Consent Decree
“We have endured quite a bit,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. “It has been a barrage of just crisis after crisis that I’ve had to manage, but again, you know, I’ve made it very clear that it’s a lot more effective and easier to lead when you are leading with your values and your convictions.”
Between 2023, when Mayor Brandon Johnson and Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling took office, and 2025, the number of times police officers used force against a member of the public increased approximately 35.8%, according to CPD data.
The monitors praised CPD for making “significant progress” between July 1 and Dec. 31 in effort to comply with the consent decree, which has been in effect for seven years.
Chicago taxpayers paid the monitors $4.7 million in 2025, records show.
Chicago police brass did not update Mayor Brandon Johnson and three City Council committee chairs about their progress in crafting the system until days after WTTW News reported they had failed to comply with city law.
Officers made an average of 732 traffic stops every day for an entire year that were not documented as required by CPD policy and state law, according to data from the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
"We have seen no evidence that the Chicago Police Department has changed any policies or training or examined any operational changes they are going to make as a response to these really disturbing findings,” said Alexandra Block of the ACLU of Illinois.
CPD has been under federal court oversight for nearly seven years as part of an effort to stop officers from routinely violating Black and Latino residents’ constitutional rights by overhauling the way the department trains, supervises and disciplines officers.
“I share your impatience,” U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer said. “I do recognize it is too slow.”
The study, conducted by social scientists from the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Pennsylvania blamed “systemic factors” for the disparity, not the actions of individual officers.
The study, which examined whether officers are efficiently and effectively deployed across the city to stop crime and respond to calls for help, found “inconsistent service levels, constrained proactive time, and limited supervisory capacity in high-demand areas.”
“When it comes to the Chicago Police Department, there’s always going to be this trust factor,” Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling said.
The number of times officers pointed their guns at individuals increased 44% between 2022 and 2024, according to one of the goals unanimously set for Snelling to achieve in 2026.
A new Chicago Police Department policy that does not ban officers from serving no-knock warrants or from pointing guns at children during raids is now final.
The Chicago Police Department must work faster to complete internal affairs investigations, Supt. Larry Snelling told a federal judge.
The report published by the Chicago Police Department acknowledges that the number of times officers used force against members of the public “continues to trend upward.”