A new Chicago Police Department policy that does not ban officers from serving no-knock warrants or from pointing guns at children during raids is now final.

The Chicago Police Department must work faster to complete internal affairs investigations, Supt. Larry Snelling told a federal judge.

The report published by the Chicago Police Department acknowledges that the number of times officers used force against members of the public “continues to trend upward.”

“We have to revisit our promotion policy,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. “We don’t want these types of archaic approaches to set us back. So, it is something that we are looking into.”

Of 439 positions in the Chicago Police Department charged with implementing the consent decree, 179 positions were empty at the beginning of December, according to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by WTTW News.

However, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer ruled that officers must have their cameras on if a deputy chief asks them to answer additional questions about the shooting.

The Office of the Attorney General told U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer that immediate steps must be taken to ensure the push to reform the Chicago Police Department results in meaningful change in the lives of ordinary Chicagoans.

Required by the terms of the consent decree, the federal court order designed to compel CPD to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers, the study is on track to be completed on time, by the end of the year, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling said.

The jump of six percentage points in the level of full compliance with the consent decree reached between Jan. 1 and June 30 is the second largest increase in the six and a half years that the federal court order has been in effect.

While the number of officers carrying the gun “decreases daily,” CPD officials told the judge there is no firm timetable for all CPD officers to stop carrying the gun because of delays obtaining a new CPD-approved weapon or holster.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer said officers who have an alternative service weapon that “meets appropriate standards should be required immediately to use that alternative weapon.”

“CPD has failed to rein in its culture of brutality and abuse,” according to the coalition of police reform groups that forced the city to agree to federal court oversight. “The department is moving in the wrong direction.”

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office urged U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer to order CPD officers to keep their cameras on “in the immediate aftermath of an officer-involved shooting or death” over the objections of CPD leaders and city lawyers.

Chicago Police Department officers pointed a gun at a person, on average, more than 11 times every day in 2024, according to an CPD annual report on officers’ use of force.

Even as the financial toll of decades of police misconduct is likely to grow in the coming months, Chicago exhausted its annual budget of $82.2 million months ago and had spent nearly triple that amount by July 31, according to WTTW News’ analysis.

Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke announced Wednesday that her office will not charge any of the five officers who shot and killed Dexter Reed during a March 2024 traffic stop after he shot and  wounded an officer.