Chicago Police Department making "significant strides" toward court-ordered reforms, monitor reports

The Chicago Police Department appears to be “gaining momentum” toward complying with court-ordered reforms after years of only incremental progress, according to the latest report from the independent monitor.

The team charged with overseeing the federal consent decree — set in place in 2019 — found the department made “significant strides” toward meaningful reforms in the last six months of 2024, with “critical opportunities for improvement” now within reach.

The department is in some compliance with 92% of sections of the federal consent decree and in full compliance with 16%, up from 9% reported last year, according to the report.

Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling said the progress is the result of work that's been done, since he took over the department, to remove “roadblocks.”

“When I started this job, I said that I was taking this seriously … consent decree is a serious business,” Snelling told the Sun-Times Friday. “There was a lot of complaining about the slow movement on the consent decree in the initial five years… So it was important to get to a point where we started to see some major progress moving forward.

When the department will reach full compliance is hard to say, according to Snelling. He notes that some police departments have been under consent decrees for over a decade, but he “does not expect” that will be the case for Chicago.

Earlier this week, Snelling released his three-year strategic plan for the department which he said was “built around the consent decree.”

“We are not doing any of these things in silos,” Allyson Clark-Henson, executive director of constitutional policing and reform, told the Sun-Times. “In order for these changes to really be fruitful, they have to take place in the everyday operations of the department.”

The independent monitoring team, led by Maggie Hickey, spent much of its report commending the work the department put into preparing for the Democratic National Convention, which resulted in few use-of-force incidents.

Hickey encouraged the department to build on these successes and focus on implementing a “meaningful community engagement plan.”

Clark-Henson said the department has been working extensively on an engagement policy which she expects will be published in the next few weeks.

In her statement, Hickey said she hopes that an engagement plan will include consistent oversight of traffic stop policies.

Hickey recommended in October that the court order “should be modified to include all traffic stops.” Snelling has also backed the change, while some community organizers have argued tethering traffic stops to the consent decree would only slow down reform.

Snelling told the Sun-Times the department is currently negotiating with the Community Commission on Public Safety around this issue but could not provide any further details.