Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said city officials and police brass are “ill-equipped to evaluate and improve response times, simply because, more often than not, we have no information on when the police arrive to respond to an emergency.”

Chicago spent $197.7 million to resolve lawsuits alleging more than 1,000 Chicago police officers committed a wide range of misconduct in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Of that total, $91.3 million came from settlements involving 116 officers whose conduct led to multiple payouts.

If confirmed as superintendent, Larry Snelling faces a delicate balancing act — addressing the crime and violence that have plagued Chicago while also changing the way CPD trains and disciplines its officers.

Chief Larry Snelling, tapped by Mayor Brandon Johnson to lead the Chicago Police Department, served as an expert witness in more than two dozen civil and criminal cases involving police officers, according to court records reviewed by WTTW News.

Raymond Comer, 38, filed a seven-count civil suit in Cook County court in which he claimed he was shot by a Chicago police officer multiple times as he sat inside a vehicle last August.

“This is an extremely important day for the city,” Snelling said Monday. “For people who grew up like I did — a resident of Englewood and a student of the Chicago Public Schools — I want you to know the possibilities are limitless.”

Larry Snelling, a longtime Chicago Police Department insider with a decades-long career in law enforcement, has been tapped to lead the department as the city’s next top cop.

The city of Chicago and the Illinois Attorney General’s Office negotiated an agreement to shift oversight of CPD’s stop-and-frisk practices into a consent decree governing the department.

A city watchdog report has found Chicago Police Department rules that require the reporting of officer misconduct have been underenforced and are in some cases conflicting — issues which contribute to the existence of a so-called “code of silence.”

“We are writing enormous checks and leaving a tremendous opportunity for reform on the table,” Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said. “It is a staggering amount of money.”

The city and its lawyers will now have to convince a jury that two officers did nothing wrong when they fired 16 shots at Darius Cole-Garrit, 21, at 9:30 p.m. Aug. 19, 2014, after a brief foot chase on the city's Far South Side.

The board reached an 8-1 decision to suspend Officer Daniel Otero for 270 days for violating a CPD rule which prohibits “any action or conduct which impedes the Department’s efforts to achieve its policy and goals or brings discredit upon the Department.”

The 22-26 vote represented a rare, if not unprecedented, decision by the City Council to reject a proposed settlement after it was endorsed by the Finance Committee and the mayor. 

The probe by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability remains ongoing. Hours after the sexual misconduct allegations became public, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration moved all of the migrants out of the Ogden (10th) Police District headquarters, which patrols Lawndale and Little Village, where the officers under investigation are assigned to work.

The City Council’s Finance Committee voted 10-9 to endorse the settlement, which now heads to a final vote at the full City Council meeting. In all, the City Council will consider paying $8.5 million to resolve four lawsuits that allege a wide range of police misconduct.

The proposed settlement is set to be considered next week by the City Council’s Finance Committee on Monday. A final vote of the City Council could come on Wednesday.