicago Police Department during 2025 — 151% more than the Chicago City Council set aside for police overtime as part of the city’s annual budget, according to records published by the city’s watchdog.
CPD not only exceeded its annual budget as set by the 2025 city budget, but it also spent 25% more than the amount set aside for police overtime in the 2026 city budget, records show.
CPD exceeded its annual overtime budget for the ninth straight year, records show.
“This is something we have to get right,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said Tuesday when asked by WTTW News about the new data published by Inspector General Deborah Witzburg.
Even though CPD spent approximately 7.3% less on police overtime in 2025 as compared with 2024, it was still two and a half times more than its budget, records show.
The cost of CPD overtime peaked in 2023, setting a record at $324.2 million, records show. Between 2023 and 2025, CPD overtime spending dropped 22.6%, records show.
CPD’s overtime costs have spiked because officers’ salaries and benefits have gone up significantly while the number of CPD members has decreased by approximately 1,200 employees since 2019, Chicago Police Department Deputy Director Ryan Fitzsimons told members of the City Council’s Budget and Government Operations Committee in September.
Johnson said Tuesday that he was heartened that CPD officers worked 8.6% fewer overtime hours in 2025 than in 2024.
“That gives me confidence that we’re moving in the right direction,” Johnson said.
Even as Chicago Police officers worked fewer overtime hours, the city recorded a 29% drop in the number of homicides, as compared with 2024, and the city’s overall violent crime rate decreased by more than 21%, according to CPD data.
Since 2021, the annual amount spent by CPD on overtime has increased 42%, according to data from the inspector general, despite routine pledges from police superintendents and mayors to rein in the spending.
One of the last changes made to the city’s 2026 spending plan before it was passed by the Chicago City Council over Johnson’s objections removed a requirement that CPD brass publicly ask the City Council for more money if it exhausts its $200 million budget for overtime.
After allowing the budget to take effect without his signature, Johnson signed an executive order designed to impose new limits on police overtime spending despite the City Council’s objections.
Read the full executive order.
Johnson said those limits will serve as a “mechanism that creates just a stronger level of accountability.”
That request must detail the “operations necessitating the need for additional overtime appropriation” and “the funding source within the department’s annual appropriation to be used to provide the additional overtime funding,” according to the order.
“The mayor, in consultation with the superintendent, retains the authority to authorize overtime in response to a genuine, pressing emergency,” according to a statement from the mayor’s office. “Spending on emergency overtime will be documented and subject to administrative review.”
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
