Budget Director Annette Guzman told WTTW News the dashboard was designed to answer questions she and her team fielded during the fraught negotiations over the city’s 2025 budget.

Mayor Brandon Johnson acknowledged that the reform effort, which began in earnest when the consent decree took effect six years ago, remains a work in progress.

The Chicago City Council unanimously agreed Wednesday to pay $27 million to the family of a Chicago woman killed by a driver being chased by Chicago police, the latest massive settlement prompted by a police pursuit that violated department policy and ended with a bystander’s death.

The latest survey from the monitoring team charged with enforcing the consent decree found that Chicagoans’ confidence in CPD and the reform effort is exceedingly low, despite a reform push that began six years ago.

The proposed policy “impermissibly allows officers to use race, ethnicity, and other protected characteristics when making decisions on whether to stop, frisk or search people, in violation of federal and state law,” according to the coalition led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

During the past six years taxpayers have spent at least $472.4 million to resolve police misconduct lawsuits, setting a new record, according to a WTTW News analysis.

The independent monitoring teams for Chicago's police consent decree include former police brass who have previously been involved in consent decrees and reform efforts across the country. Despite their professional credentials, some members have documented histories of misconduct that might complicate the long-running effort.

U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer said she would convene hearings before expanding the consent decree to include traffic stops.

“The level of compliance is unsatisfying to the public,” U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer said. “I am determined that we will be seeing good progress ... in 2025. Let’s accelerate the progress.”

Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability President Anthony Driver, Jr., said he had no doubt that he was stopped because he is a 6-foot-3-inch Black man who weighs more than 200 pounds and wears his hair in dreadlocks.

Mayor Brandon Johnson said he will ask the Chicago City Council to restore 162 now-vacant positions to the Chicago Police Department charged with implementing the court order known as the consent decree. Johnson reversed course after Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the team monitoring the city’s compliance with the consent decree warned the cuts would make it impossible for the city to comply with the requirements. 

If the mayor’s spending plan is approved by the City Council, 79 vacant positions charged with implementing the court order known as the consent decree would be eliminated, records show. Those cuts will make it impossible for the city to comply with the requirements of the court order, reform advocates said.

Chicago police agreed to judicial oversight in 2019. Since then, a series of mayors and police chiefs let efforts languish and no one in a position of oversight has pushed forcefully to keep the process on track, WTTW News and ProPublica found.

“I must remind you that the consent decree is not optional,” Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul wrote to Mayor Brandon Johnson. “The City of Chicago must deliver on its consent decree obligations.”

This month marks 10 years since the police murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Advocates say efforts to hold the Chicago Police Department more accountable and to change the way officers interact with residents have not shown much progress.

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.