Aldermen
A Chicago Police Department spokesperson told WTTW News in a statement the department does not “utilize quotas” for traffic stops.
Ald. Jim Gardiner spent nearly three times as much on legal fees during 2023 and 2024 than any other member of the Chicago City Council, according to a WTTW News analysis of records filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections.
If approved, it would be the seventh lawsuit filed by Chicagoans who said they were the victims of Reynaldo Guevara’s misconduct to be resolved, at a cost of $78 million to Chicago taxpayers.
One of Chicago’s largest developers will invoke a little-known and untested provision of city law in an attempt to win approval for a 615-unit apartment complex in Lincoln Park.
The Chicago City Council voted to pay $4 million to the family of a man who spent 33 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of murdering a woman in 1989 in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood.
Between March 2021 and June 2024, Chicago spent more than $238.8 million on a host of programs including affordable housing, mental health, violence prevention, youth job programs and help for unhoused Chicagoans, according to the most recent reports filed with the U.S. Department of the Treasury as required by federal law.
The City Council will also weigh paying $325,000 to resolve a separate lawsuit filed by a man who was shot and wounded by a Chicago Police officer in March 2018 while suffering a mental health crisis.
In all, Chicago taxpayers spent $201.8 million to resolve 43 lawsuits brought by more than three dozen people wrongfully convicted based on evidence gathered by the Chicago Police Department since 2019, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.
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.
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.
During the first six months of 2024, Chicago taxpayers paid $40.5 million to resolve lawsuits alleging police officers committed misconduct, records show.
In all, Chicago taxpayers spent $197.8 million to resolve 42 lawsuits brought by more than three dozen people wrongfully convicted based on evidence gathered by the Chicago Police Department between Jan. 1, 2019, and April 30, 2024, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.
U.S. District Court Judge John F. Kness ordered former Ald. Carrie Austin, 75, to undergo a physical examination by an expert doctor to determine whether she is too ill to stand trial, as her lawyers insist.
The lawsuit filed by John Velez, who spent 17 years in prison before his conviction in the murder of 26-year-old Anthony Hueneca in Little Village was overturned, is set for trial for July 2025, U.S. District Court Judge Edmond Chang ruled Tuesday.
If the city loses at trial, it could cost taxpayers between $18 million and $34 million, according to public warnings that most of the Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee ignored.
John Velez was convicted of killing 26-year-old Anthony Hueneca in Little Village. The jury did not hear evidence that Velez was actually in Cicero at the time of the shooting.