Seven years ago, on March 1, 2019, the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago entered into a court-enforced agreement, known as the Consent Decree.[1] This agreement was the result of an Office of the Attorney General lawsuit against the City of Chicago in response to the U.S. Department of Justice’s findings of widespread unconstitutional conduct by the Chicago Police Department (CPD). The Decree mandates extensive reforms across hundreds of police practices and aims to remedy the Department’s extensive history of police misconduct, inefficiency, and discriminatory practices.
Since before the Consent Decree was in place, Impact for Equity has been advocating for it to be more than just a checkbox exercise. We have stressed the need for urgent reform that has a sustainable and significant positive impact on the Black and Latine communities that continue to face disproportionate use of force in police interactions. In recent years, our focus has been on the speed of compliance which had, until 2025, been devastatingly slow. We were pleased to see the city moving at a faster pace, jumping from 9% to 22% full compliance in 2025. The Department has clearly invested more time and capacity toward making headway on projects that many, including Impact for Equity, have identified as priorities.[2]
However, the critical question of whether these changes to policy and training are positively shifting CPD’s internal culture or improving community experiences with police remains. Over the past year, Impact for Equity conducted a series of listening sessions to ask this very question. Hundreds of community members continue to describe a reality that feels disconnected from the progress reflected in compliance reports. In listening sessions, residents spoke about police encounters that still escalate quickly, the lingering fear rooted in over policing, and a deep skepticism that accountability systems will intervene when harm occurs. These stories are not isolated. Recent data mirrors what communities have been naming for years: even when crime rates and arrests are taken into account, Black and Latine Chicagoans experience police use of force at higher rates than their White counterparts. Firearm-pointing incidents have increased in recent years, and racial disparities persist.
These deeply concerning trends are at the core of why we have a Consent Decree and should be weighted heavily when measuring consent decree progress. In 2018, at the outset of the Consent Decree, our organization sent a letter to the Office of the Attorney General urging them to incorporate outcomes-based metrics to assess compliance. “In the absence of outcome measures, the Monitor and the Court are left to assess whether the defendant has taken specific action steps, not whether taking those steps has actually brought about the desired change,” wrote Adam Gross, former Director of the Police Accountability Program at Impact for Equity. This call to action resonates now more than ever. At the public consent decree hearing this February, Joi Imobhio, Policy Analyst at Impact for Equity, called for a deeper evaluation of the Consent Decree’s progress. “Policies may be in place, but behavior has not changed. We are seeing what checkbox compliance looks like in real time: better documentation, but more harm.”
Seven years into this process we should see greater alignment between CPD’s culture and the spirit and aims of the Decree. We believe that the Consent Decree is one of many powerful tools that can result in meaningful change. However, until CPD is transparently addressing ongoing harm, taking initiative to analyze its own data, and doing everything within its’ power to hold problematic officers accountable, the Consent Decree parties should be utilizing all the tools at their disposal to hold the Department to account.
Looking ahead, Impact for Equity is working with several grassroots organizations to increase engagement in the Consent Decree process to define and demand community-informed compliance. To learn more about Impact for Equity’s evaluation of Consent Decree Progress click here.
[1] State of Illinois v. City of Chicago, Case No. 17-cv-6260 (N.D. Ill) at ¶¶ 79-82 (“Consent Decree”);
[2] In 2023, we, along with 20 community organizations sent a letter to the then Mayor of Chicago and CPD Superintendent calling for them to push forward compliance starting with three core Decree requirements: a workforce allocation study ¶356-358, a comprehensive data system analysis¶607, and meaningful community engagement opportunities¶46-47. From 2024-2025, we released several Consent Decree scorecards which assessed the Department’s progress on 5 key requirements including: tracking misdemeanor arrests and tickets ¶79-82, improved response to behavioral health crises ¶106-112, automatic system for identifying potentially dangerous officers ¶583-591, improvement of data systems¶607, and gathering community feedback from communities throughout Chicago¶46-47.
