Stories by Matt Masterson

Carjacking totals dropped across Chicago in 2018 following a yearslong spike, and city leaders hope the deployment of a technological tool will help draw those totals down further.

Civilian Office of Police Accountability investigator Alison Yohanna is facing felony charges after she allegedly emailed a false report of a mass shooting at her office late last month.

A staff member at Chicago’s largest public high school has been removed following an allegation of inappropriate behavior involving a student. “We are taking this situation seriously,” the school’s principal wrote Friday in an email to parents.

Among the extraordinary details that came to light after Ald. Ed Burke was charged Thursday with attempted extortion was the fact that nearly two dozen firearms were found in his offices during a series of November raids.

A Cook County judge has already delayed her finding once in the unprecedented trial of three Chicago police officers. The new verdict date is Jan. 17 – a day before the sentencing of former Officer Jason Van Dyke.

Chicago police descended on COPA’s office last Friday following a report of an emailed threat. But COPA officials now say that threat was “false” and the sender has been identified as an agency employee.

The school district’s inspector general found the music director “willfully violated” CPS fundraising guidelines. That’s just one of the investigations highlighted in the watchdog’s just-released annual report.

Nearly 250 Chicago schools have been labelled “underutilized,” according to district data. That total exceeds the number of schools CPS says are running efficiently.

The school district says identification numbers, grades, standardized test scores and the email addresses of numerous Ogden Elementary students were exposed in the latest CPS data breach.

Strawberry Hampton, a 27-year-old transgender woman, said she was constantly harassed and abused by prisoners and corrections officers alike inside various all-male prisons.

Nearly a dozen Chicago police districts this year saw their lowest number of recorded robberies since 2000 as the citywide robbery rate fell by 19 percent year-over-year.

The holiday travel season is officially underway, but if you’re planning to leave the Windy City, it might be best to hit the road sooner rather than later.

A verdict was expected Wednesday in the bench trial of three Chicago police officers charged with conspiring to cover up details of the fatal 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald. The defendants will instead learn their fate in January, just days before Jason Van Dyke is scheduled to be sentenced.

Community organizers have helped raise thousands of dollars for the families of two Chicago police officers who were struck and killed by a Metra train in an accident Monday night on the Far South Side.

A verdict was expected Wednesday in the trial of three Chicago police officers accused of conspiring to cover up the fatal 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, but the judge has postponed her decision.

Jason Van Dyke was found guilty of second-degree murder in October. Next month, the suspended Chicago police officer will learn how much time he’ll spend in prison.

In a class-action lawsuit, the state’s child welfare agency is accused of keeping children confined to psychiatric hospitals beyond their discharge dates because it doesn’t have the necessary facilities to house them.

In just over a year, Mohammed Shariff says he illegally dispensed more than two kilograms of oxycodone and hundreds of thousands of other opioid pills to patients who planned to resell them.

There’s been a renewed focus on student sexual abuse after hundreds of cases within Chicago Public Schools came to light. But a new report finds that schools across the state aren’t doing enough to support abuse survivors.

A federal judge rules the upcoming trial of Brendt Christensen will be moved from Urbana to Peoria. He is charged with the kidnapping and death of 26-year-old Yingying Zhang.

Arguments are over in the trial of three Chicago cops accused of trying to cover up details of the Laquan McDonald shooting. Now it’s up to a judge to issue her verdict in a ruling that will come later this month.

Defense attorneys for three Chicago police officers will have their first opportunity to present evidence Thursday morning. But it remains to be seen if any witnesses will be called.

After the state rested its case Tuesday, defense attorneys each requested a directed finding of not guilty, claiming the state had failed to prove any conspiracy existed. More updates from week two in the courtroom.

Kwame Nkrumah Charter School and Urban Prep West Charter School have both failed to “provide a high quality education” for their students, the district says.

An eyewitness who says he was shooed away. A key witness who says a detective lied. Scrutiny over events leading up to the shooting. Key takeaways from week one of an unprecedented trial of three Chicago cops accused of working to cover up the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald.

A delayed ruling on key evidence will extend the special prosecution’s case into next week. The latest from the trial of three Chicago police officers accused of attempting to cover up the 2014 shooting death of Laquan McDonald.