Of 439 positions in the Chicago Police Department charged with implementing the consent decree, 207 positions, or 47%, were empty seven months into 2025, according to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by WTTW News. CPD officials failed to account for another 226 positions.

There is no sign Chicago Police Board President Kyle Cooper's pleas will break a legal stalemate that has lasted more than 16 months, keeping the system Chicago officials used for 60 years to hold officers accused of the most egregious misconduct in a deep freeze.

Chicago is seeing a historic drop in violent crime in the first half of the year. According to the Chicago Police Department, homicides and shootings are both down more than 30% in the first six months of the year compared to 2024.

None of the alderpeople at the sparsely attended committee hearing pressed CPD officials about why the department had fully complied with just 16% of the court order known as the consent decree by the end of 2024, five years after it took effect.

CPD reported to state officials that officers made 295,846 traffic stops in 2024. But police dispatchers recorded that officers made an additional 210,622 stops in 2024 that were not documented, raising questions about how many traffic stops took place last year.

Chicago Police Department officials agreed to revise proposed new rules and prohibit officers from searching vehicles based on the smell of raw cannabis, a coalition of reform groups told the federal judge overseeing efforts to reform the Chicago Police Department.

Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling promised to use the power to expand the city's curfew only preemptively, to prevent large teen gatherings from taking place. That goal is shared by Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has repeatedly questioned the constitutionality of the proposal.

The significant surge in shootings by officers in the first five months of 2025 comes more than six years after city and police leaders agreed to extensive oversight from a federal judge after decades of scandals sparked by misconduct and brutality.

U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer praised the revised policy as an example of what can be achieved through the consent decree process.

Despite Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s trademark optimism, the unrelenting turmoil of the past two years, and his missteps in handling problems both new and old, has weakened his political standing, ensuring that if he runs for and wins a second term in office in 2027, he will have to do it the same way he won the first time: as an underdog.

City officials agreed in June 2023 to expand the consent decree to include when officers can stop and search Chicagoans, which are officially known as investigatory stops.

Chicago police officers would not be banned from making traffic stops based on minor registration or equipment violations that are designed to fund evidence of “unrelated” crimes, under a new policy unveiled Thursday by Chicago Police Department leaders.

The 7-percentage point increase in the level of full compliance with consent decree CPD reached between July and December is the largest increase in the nearly six years that the federal court order has been in effect.

"History has shown that when oversight is diminished, the risk of injustice increases — especially for those in communities that have long experienced the burdens of aggressive policing," Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell said.

Chicago police continued to target Black and Latino drivers with a massive campaign of traffic stops that failed to make the city safer in 2024, according to a new analysis from a coalition of groups.

A Chicago Police Department spokesperson blamed data collection errors and lax supervision for the unreported stops.