The former federal prosecutor overseeing the Chicago Police Department’s court-ordered overhaul warned Tuesday that drastic budget cuts proposed by Mayor Brandon Johnson could amount to a “devastating blow to future CPD reforms.”
Maggie Hickey, the monitor tracking CPD’s compliance with a slow-moving federal consent decree, said Police Supt. Larry Snelling has prioritized the reform push and insisted that “Chicago cannot afford for the pace to slow down.”
“The proposed budget cuts would be a step backward for the CPD reform process at a pivotal point — just when progress is starting to be felt,” Hickey said during a status hearing in the federal court case.
Her fears were echoed by Katherine Panella, a senior assistant Illinois attorney general, who said her office has “grave concerns regarding the city’s proposed budget cuts to the CPD’s Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform, which is the cornerstone of CPD’s reform work.”
Under Johnson’s budget proposal, released late last month, that office’s budget would shrink by 45% — from $6.7 million to $3.7 million in 2025. The staff would be cut from 65 budgeted employees to 28 next year.
“Deep slashes to the budget of the Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform, like the ones that have been proposed, endanger the momentum that has begun to build over the last year,” Panella said. “We strongly urge the city leadership to reconsider these proposed cuts. Compliance with the consent decree is not optional.”
Spokespeople for Mayor Johnson didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The latest report issued by Hickey’s team found that CPD had fully complied with only 7% of consent decree provisions by the end of 2023. To reach full compliance, the department first must create policy, then train officers on the policy and implement the changes. A new monitoring report is expected as early as this week.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Hickey also highlighted Johnson’s plan to cut 28% of the budget and 90 jobs from CPD’s Training and Support Group. She said she’s “fearful that the city’s proposed CPD budget cuts will slow down efforts toward full compliance.”
“Those teams — the training teams and the members of the office of constitutional policing — have been working so hard in the last year and a half, and they have seen real success,” she said. “And it would be a shame to see them not supported in the 100% way that they deserve to be.
“Cutting these positions permanently could be a devastating blow to future CPD reforms. We cannot afford to stall progress now.”
Hickey said the response to the Democratic National Convention shows the city and CPD “have established the foundations for change” and created “momentum toward implementing reform.”
“The CPD demonstrated that it can rise to the standards of the consent decree and Chicago’s community when reform, community engagement and procedural justice are fully supported and fully resourced,” she said.
Johnson’s proposed $17.3 billion budget would increase CPD’s annual budget slightly, to $2.1 billion, but only to cover the 5% raises he gave rank-and-file officers when he extended and sweetened a contract negotiated by his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot.
In light of the cuts to offices vital to reform, Supt. Snelling said his first priority was “to make sure that we had people to continue to work toward the consent decree.”
“Those were the positions that we fought for first,” he said. “We’re going to continue to fight for them because this consent decree — the progress that I believe we’re making right now — I don’t want to break that momentum. And I want to make sure that we keep going in the right direction.”
Like Snelling, Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer’s comments were tempered but pointed. Referring to an assessment Hickey made, Pallmeyer acknowledged the consent decree is “a marathon, not a sprint.”
“We can’t slag here at mile five or seventeen, or however far we are,” Pallmeyer said. “We need to keep up the momentum. That’s going to require determination, it’s going to require commitment, funding, continued efforts, continued vigilance, and the efforts of everyone on this call.”