Policing
That missed deadline comes as CPD officials acknowledged, again, that the number of times officers used force against members of the public “continues to trend upward,” according to the report.
Chicago taxpayers have already paid $3.4 million to defend the lawsuit that accuses the CPD 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, records show.
“By administratively closing hundreds of cases COPA may have alleviated its own burden, but it also created a vacuum of accountability within the police oversight system it is mandated to uphold,” according to the analysis released by the Office of the Inspector General.
Fred Waller is expected to serve as CPD’s interim superintendent through the end of the year, as the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability searches for a permanent leader.
The CPD on Thursday announced that its Forensic Services Division is now an accredited laboratory by the American National Standards Institute’s National Accreditation Board, the result of what the department said has been a multi-year effort.
The ACLU of Illinois sued the city three years ago on behalf of five Chicagoans, calling the Chicago Police Department's use of traffic stops the latest chapter in CPD's “long and sordid history” of racist discrimination.
More Chicagoans believe violent crime has increased in the city, according to a new poll, even as the numbers of shootings and homicides throughout 2026 are essentially the same as last year, which ended with the fewest recorded killings in 60 years.
The policy was updated nearly four months after Mayor Brandon Johnson told reporters existing CPD policy complied with an executive order he promised Chicagoans would lay “the groundwork to prosecute Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents for criminal misconduct.”
CPD spent approximately $700,000 more on overtime during the first six months of 2026 than it did during the same period in 2025, according to a database published by Inspector General David Glockner.
Chicago Supt. Larry Snelling’s retirement began Wednesday after a nearly three-year tenure leading the nation’s second largest police department. He leaves behind a city that’s seen significant declines in violent crime but has not completed federally mandated reforms.
The eight officers obtained loans worth approximately $283,000 after making “materially false statements in their applications for forgiveness of the loans,” according to the report.
Another member of CPD was fired after showing other employees of the police department photos of the teen dressed in the Nazi uniform while at work, creating “an offensive work environment,” according to the inspector general’s report.
It will be up to Chicago's next top cop to complete the hundreds of tasks laid out by the nearly seven-and-a-half-year-old court order while making sure the changes stick — and put an end to the decades of scandals, misconduct and brutality that have defined CPD and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
A 2021 ordinance established the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, or CCPSA, and gave the commission power to set department policy, review the police budget and select superintendent finalists.
Chicago taxpayers paid three times more to resolve police misconduct lawsuits in 2025, as compared with 2024, according to the annual report detailing the cost of lawsuits filed against the Chicago Police Department.
Pay $9M to Man Who Spent 17 Years in Prison After Being Wrongfully Convicted, City Lawyers Recommend
Wrongful convictions have long been the most expensive kind of police misconduct in Chicago, costing taxpayers $131.5 million in the first six months of 2026, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.