When video of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald finally surfaced in November 2015, after a year of official suppression, it ignited citywide protests and a national reckoning. The footage was damning not just for what it showed, but for what it represented: a pattern of unconstitutional policing that the U.S. Department of Justice would later document in excruciating detail.
The DOJ’s investigation found that the Chicago Police Department routinely violated the constitutional rights of Black and Latinx residents, used excessive force, and operated with a culture of impunity.
Officers commonly stopped and searched Black youth without legal justification, driven by racial stereotypes rather than reasonable suspicion. The department’s own data revealed what community members had been saying for decades: CPD treated Black and Brown Chicagoans as suspects first and citizens never.
In response, a federal consent decree took effect in March 2019, a court-ordered roadmap requiring comprehensive reforms in use of force policies, training, accountability, community policing, and officer wellness. It was supposed to be transformational. It was supposed to take five years.
Six years later, and as of October 15, 2025 we’re at 23 percent compliance.
Let that number sink in. After six years of federal oversight, an independent monitoring team with unrestricted access to department data and facilities, and more than $15 million in taxpayer money spent on monitoring alone, the Chicago Police Department has fully implemented just 23 percent of the reforms it agreed to. The consent decree won’t expire until at least 2027—meaning we’re looking at eight years minimum, with compliance costs continuing to mount.
But the raw compliance number only tells part of the story. The department has finalized written policies for about 94 percent of the decree’s requirements—what’s called “preliminary compliance.” On paper, CPD looks like it’s trying. In practice, the gap between policy and implementation reveals an institution resisting change at every turn.
Consider what’s happening with use of force, the area where CPD has supposedly made the most progress. Between 2023 and 2024, use of force incidents increased by 47 percent. When the department’s own systems flagged policy violations, supervisors took corrective action only 3 percent of the time. This isn’t reform. This is paperwork designed to create the appearance of reform while the fundamental culture remains unchanged.
The consent decree explicitly aimed to reduce instances where force would be used against community members. Instead, we’re seeing a stark increase. Officers are shooting more people. Sixteen shot and eight killed as of September 2025. For the first time in six years, CPD is finally reporting all use of force incidents as required. The numbers they’re reporting should alarm us all.
This matters because trust is not an abstraction. When Black Chicagoans see police as an occupying force rather than public servants, we don’t call for help when we need it. We don’t cooperate with investigations. We don’t believe the system will protect us because the evidence suggests it won’t. This breakdown in trust perpetuates cycles of violence and undermines public safety for everyone.
The consent decree was never meant to be merely a bureaucratic exercise. It was supposed to fundamentally reshape how CPD operates, moving from a warrior mentality to a guardian approach, from reactive enforcement to genuine community partnership, from a code of silence to real accountability. The goal was constitutional, effective policing that keeps both community members and officers safe while rebuilding shattered trust.
That goal feels more distant today than it did in 2019.
And here we are today with this model and mirror of all that is wrong with the Chicago Police Department front and center on the Fraternal Order of Police October 2025 edition of its magazine.
The message is clear: there is no urgency. No accountability. No real commitment to transformation. Black and Latinx communities are not safe. We have never been safe. And I maintain that until we police ourselves, we will never be safe. Our communities continue to bear the brunt of unconstitutional policing. We experience the traffic stops that replaced the pedestrian stops after those came under scrutiny. We endure the continued targeting based on racial stereotypes. We watch as the department implements policies on paper while officers on the street operate under the same old Kirk-like culture.
And we are told to have patience. To give reform time. To trust the process.
But six years and 23 percent compliance is not a process. It is a failure. It’s a demonstration that without genuine institutional will to change, consent decrees become expensive theater. The DOJ investigation, the community outcry, the millions spent on monitoring, the hundreds of pages of reform requirements, none of it matters if the department simply refuses to change and faces no meaningful consequences for that refusal. But I guess it has learned from the best! The law doesn’t apply from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave to CPD.
The 7-percentage-point increase in compliance between July and December 2024 which had been the largest increase in six years was celebrated as progress. But let’s be honest about what that means: CPD made its biggest compliance leap in preparation for and response to the Democratic National Convention, when the eyes of the nation were on Chicago. The department could perform reform when the stakes were high enough. The fact that it took a major political event to spur meaningful action reveals everything about the department’s priorities.
Sustainable reform requires more than performing for federal monitors or political conventions. It requires a fundamental shift in culture, leadership, and accountability, a shift that clearly has not occurred. When use of force increases while compliance inches forward, when supervisors ignore policy violations 97 percent of the time, when the union magazine celebrates a blatant racist while the community demands justice, the message is unmistakable: CPD is not interested in transformation.
Trust is earned through consistent action over time. The Chicago Police Department had six years to demonstrate its commitment to constitutional policing. Instead, it has shown us that court orders, federal oversight, and community demands are insufficient to change an institution that does not want to change.
Until that fundamental resistance is confronted, until there are real consequences for non-compliance, until leadership prioritizes community trust over institutional inertia, until officers who violate rights face genuine accountability, the consent decree will remain what it is today: an expensive document gathering dust while Black and Brown Chicagoans continue to experience the same unconstitutional policing that sparked reform in the first place.
Sixteen percent in six years is institutional contempt. And no community should be asked to trust a department that has shown such contempt for our constitutional rights, our safety, and most importantly our humanity.
The question is no longer whether CPD will reform. The question is whether Chicago has the political will to force reform on a department that has made clear it will not reform itself.