Chicago Police Department data shows that compared to last year, violent crime in the city is down 22% through the end of July. There have been 36% fewer shootings, and homicides are down 32%.

A Chicago Police Department spokesperson confirmed that Officer Carlos Baker has been relieved of his police powers, effective Friday.

Chicago taxpayers have already paid $1.46 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, according to records obtained by WTTW News.

Of 439 positions in the Chicago Police Department charged with implementing the consent decree, 207 positions, or 47%, were empty seven months into 2025, according to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by WTTW News. CPD officials failed to account for another 226 positions.

The ruling, which is likely to be appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, endorses the effort backed by the city’s largest police union to upend the system used for 60 years to punish officers.

“We need our government officials,” said JaShawn Hill, executive director of Chicago Survivors. “We need philanthropic communities and people who believe in our mission to step in and to help leverage us, because if they don’t, we will not be able to provide the quality of care that we have been able to do.”

There is no sign Chicago Police Board President Kyle Cooper's pleas will break a legal stalemate that has lasted more than 16 months, keeping the system Chicago officials used for 60 years to hold officers accused of the most egregious misconduct in a deep freeze.

Chicago’s persistent violent crime numbers finally take a downturn — we talk about why. Plus, a look at the city’s efforts to hold the Chicago Police Department accountable.

Chicago is seeing a historic drop in violent crime in the first half of the year. According to the Chicago Police Department, homicides and shootings are both down more than 30% in the first six months of the year compared to 2024.

None of the alderpeople at the sparsely attended committee hearing pressed CPD officials about why the department had fully complied with just 16% of the court order known as the consent decree by the end of 2024, five years after it took effect.

The amount of taxpayer funds spent on overtime by all city departments, including CPD, dropped in 2024 for the first time since 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic upended the city’s operations.

According to data from the city and Chicago Police Department, total violent crime is down at least 22% thus far in 2025, while there have been 90 fewer homicides and more than 400 fewer shootings compared to last year.

In all, Chicago taxpayers have spent more than $120.3 million since January 2019 to resolve 31 lawsuits filed by Chicagoans injured during police pursuits, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.

For more than four decades, Jackie Wilson has said he was tortured into confessing to two Chicago Police officers by disgraced former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge.

City lawyers reached an agreement to settle the lawsuit filed by Gilbert and Hester Mendez midway through a federal civil trial after Peter Mendez, who was 9 at the time of the no-knock raid, told a jury that he was traumatized by Chicago police officers’ decision to point a M4 assault rifle and other guns at him and his 5-year-old brother.

CPD reported to state officials that officers made 295,846 traffic stops in 2024. But police dispatchers recorded that officers made an additional 210,622 stops in 2024 that were not documented, raising questions about how many traffic stops took place last year.