The Department of Law “selectively acts in opposition to the OIG’s investigative work when OIG’s work may result in embarrassment or political consequences for city leaders,” Inspector General Deborah Witzburg wrote.

A 20-second video released Wednesday by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office of a small City Hall room crammed with gifts his office accepted on behalf of the city is “not a substitute for public access to public property,” Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said.

No longer will gifts accepted by Chicago’s mayor on behalf of the city be covered by an “unwritten arrangement” dating back to the late 1980s during the administration of former Mayor Eugene Sawyer, Board President William Conlon said.

"These gifts are, by definition, city property; if they are squirreled away and hidden from view, people are only left to assume the worst about how they are being handled," Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said.

Inspector General Deborah Witzburg's probe found the department members offered the deputy chief inappropriate “professional courtesy.”

After an unrelated news conference, Mayor Brandon Johnson declined to say whether he still had confidence in Jason Lee, but praised his track record of helping progressive politicians get elected.

After another CPD officer “unreasonably and without a lawful purpose” struck a protester, the deputy chief “improperly grabbed the same protestor while they were on the ground and sprayed them directly in the face with Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) spray,” according to a report from the city’s watchdog.

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.

The city is on pace to spend at least $258 million on police overtime by the end of the year, even as officials imposed limits on overtime for all city departments, except for police and the Chicago Fire Department, amid a massive budget crunch.

In each of the five cases, Inspector General Deborah Witzburg informed Civilian Office of Police Accountability Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten that the agency known as COPA had erred when it closed those cases because they involved serious allegations of police misconduct.

The city's inspector general said it was “troubling” that the city did not hold the firm that leases the city's parking meters accountable for seven years.

Cases that involved at least one officer with repeated claims of misconduct accounted for nearly 43% of the $384.2 million paid by taxpayers to resolve police misconduct cases between 2019 and 2023, according to the analysis.

The Chicago Police Department has yet to launch a new study of whether officers are efficiently and effectively deployed across the city to stop crime and respond to calls for help. “I don’t understand what the hold up is,” Ald. Matt Martin (47th Ward) told WTTW News. “This is years, if not decades, overdue.”

Investigators with CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs did not interview anyone other than the eight officers accused of belonging to the Oath Keepers, according to a 30-page report.