Stories by Heather Cherone

Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said city officials and police brass are “ill-equipped to evaluate and improve response times, simply because, more often than not, we have no information on when the police arrive to respond to an emergency.”

A slate of county and state offices is up for grabs in March, including state’s attorney and circuit court clerk as well as a key seat in the Illinois House to represent the city’s Northwest Side.

More than 2,000 men, women and children are being forced to sleep on the floors of police stations across the city and at O’Hare Airport, according to city data released by the mayor’s office Wednesday.

Madigan, 81, once so dominant that he was known as the “velvet hammer,” was at the heart of the allegations that led to 32 guilty verdicts in those trials. He now faces an uphill battle to avoid guilty convictions to match his former chief of staff Tim Mapes and longtime political confidant Mike McClain.

The number of migrants living at police stations and O’Hare rose 28% between Aug. 18 and Friday. All are waiting for space to open up in one of 15 city shelters, which housed more than 6,500 migrants as of Friday, according to city data.

A revised version of the proposal known as “Bring Chicago Home” has Mayor Brandon Johnson’s support, setting up a fierce debate in the coming weeks over how the city should fight homelessness.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former middle school teacher, told WTTW News on Thursday’s “Chicago Tonight” that he would give his administration an A-minus “at least for style,” with much more work to be done.

The size of the Chicago Police Department is essentially unchanged since Mayor Brandon Johnson took office 100 days ago. There are 12,363 employees, including 11,722 sworn officers.

Chicago spent $197.7 million to resolve lawsuits alleging more than 1,000 Chicago police officers committed a wide range of misconduct in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Of that total, $91.3 million came from settlements involving 116 officers whose conduct led to multiple payouts.

Chief Larry Snelling, tapped by Mayor Brandon Johnson to lead the Chicago Police Department, served as an expert witness in more than two dozen civil and criminal cases involving police officers, according to court records reviewed by WTTW News.

During his campaign for mayor, Brandon Johnson promised to fire Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady, and Friday night, he did just that — setting off a wave of recriminations and outrage.

Cook County residents are now eligible for assistance, including grants for temporary housing and home repairs and low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, officials said.

Chicago Board of Ethics Chair William Conlon said the settlement was “in the best interest of everyone,” while former Ald. Howard Brookins said he had been vindicated.

“This is an extremely important day for the city,” Snelling said Monday. “For people who grew up like I did — a resident of Englewood and a student of the Chicago Public Schools — I want you to know the possibilities are limitless.”

Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas called the legislation “the most significant property tax reform legislation the General Assembly has approved in decades.”

Larry Snelling, a longtime Chicago Police Department insider with a decades-long career in law enforcement, has been tapped to lead the department as the city’s next top cop.

“We are writing enormous checks and leaving a tremendous opportunity for reform on the table,” Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said. “It is a staggering amount of money.”

Supporters of the proposal say the change will help the nearly 66,000 Chicagoans who are unhoused by generating approximately $160 million annually — enough to address the root causes of homelessness by building new permanent housing that offers wraparound services like substance abuse counseling.

Nearly 12,000 people, most of them from Central and South America, have arrived in Chicago in the past 11 months, stretching the city’s safety net beyond its breaking point.

“These are the rules that stand between us and government illegitimacy,” Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said.

It took less than five months for the Chicago Police Department to exhaust the $100 million earmarked for overtime set by the Chicago City Council as part of the city’s 2023 budget, according to data obtained by WTTW News through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The city and its lawyers will now have to convince a jury that two officers did nothing wrong when they fired 16 shots at Darius Cole-Garrit, 21, at 9:30 p.m. Aug. 19, 2014, after a brief foot chase on the city's Far South Side.

A decade-long push to reopen public mental health clinics closed in 2011 and expand efforts to respond to 911 calls for help not with police officers but with social workers and counselors was center stage at City Hall Monday.

The second-installment of property owners’ 2022 tax bills will be more than 120 days late amid months of bureaucratic wrangling and finger pointing among Cook County officials.

The 22-26 vote represented a rare, if not unprecedented, decision by the City Council to reject a proposed settlement after it was endorsed by the Finance Committee and the mayor. 

Taken together, the two proposals are likely to form the foundation of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s agenda when it comes to labor. A former organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson enjoyed the unanimous support of Chicago’s progressive labor organizations.