By Sam Charles
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — After more than seven years of reform efforts, the Chicago Police Department has reached preliminary compliance with almost all paragraphs of the ongoing federal consent decree, according to the team that reviews the city’s adherence.
The consent decree monitoring team, led by attorney Maggie Hickey, announced the progress Tuesday in the team’s 14th semi-annual report, submitted to U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer.
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As of June 30, the city achieved preliminary compliance in 99% of monitorable consent-decree obligations, meaning the police department has established specific policies to reach reform goals. Secondary compliance — when training on those policies is implemented — has been reached in 78% of the decree’s requirements.
The latest report card from the monitoring team covers the last full month of former CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling’s tenure. The search for the next permanent head of the police department is expected to last several more months, though three finalists for the job are set to be revealed next month by the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability.
“(Snelling’s) recent retirement will be a test for the CPD to show that its reforms are now built into how it operates,” Hickey said in a statement. “We hope that Acting Superintendent Fred Waller and CPD leadership not only maintain compliance but continue to push the Consent Decree forward from the top down.”
Hickey and the monitoring team also issued a familiar refrain, though, warning that “While real progress has been made, staffing remains a central challenge to obtaining and sustaining progress with the Consent Decree.”
Data from the city’s Office of Inspector General show, as of September, CPD had 11,433 sworn officers — down from 13,319 in March 2019 when the consent decree was entered. However, the downward trend has flattened in recent years, and a recent Tribune data analysis found Latino CPD officers soon will be the largest racial group in the police department for the first time in the city’s history.
“The principal challenges for the Recruitment, Hiring and Promotion section are largely external and strategic: Recruiting qualified candidates in a competitive environment, shortening hiring timelines, preparing future leaders, and sustaining collaborative governance across multiple City entities,” the monitoring team found.
Earlier this year, CPD released a long-awaited workforce allocation study that cited “real and uneven staffing pressures” in calling for hundreds more officers and civilians to be hired by the police department.
“CPD recognizes that civilianization recommendations cannot be implemented wholesale,” the study summary read. “Each recommendation must be evaluated through the lenses of collective bargaining obligations, historical role classifications, operational risk, and budget feasibility. As a result, CPD is undertaking a structured validation process … to determine which civilianization recommendations can be advanced in the near term and which require longer-range planning or modification.”
The consent decree monitoring team’s report also noted officers’ timely activation of their body cameras remains “a top debriefing point among CPD officers.”
In the first half of 2026, CPD expanded a program in which patrol district supervisors quickly review incidents where officers point their weapons at civilians. Since the review program was expanded citywide, firearm-pointing incidents have decreased by 16%, according to CPD.
Though CPD broadened its day-to-day officer oversight efforts in recent years, the system for adjudicating major officer misconduct cases has largely been paused since 2023 amid a protracted legal fight between the city and Fraternal Order of Police .
The city has argued that hearings in those misconduct cases should remain open to the public, in keeping with the ongoing consent decree compliance efforts. Attorneys for the union contend that officers in a collective bargaining unit are entitled to have those cases heard and decided by a third-party arbitrator. The Illinois Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments and could issue an opinion in the coming months.
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