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. 

A new report from NYU offers alternative solutions to policing that researchers said would better serve the public and free up police to investigate more serious crimes.

The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability has yet to provide the Office of the Inspector General with the evidence that prompted the commission to call for a probe into “the quality and integrity” of the investigations into police misconduct by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, according to a letter obtained by WTTW News.

The lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois accuses the Chicago Police Department of making more than 1.5 million traffic stops between 2016 and 2023 based on dubious evidence of minor violations that took direct aim at Black and Latino Chicagoans but spared White Chicagoans. 

A court order requiring the Chicago Police Department to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers should not be expanded to include traffic stops, eight alderpeople told the federal judge overseeing the push to reform the department.

The five officers who conducted the traffic stop that led to the death of Dexter Reed and the wounding of one officer had been the subject of 36 complaints that they were improperly stopping Chicagoans driving through the city’s West Side, according to records provided to WTTW News by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

Superintendent Larry Snelling’s remarks come nearly two months after the first sign of deep tension between CPD and COPA emerged, and reflect a widening breach between the two agencies, sources told WTTW News.

The vast majority of the more than 537,000 traffic stops made by Chicago police in 2023 were based on dubious evidence of minor violations that took direct aim at Black and Latino Chicagoans but spared White Chicagoans, according to a new report from Impact for Equity, a nonprofit advocacy and research organization that has helped lead the push to reform the Chicago Police Department.

Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling blasted Civilian Office of Police Accountability Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten for treating Chicago Police officers so unfairly that he says they are at risk of suicide and compromise public safety.

The Illinois Department of Corrections has awarded a new contract to the controversial Wexford Health Sources, the same private health care provider that’s been handling medical care in the state’s prison system since 2011.

Inspector General Deborah Witzburg on Wednesday said the court overseeing the federal consent decree has found that her office and its public safety section are in “full and effective compliance” with all applicable requirements.

The Chicago Police Department has reached full compliance on just 6% of its consent decree requirements. Independent monitor Maggie Hickey expressed a belief that additional transparency will help bring police in line with necessary reforms.

The independent monitoring team that oversees the CPD’s consent decree implementation published its eighth semi-annual report this week, which found that although the department has reached some level of compliance with 85% of paragraphs, it has only fully complied with 33 out of 552 paragraphs.