For police officers these past few years, Chicago has lurched from one stressful moment to another.
The pandemic shut the city down, then reopened it unevenly. Crime surged. Periods of civil unrest and large-scale protests demanded heavy police presence and offered little respect for officers doing their job. Major events — from the Democratic National Convention to repeated NASCAR races and Lollapalooza — required significant deployments. Teen takeovers and downtown disturbances forced the Chicago Police Department to adapt tactics in real time.
Under steady new leadership, that turbulence is finally dissipating.
Yet that leadership is being painted as the culprits driving up blown budgets. A recent WTTW report shows the Chicago police exceeded their budget by more than $500 million over five years, much of it tied to overtime. The investigation quotes criticism describing this as “allowing CPD to spend unlimited sums of taxpayer money.”
To be sure, $500 million isn’t chump change, and it’s fair to address the cost side of the equation, especially in light of the city’s current financial situation.
Yet any narrative that CPD’s current leadership is somehow to blame for the city’s budget problems is fundamentally flawed. Snelling wasn’t in charge for most of the period WTTW examined, first off — the period in question spans Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration and her superintendents. Snelling was sworn in on Sept. 27, 2023.
The question you have to ask is why did the police blow through their overtime every year? It’s not as if Chicago’s rank-and-file officers want to work 60 hours a week, regularly having their days off canceled and working weekends.
Should CPD have abandoned its post because they were blowing through the overtime budget?
Of course not.
We’ve long held that fewer police working too many hours is bad for everyone. Better to have an adequately staffed department. CPD’s sworn officer headcount dropped by approximately 1,700 officers between January 2019 and mid-2022, according to the Civic Federation. The department still has far fewer officers today than it did before the pandemic. The Civic Federation also points out that since 2019 — with the exception of 2024 — CPD has “routinely spent less on payroll than was appropriated over the past six years.”
The implication is straightforward: CPD has been making up for understaffing by asking the officers it does have to work more hours. That isn’t a sustainable model.
Something had to give.
And as to ongoing overtime overspending, the City Council and CPD rightly addressed this issue recently, implementing a $200 million overtime cap and adding City Council oversight if the department needs to spend more. We appreciate that this maneuver improves the city’s ability to forecast and gives the Police Department clear expectations.
Snelling said he can live within this overtime cap. He also reaffirmed that overtime isn’t a dirty word.
“There’s no way I’m ever going to sit up and tell you that it’s never going to be necessary to use overtime. We’re a police department, things happen,” Snelling said during a hearing last Wednesday. “We have to make sure if we’re using it, that we’re using it in the most careful manner, the most responsible manner.”
None of this was about officers padding hours; it was the cost of keeping the city running during extraordinary strain. Snelling said he’ll make it work with the new restrictions in place. Given his credibility and track record, Chicago has every reason to trust him.
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Correction: A previous version of this editorial imprecisely described the reason why the Chicago Police Department exceeded its budget, as reported by WTTW News. The budget overrun was tied to overtime, lawsuit costs and other items. The Tribune regrets the error.
