Stories by Matt Masterson

Both local and state police will be ramping up their patrol deployments Tuesday night to maintain safety at busy New Year’s Eve events and along roads as marijuana legalization takes effect.

Brian Travis was arrested on Christmas Day at O’Hare International Airport and charged with sexually assaulting an underage female student from an Albany Park neighborhood high school.

Brendan Dassey was 16 years old when he confessed to assisting his uncle, Steven Avery, with the rape and murder of Teresa Halbach. His case and subsequent appeals were made famous in the 2015 Netflix series “Making a Murderer.”

Last year, 86% of the nearly 490,000 traffic stops made by Chicago police involved a driver of color, according to the ACLU of Illinois. Of those, 300,000 stops involved a black driver.

Dwright Boone-Doty and Corey Morgan were convicted in October of first-degree murder for the killing of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee. The two will each spend multiple decades behind bars for the slaying, which prosecutors called a “dark day” in the city of Chicago.

Attorneys from Chicago’s Law Department argue in a new filing Monday that the former “Empire” star’s countersuit should be thrown out, in part, because that criminal case could be reopened.

The Chicago Board of Education and a West Side charter school are being sued by a female student who claims the school’s ex-basketball coach sexually assaulted her multiple times last year.

Federal prosecutors said that by lying to a grand jury, 58-year-old Beena Patel “threw a wrench in the wheels of justice and ground them to a halt.”

Armando Lopez, 19, was charged with first-degree murder in connection with the killing of registered nurse Frank Aguilar, 32, on Nov. 12. Detectives believe they’ve also identified the shooter, who is not yet in custody.

In three weeks, Illinois will become the 11th state with legalized marijuana sales. On Wednesday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker joined Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx as she began the process of vacating thousands of low-level cannabis convictions.

A Chicago firm is suing the vendor behind the SAT and Advanced Placement exams in a federal class-action suit that accuses them of collecting and selling millions of students’ personal information.

The U.S. government is moving to revoke the citizenship of José Vilchis, a longtime gymnastics coach who’s been accused of sexually abusing multiple underage girls over the course of three-plus decades.

The Chicago Police Board held the first of three community listening sessions Monday in Washington Heights as it continues its search for a new superintendent.

In June, Brendt Christensen was convicted of kidnapping and killing University of Illinois Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang. This week, he was sent to McCreary United States Penitentiary, a high-security federal prison that houses some 1,500 convicts in southern Kentucky.

Three public listening sessions will be held next week as the board seeks a permanent replacement for Eddie Johnson, who was fired as police superintendent earlier this week.

Ernesto Godinez, 29, the reputed gang member convicted of shooting a federal agent in the head last year on the Southwest Side, has been sentenced to more 200 months in federal prison.

Federal prosecutors say Kenneth Johnson continued accepting Social Security checks meant for his mother for more than two decades after her death. His sentence includes six months of community confinement and an order to pay back all the money he stole.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot makes a bombshell announcement: Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is terminated, effective immediately. Lightfoot says an inspector general’s investigation revealed Johnson “repeatedly lied” to both the mayor and the public.

Fifteen-year-old Rylan Wilder remains hospitalized after he was shot last week as police trailed a bank robbery suspect in the Old Irving Park neighborhood.

Former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke is being held in a facility in Baltimore, Maryland, as he awaits placement inside another prison. He was moved out of federal custody this week. 

Former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke is no longer being held in a federal prison in New York – or in federal custody, period – but it’s unclear where he will serve out the remainder of his sentence for the murder of black teen Laquan McDonald in 2014.

The family of Rylan Wilder, who was wounded last week during a confrontation between a bank robbery suspect and police, is suing that suspect and asking local police departments for more information about their son’s shooting.

The father of slain pharmacist Dayna Less is suing Mercy Hospital and its security firm, claiming their “systemic failures” allowed a domestic violence incident “escalate into a triple homicide.”

Federal prosecutors in Chicago say their office is entering into a new Department of Justice initiative aimed at reducing gun violence through coordinated prosecutions and new or improved background check enforcements.

Former “Empire” star Jussie Smollett has filed a federal counterclaim against the city of Chicago claiming he owes the city no more money and was maliciously prosecuted for the alleged hoax attack police say he orchestrated on himself.

The family of Rekia Boyd erupted into applause Tuesday after a judge denied a request from the man who was charged and acquitted in her killing – a former Chicago police detective – to expunge any record of his criminal case from the public’s view.