Stories by Heather Cherone

A federal court order requiring the Chicago Police Department to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers should be expanded to include traffic stops, but the city’s new police oversight board should be given some power over the hot-button issue, according to a new recommendation. 

The shelter at 27th Street and Pulaski Road, which opened in January at the height of the crisis that strained state and city resources, now houses 146 people, state officials said.

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said during an appearance on WTTW News’ “Chicago Tonight” he has repeatedly urged the mayor to use funds from the city’s TIF districts instead of borrowing money or making cuts to classrooms.

Mayor Brandon Johnson acknowledged Wednesday he decided not to veto the ordinance because of concerns it would set a “dangerous precedent.”

“I’m not going to cut, and take away, layoff, fire, privatize so that other people can benefit, and the people of Chicago can lose,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. “Not under my watch.”

“I truly believe in community input,” Ald. Walter Burnett (27th Ward) said. “I want the people to have a voice. I don’t know every nook and cranny of every neighborhood. And when I say the people, I mean the alderman.”

The City Council’s Finance Committee unanimously endorsed the plan from R2 Co. and the Campari Group to transform the 14-story office building at 79 W. Monroe St. into an apartment building with 117 units, including 41 units set aside for low- and moderate-income Chicagoans.

“This is still very much a frustration I have,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. “I’ve been in conversations with the superintendent, with our budget director to come up with better systems.”

Although the mailers did not identify who paid for them, the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 helped bankroll the campaign, Local 150 officials told WTTW News.

The city is on pace to spend at least $258 million on police overtime by the end of the year, even as officials imposed limits on overtime for all city departments, except for police and the Chicago Fire Department, amid a massive budget crunch.

Chicago taxpayers have paid $74.4 million since 2019 to resolve lawsuits involving police pursuits, with the city’s insurance coverage paying an additional $25 million, according to a WTTW News analysis.

The 6-0 vote by the board overseeing the Chicago Public Schools came two days after CEO Pedro Martinez announced he had refused Mayor Brandon Johnson’s request to resign, an unprecedented show of public defiance by the head of a city agency toward the mayor.

During the past week, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has written three times to parents, staff and students, and in each letter, he has promised that he will not close any schools while at the helm of CPS, even as he acknowledged compiling a list of schools that could be closed as part of an effort to compile a five-year strategic plan.

Mayor Brandon Johnson burned a significant amount of political capital to convince the Chicago City Council in April to appropriate an additional $70 million, which the city did not need after a feared surge of migrants failed to materialize.

Deputy Mayor of Community Safety Garien Gatewood told WTTW News’ “Chicago Tonight” program on Monday that city officials are excited to see what kind of technology is available.

Former Ald. Ed Burke is in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons at Federal Correctional Institution Thomson in Thomson, Illinois, nearly 150 miles west of his beloved hometown. He will begin his two-year prison sentence.

In each of the five cases, Inspector General Deborah Witzburg informed Civilian Office of Police Accountability Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten that the agency known as COPA had erred when it closed those cases because they involved serious allegations of police misconduct.

While none of the officers who shot at Reed, who was hit 13 times, have returned to active duty, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling has refused Civilian Office of Police Accountability Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten’s call to relieve them of their police powers.

A spokesperson for Mayor Brandon Johnson declined to comment on whether he had asked CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to resign, citing the mayor’s policy of not commenting on personnel matters. A spokesperson for Martinez declined to comment.

The Chicago City Council voted 44-3 to approve what supporters dubbed the Northwest Side Housing Preservation Ordinance, which expands two pilot programs that began in 2021 and makes them a permanent part of the city code.

Calling the measure illegal, Mayor Brandon Johnson said he would veto it.

The revised governmental ethics ordinance prevents what Board of Ethics Chair Steve Berlin called the “erasure of 13 years of reform.”

During the past eight years, city officials have paid at least $11.2 million to hire private attorneys to defend former Sgt. Ronald Watts and the officers he supervised, despite his criminal conviction and the hundreds of people he helped convict who have been exonerated.

The showdown set for Wednesday is the latest inflection point in the monthslong debate over whether ShotSpotter is an irreplaceable tool in the fight against gun violence or a waste of taxpayer funds.

During the first six months of 2024, Chicago taxpayers paid $40.5 million to resolve lawsuits alleging police officers committed misconduct, records show.

The pilot program launched by federal proscecutors Chicago appears to be the latest attempt to root out the deeply entrenched culture of corruption that has long defined local and state politics.