Stories by Heather Cherone

Even though Chicago’s 2025 budget included $500,000 for the program, the effort will not move forward after the City Council’s Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee, meeting in a joint session with the Transportation Committee, rejected officials’ plan to plow sidewalks in two small parts of the city.

The pause affects a long-awaited plan to extend the city’s Red Line train. The money was “put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting,” budget director Russ Vought wrote on social media.

Conyears-Ervin, who is running to represent Illinois’ 7th Congressional District, had been fined a total of $70,000 by the Chicago Board of Ethics in two separate probes.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer said officers who have an alternative service weapon that “meets appropriate standards should be required immediately to use that alternative weapon.”

Chicago taxpayers paid $295 million between 2019 and 2024 to resolve lawsuits naming officers whose alleged misconduct led more than once to payouts, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News. In all, the city spent $491.7 million to resolve lawsuits alleging 1,643 Chicago police officers committed a wide range of misconduct.

“CPD has failed to rein in its culture of brutality and abuse,” according to the coalition of police reform groups that forced the city to agree to federal court oversight. “The department is moving in the wrong direction.”

The measure reverses the city’s 68-year ban on tiny homes but creates a patchwork of regulations that could significantly differ from ward to ward in order to uphold the decades-old tradition known as aldermanic prerogative.

Chicago taxpayers will pay $90 million in the first-ever global settlement of lawsuits tied to a single Chicago police officer, under the agreement approved Thursday, to 180 people who spent nearly 200 years in prison.

The 29-year-old, who is better known as Red, was immediately sworn in to office on a Bible held by his father, who represented parts of the West Side and the West Loop for 30 years on the Chicago City Council before he stepped down in July.

The unanimous vote by the City Council’s Housing and Real Estate Committee means a yearslong fight to prevent longtime residents from being pushed out of South Shore is one step away from victory.

A compromise proposal to allow Chicagoans to build basement, attic and coach house dwellings across the city would still give alderpeople the final say over whether the tiny homes could be built in their wards, officials said.

“It could have been me in the exact same way,” Shunza Walker, 41, told WTTW News.

The Chicago Police Department spent approximately 7% less on overtime during the first six months of 2025 than it did during the same period in 2024, records show.

“We don’t have a spending problem, we have a revenue problem,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday. “That’s why my budget is going to challenge the ultra-rich to pay their fair share in taxes.”

An appeals court ruled last month that Chicago police officers accused of serious misconduct have the right to ask an arbitrator — and not the Chicago Police Board — to decide their fate, but those proceedings must take place in public.

The report offers “89 preliminary options to improve operations, generate new revenue, and pursue strategic opportunities, all while preserving city services” that could add between $1 billion and $2.1 billion to the city’s bottom line.

A final vote on both proposals, which would create 786 new homes, including 237 units of affordable housing, is set for the Sept. 25 City Council meeting.

The first global settlement of lawsuits tied to a single officer is now set for a final vote by the full Chicago City Council on Sept. 25.

“This should come from the top, yet with each new crisis in recent years, we are reminded that we cannot rely on President Trump to tamp down the anger and the passion in the aftermath of political violence,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “Instead, he actively fans the flames of division.”

“This is about making sure no family in Illinois is left wondering if they can protect themselves against preventable serious illness,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “When the federal government abandons its responsibility, Illinois will step up.”

The plaintiffs in the lawsuits, which date back to 2017, spent nearly 200 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted based on what they allege was fabricated evidence gathered by Sgt. Ronald Watts, who was convicted in 2013 of taking bribes, and other officers.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office urged U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer to order CPD officers to keep their cameras on “in the immediate aftermath of an officer-involved shooting or death” over the objections of CPD leaders and city lawyers.

In a launch video, Ald. Brendan Reilly touted his record as an independent member of the Chicago City Council and vowed to fight crime, build more housing and root out corruption.

Chicago Police Department officers pointed a gun at a person, on average, more than 11 times every day in 2024, according to an CPD annual report on officers’ use of force.

Chicago taxpayers paid $6.3 million to settle 54 lawsuits, according to a WTTW analysis of city records. An additional $4.5 million went to pay private lawyers to defend the conduct of CPD officers named in those lawsuits.

Chicago police officers have now shot 16 people, killing eight, less than nine months into 2025, more than in all of last year, records show.