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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Chicago Police Department has overspent its budget five years in a row, according to Chicago’s annual financial reports.

The city’s 2026 budget set aside just $82.5 million for police misconduct settlements, and authorized officials to borrow an additional $283.3 million to cover the soaring cost of lawsuits alleging wrongdoing by police officers, records show.

Marcel Brown's lawsuit was resolved with the largest payment Chicago taxpayers have ever made to compensate someone wrongfully convicted based on evidence developed by Chicago police, according to a WTTW News analysis.

It is not clear how — or why — Benchmark Analytics was selected by officials in the Johnson administration in the fall of 2024 to create the system required by the federal court order known as the consent decree.

David Jones’ federal lawsuit accuses four Chicago police officers, including convicted former Officer David Salgado, of conspiring to frame him in March 2015 for selling drugs in Lawndale.

Since January 2025, Chicago taxpayers spent at least $103.1 million to resolve 14 lawsuits brought by people who were injured or on behalf of those killed during police pursuits, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.

Instead, Officer Michael Bryant should be suspended for 25 days, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling determined, objecting to the recommendation from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability that Bryant be fired.