In an interview with WTTW News, Mayor Brandon Johnson laid out the qualities he’s looking for in Chicago’s next top cop and stressed that there’s no need to delay that selection process until after the upcoming mayoral election in February.
There were 37 homicides in the city last month, the lowest total for any such month dating back to at least 1970. That total is down 18% compared to July 2025.
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.
A Chicago man is facing nearly a dozen felony charges following a shooting during an alleged standoff in the Albany Park neighborhood Monday that left a woman and a SWAT officer injured.
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.
Mayor Brandon Johnson is urging anyone who may have been victimized by federal immigration agents during “Operation Midway Blitz” to come forward and detail their experiences to the Chicago Police Department.
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.
U.S. District Chief Judge Virginia Kendall signed an order on July 27 giving U.S. Magistrate Judge Beth Jantz the authority to craft a “global settlement” of 17 cases which accuse the officers of violating drivers’ civil rights between 2023 and 2024.
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.
 

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