Mayor Lori Lightfoot has introduced a series of changes to the way the Chicago Police Department serves search warrants in an effort to douse the continuing firestorm triggered by video of a mistaken raid that left Anjanette Young handcuffed and pleading for help in February 2019.

Robert Smith spent decades in prison on a wrongful murder conviction. Now, he’s suing the city and several Chicago Police Department detectives who worked under notorious Area 2 Commander Jon Burge, claiming they beat a false confession out of him.

Gov. J. B. Pritzker signed a criminal justice bill Monday that is massive both in its size – 764 pages – and scope. We discuss the the coming changes and what concerns the bill raises for opponents.

The Chicago City Council is poised to pay a Chicago family $175,000 after officers mistakenly raided their apartment in March 2017 while looking for their neighbor.

The massive, 764-page criminal justice reform bill will eliminate cash bail, require law enforcement officers to wear body cameras and create a certification program for police. “This legislation marks a substantial step towards dismantling the systemic racism that plagues our communities,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said. 

The author of a scathing report from the city’s Office of Inspector General says the senior leadership of the Chicago Police Department failed both their front-line officers and the public during the unrest that followed the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

More than 100 convictions tied to former Chicago police Sgt. Ronald Watts and his team have been thrown out in recent years. “Today, we were able to bring some justice to nine people who were targeted and victimized by former Sergeant Watts,” Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said in a statement.

The Chicago Police Department was “under-prepared and ill-equipped, and thus critically disserved both its own front-line members and members of the public,” according to the inspector general’s report, the first in-depth examination of the police department’s response to the unrest. 

A new archive detailing the experiences of police torture survivors went online this month. We hear from two people who are helping those survivors heal.

The Invisible Institute, a journalism nonprofit based on the city’s South Side, has published an online archive documenting former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge’s "violence against more than 100 Black men, from the 1970s to the 1990s.”

A federal judge ruled that disciplinary action against attorney Keenan Saulter was unnecessary because the Chicago lawyer acknowledged he violated the court order — but had a “good faith basis” to believe that the video was being improperly withheld from the public by city officials.

The update announced Wednesday comes as Officer Rusten Sheskey, who shot Jacob Blake seven times on Aug. 23 in Kenosha, remains on administrative leave while a police review board examines the case.

Illinois is poised to become one of the first states to eliminate cash bail after the state legislature passed a sweeping criminal justice reform bill earlier this month. Now proponents who pushed for that change hope the measure can be used to reform pretrial services elsewhere.

Aldermen agreed Monday to settle a lawsuit brought by a Chicago man who was shot by police during a traffic stop in February 2015 that officials ruled was unjustified by paying him $525,000 and forgiving approximately $45,000 in debt he owes to the city.

Inspector General Joseph Ferguson announced Wednesday that his probe of the botched raid in February 2019 that left Anjanette Young handcuffed while naked and pleading for help would focus on “possible misconduct” by city officials.

A Chicago police lieutenant is suing the city, claiming a new safety team designed to address neighborhood concerns and improve community relationships has instead focused on making baseless traffic stops in order to meet illegal self-imposed quotas.