1 week Ago By Chip Mitchell
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2025 budget proposal recommends the same funding level for Police Department settlements and court losses that the city has allocated annually for five years — an amount increasingly illusory as actual spending climbs higher and higher. Johnson’s recommendation duplicates the $82.6 million that Mayor Lori Lightfoot put on the books in late 2019 for her administration’s first budget.
The line item covers settlements, judgments, outside counsel and various legal expenses to defend against police misconduct lawsuits and other CPD claims. Johnson has stuck with that figure in his first two annual budgets, even though the costs soared last year to a record $150.8 million.
“That is certainly a problem in terms of budget transparency and budget planning,” city Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said. “If we are going to continue to budget the same amount, knowing that it has not been enough in prior years, we would want [to] have taken some measurable, demonstrable steps to reduce risk.” The city has budgeted sufficient funds for annual CPD legal costs only once since 2012.
The exception was 2020, when COVID hamstrung court operations. The cases range from wrongful convictions to excessive force, unlawful arrests, car crashes and sexual harassment. The $82.
6 million in Johnson’s budget seems especially unrealistic given the Law Department’s present caseload, which includes 175 lawsuits tied to corrupt former Sgt. Ronald Watts. So far, the city has settled just one Watts-related lawsuit, a $500,000 deal inked in July.
Settling the remaining cases could cost as much as $80 million, according to a WBEZ estimate . CPD now accounts for more than $973 million, or nearly 69%, of the city’s $1.4 billion in settlements, judgments and fees since 2010, according to a WBEZ analysis of Law Department data.
Those figures do not include costs for outside counsel, which have averaged roughly $25 million annually in recent years, a WBEZ review of city records found. Johnson’s office did not answer what his administration is doing to reduce the spending, why he is proposing the $82.6 million budget again or why the city has not had a chief risk officer since Lightfoot left office last year.
Witzburg linked the escalating costs to the city’s lack of compliance with a federal court-ordered police reform agreement. The pact, known as the consent decree, followed teenager Laquan McDonald’s 2014 murder by an on-duty cop. Maggie Hickey, the court’s monitor for consent decree progress, reported in May that the city and CPD had fully complied with only 7% of 555 monitorable provisions in the agreement.
“The city’s pace of compliance with the consent decree is extraordinarily slow,” Witzburg said. “When we’re thinking about the ways that we reduce risk by improving policing practices, I think that is one important and concerning data point.” CPD did not answer why the department has failed to implement the consent decree faster or what steps Superintendent Larry Snelling has taken to curb the sorts of misconduct that spark expensive lawsuits.
Snelling took the department reins in September 2023. A police spokesperson said CPD officials will likely answer such questions during an upcoming City Council hearing about the department’s budget. A separate Johnson budget proposal could slow CPD’s consent decree compliance even more.
The mayor is recommending that funding for the department’s Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform shrink by 45% to $3.7 million from this year’s $6.7 million.
The cut would reduce the office’s 65 budgeted employees to 28 next year. Hickey, a former federal prosecutor, warned that the cut would be a step backward for CPD reform. Chip Mitchell reports on policing, public safety and public health.
Follow him at @ChipMitchell1 . Contact him at [email protected] .
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