Crime & Law
Witzburg Ends Her Term as Chicago’s Inspector General With a Flurry of Reports — And Warnings
Video: Inspector General Deborah Witzburg joins “Chicago Tonight” on April 16, 2026. (Produced by Shelby Hawkins)
Throughout her four years as Chicago’s inspector general, Deborah Witzburg has repeatedly warned officials that they must work to pay down Chicago’s “deficit of legitimacy” and finally prove the city is truly ready for reform.
But Witzburg told WTTW News’ “Chicago Tonight” on Thursday that she will leave office at the end of next week, after just one term in office, with much of that debt left unpaid.
Chicago has earned “every bit” of its reputation as the most corrupt of corrupt American cities, with much more work to be done, Witzburg said.
“In that world, where there is no finish line in sight, mile markers are hard come by, and so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and worrying about this question of how we know if we are making progress, how we know if it’s working,” Witzburg said. “I think that we have made progress. I think that we have held people in power to account in a way that historically didn’t happen, and I think that matters to people.”
In her final two months in office, Witzburg published three major audits, including one that blasted the Department of Law for refusing to provide records about the hiring of “high-profile” city employees in violation of city law and a federal court order. Another audit urged Chicago Police Department leaders to stop inconsistently stripping officers accused of serious misconduct of their guns and badges.
“If we are ever going to make any progress in fostering public trust in policing, we need a disciplinary system in which both members of the public and members of the department have reason to be confident,” Witzburg said.
After clashing with Mayor Brandon Johnson throughout his term in office, Witzburg declined to ask him to reappoint her to serve a second, and final, term as inspector general.
“I think there’s a great deal of room for improvement, to say the least, in the city’s cooperation with oversight,” Witzburg said. “If we are not all working in the direction of building a government that more closely resembles the one Chicagoans deserve, then at least some of us are in the wrong line of work.”
Johnson now has until May 12 to select one of the three finalists picked by a five-member search committee to replace Witzburg, and ask the Chicago City Council to confirm his pick.
Whoever gets the nod to serve as the city’s sixth inspector general, a job that will pay more than $200,000 annually, will have their work cut out for them, Witzburg said.
They will also have very big shoes to fill, Ald. Matt Martin (47th Ward) said Thursday during Witzburg’s final appearance before the Ethics Committee that he chairs.
“You have, in my opinion, left the office much stronger than when you started,” Martin told Witzburg, calling her work “phenomenal.” “You set an incredibly high bar.”
Johnson said he was looking for an inspector general who is willing to collaborate with all city departments and agencies, and joked it would be “nice if they were a Cubs fan.”
“The city of Chicago is open for business but not for sale,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday. “We want to make sure we are open and transparent, while weeding out any sprinkles of corruption.”
Witzburg, a former assistant state’s attorney, served as the city’s first public safety inspector general, a position created as part of a package of reforms crafted by the City Council and former Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the wake of the police murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
In July 2023, Witzburg found that former Mayor Lori Lightfoot violated the city’s ethics ordinance when her campaign sent emails to city employees at their official city emails asking them to contribute to her bid for a second term.
That same month, Witzburg found that Ald. Jim Gardiner (45th Ward) retaliated against a frequent critic and political foe by directing a city employee to issue “unfounded citations” that could have forced the Jefferson Park man to pay more than $600 in fines.
That was the “first-ever finding of probable cause in an inspector general ethics investigation of a sitting member of City Council,” officials said.
The Chicago Board of Ethics later dismissed Witzburg’s finding in Lightfoot’s case. An administrative law judge dismissed the case against Gardiner after he found the inspector general’s office failed to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence in his case.
Witzburg found three investigations conducted by CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs into ties between police officers and far-right extremist groups that have clashed with the United States government to be lacking, and demanded they be reopened. None of those probes resulted in any of the officers being disciplined.
A proposal designed to rid the Chicago Police Department of officers who “actively participate” in extremist and anti-government groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers is set for a final vote next month.
Witzburg’s most public clash with Johnson came after she released an audit that detailed repeated efforts by the mayor’s staff to hinder her probe into the mayor’s acceptance of gifts on behalf of the city. Forty days later, Johnson opened the so-called City Hall “gift room” to scrutiny as Witzburg had demanded.
In December 2023, the Office of the Inspector General became the first city department to reach full compliance with the federal court order known as the consent decree, which requires the Chicago Police Department to stop routinely violating residents’ constitutional rights.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
