Crime & Law
Chicago Taxpayers Spent $259M to Resolve Police Misconduct Lawsuits in 2025: City Analysis
(Michael Izquierdo / WTTW News)
Chicago taxpayers spent nearly $259 million in 2025 to resolve lawsuits alleging Chicago police officers committed a wide range of misconduct — including wrongful convictions and improper pursuits, according to a city report required by the federal court order known as the consent decree.
That is more than three times what Chicago taxpayers paid to resolve police misconduct lawsuits in 2024, according to the annual report from the Chicago Department of Law detailing the cost of lawsuits filed against the Chicago Police Department.
That tally does not include the $101.3 million the city agreed to spend to resolve 184 lawsuits filed by Chicagoans who were wrongfully convicted based on what they allege was fabricated evidence gathered by former Chicago Police Sgt. Ronald Watts, who was convicted in 2013 of taking bribes, and other officers, according to the report.
The vast majority of those payments will be made in 2026, records show, helping the city to manage the financial fallout of the scandal that engulfed Watts and the officers he supervised.
Had the city paid to resolve the lawsuits alleging misconduct by Watts in 2025, when the City Council voted to settle them, Chicago taxpayers would have paid a total of $360.3 million to resolve police misconduct lawsuits, according to the report.
Annually, the city sets aside $82 million to cover the cost of police misconduct lawsuits as part of the Chicago Police Department’s nearly $2 billion budget.
However, according to the city’s audited annual financial report for 2025, CPD spent just $131.1 million to resolve police misconduct lawsuits.
CPD overspent its total 2025 budget by $162.5 million, according to Chicago’s annual financial report.
Representatives of the city’s Law Department, which is responsible for detailing police misconduct lawsuits under the consent decree, and the city’s Finance Department, which is responsible for compiling the city’s Annual Certified Financial Report, did not respond to questions about the apparent discrepancy.
It is unclear how the city paid the remaining $127.8 million worth of bills to resolve those lawsuits, why that expense was not attributed to the police department and why it has not been transparently reported to Chicagoans.
Between 2021 and 2025, while the Chicago Police Department has been subject to a federal court order to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers, taxpayers have spent $472.4 million to resolve police misconduct lawsuits, according to reports required by the consent decree.
Wrongful convictions were once again the most expensive kind of police misconduct in Chicago, costing taxpayers a total of $193.4 million in 2025, or almost 75% of the total amount spent to resolve allegations of police misconduct, according to the report.
Taxpayers also spent $54.4 million to resolve lawsuits that alleged police officers improperly pursued drivers through the city’s streets, causing several deaths and injuries, according to the report.
In addition to the settlements, taxpayers spent $36.08 million to pay private attorneys to defend police misconduct in 2025, $1.3 million more than in 2024, setting a new record, according to the report.
The Department of Law’s entire budget for 2025 was $47.9 million, according to the city’s spending plan.
The cost of resolving police misconduct lawsuits has become a frequent source of political heartburn for members of the Chicago City Council, who are divided along ideological lines about the cause of the escalating costs. The City Council must ratify all settlements of more than $100,000.
More conservative alderpeople say the city’s lawyers and their colleagues are too eager to settle cases before trial. According to the alderpeople, that encourages those guilty of criminal wrongdoing to sue the city in the hopes of an easy payday.
However, progressive members of the City Council see the expense as perhaps the most visible cost of the fact that city officials have yet to put an end to the decades of scandals, misconduct and brutality that have engulfed the Chicago Police Department.
Despite the fact that the federal court order requiring CPD to reform itself has been in effect for seven years, CPD has fully met just 25% of its requirements, according to the most recent report by the team monitoring the city’s compliance with the reform push.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
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