The process for meting out discipline in the most serious cases of misconduct by Chicago police officers has been largely at a standstill for more than two years.
During that stretch, a backlog of unresolved cases has grown as a legal fight between the city and the largest CPD officers’ union has worked its way to the Illinois Supreme Court.
In 2025, cases in that category swelled to near 500. As of mid-December, police Superintendent Larry Snelling still must decide whether or not to bring administrative charges in 490 cases in which the Civilian Office of Police Accountability sustained allegations of misconduct, city records show.
“We now find ourselves in a place where unadjudicated cases involving allegations of serious misconduct by police officers are stacking up,” Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg told the Tribune. “That is a bad and unfair thing for all the people involved in those cases — members of the public, family members of people who’ve been hurt, members of the department who have discipline hanging over them.”
In 2025, Snelling did move to fire 11 police officers, records show. But overall, there are 26 pending misconduct cases with allegations serious enough to warrant the involvement of the Chicago Police Board. Of those, just four cases are proceeding.
In the meantime, COPA and the bureau of internal affairs have continued to investigate allegations of misconduct.
For now, the future of those cases remains hazy as the Illinois Supreme Court will soon hear arguments from the Fraternal Order of Police and the city in a case that could further reshape Chicago’s police discipline apparatus. A ruling would likely come in 2026.
“This is where the rubber meets the road,” Witzburg added. “No amount of good and timely investigative work matters at all if we don’t have mechanisms in place to dispose of these cases fairly and appropriately at the end.”
At the most recent Police Board meeting, President Kyle Cooper said the ongoing court case “has brought to a standstill consideration of the vast majority of cases in which the recommendation is to discharge the accused officer from the Chicago Police Department.”
The decision of the state’s high court could break the logjam.
“Once the Supreme Court issues its decision, we look forward to the Fraternal Order of Police and the city working expeditiously to finalize an arbitration process,” Cooper added.
Department goals
Speaking Thursday, Snelling said one of the department’s goals for 2026 was to bolster the public’s understanding of police accountability and discipline systems.
“If we need accountability, if we have officers amongst us who are not here faithfully, then we need to do what we have to do to ensure that we maintain a reputation of our hardworking officers who are out there every day doing the work faithfully,” Snelling said. “And I will work closely with COPA and any other investigative body to make sure that we do that.”
“Ensuring the community knows how complaints and misconduct are handled and what the process is can help strengthen public confidence and (address) the concerns that the investigation is handled in the best way possible and is transparent,” Snelling added.
Transparency question
The adjudication process for the most serious misconduct cases has remained mostly stagnant since late 2023 after an arbitrator, overseeing contract negotiations between the city and FOP, ruled that Chicago officers, as public sector employees in a collective bargaining unit, may have the most serious disciplinary cases heard and decided by a third-party outside of public view.
The city later appealed in Cook County Circuit Court, and, in March, Judge Michael Mullen ruled that CPD officers may have those cases heard and decided by a third-party, but those proceedings must be held in public.
Mullen’s order held that officers who face charges can still elect a hearing by the Police Board, but just four officers have so far.
The FOP appealed, but last August a panel of Illinois Appellate Court judges concurred with Mullen and said the hearings should be publicly accessible, in keeping with 60 years of precedent.
However, the appellate judges also ruled partly in favor of the FOP and ordered that officers accused of serious misconduct can still be paid while their cases move forward.
The FOP in September filed its petition to the Illinois Supreme Court. The union’s attorneys argued that the Appellate Court’s opinion, if allowed to stand, would threaten the arbitration rights of every public employee in the state, not just police officers in Chicago.
“In so ruling, the (Appellate Court) majority rejected long-standing Illinois Supreme Court precedent on the level of deference given to labor arbitrators’ findings and interpretations in arbitration awards,” the union argued.
“The Appellate Court has thus opened the door for all Illinois government employers to argue that their employee disciplinary cases require public attendance or participation,” the argument said, “thereby allowing employers to seek to vacate any arbitrator’s award that is not heard publicly, or even to void CBAs because they do not provide for public arbitration hearings.”
Three other unions that represent local municipal employees — AFSCME, AFL-CIO and Associated Fire Fighters of Illinois — signed an amicus curiae in support of the FOP’s petition.
Complaint numbers
While disciplinary cases progress, accused officers are often assigned to the department’s alternate response section — sometimes referred to as “callback” — which handles non-emergency calls for service.
As of October the department had 265 officers assigned to alternate response, according to data from the inspector general.
2025 saw a decline in the overall number of misconduct complaints lodged against CPD officers. Through Dec. 1, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability initiated 936 investigations, while the department’s bureau of internal ffairs opened 4,931.
Through early December, COPA reported 15 shootings by Chicago officers, up from the nine in 2024. Since the start of the year, COPA has opened investigations into 36 weapon discharges by officers, city records show. The majority of COPA’s investigations concern allegations of civil rights abuses, operational violations and excessive force.
The most recent police shooting occurred late Tuesday when a man was fatally shot by officers in the 5700 block of North Washtenaw Avenue. His identity has not officially been released.
Though they garner the most attention, cases that involve the Police Board account for only a small fraction of officers’ alleged misconduct. Each year, Police Department supervisors issue thousands of Summary Action Punishment Requests that can result in an officer reprimand or a one- to three-day suspension from work.
The department recently changed policy to see that every firearm pointing incident is now reviewed by a district captain — one of the highest ranking officers in each patrol district, who uniformed officers interact with often.
Reports of use-of-force incidents involving officers increased again in 2025, the fourth year in a row.
Accounting for increases
Snelling stressed that the department’s internal policies now require officers to fill out use-of-force reports more often, even in instances where an officer was the victim of an attack.
“The more you get on paper, the more you can assess what’s going on,” Snelling said. “The more you create training around it, you can determine if there (are) patterns or practices that you need to address.”
In October, the monitoring team tasked with gauging the city’s and Police Department’s adherence to a federal consent decree released its 12th report. The monitoring team, led by Maggie Hickey, found the department to be in preliminary compliance with 94% of the consent decree’s mandates as of June 2025.
The Police Department had reached secondary compliance in 65% of consent decree paragraphs, meaning the department had established a policy and started training officers. Full compliance — where the policy is incorporated in police day-to-day operations — was reached in 23% of the consent decree, according to the monitoring team.
