Mayor Johnson under fire for shrinking CPD

Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson has accused Mayor Brandon Johnson of “chopping away” at the Chicago Police Department to help balance his pre-election budget after three years of shrinking CPD by attrition, but the mayor apparently wanted to go further.

Acting Police Superintendent Fred Waller told the City Council Wednesday he negotiated with the mayor’s office to keep the police academy going year-round.

At Waller's request, the mayor agreed to keep the training going for 12 months, with recruit classes of “50 or more,” he said.

Waller disclosed the mayoral concession during day-long testimony at City Council budget hearings. 

The mayor’s $17.6 billion budget already is under attack for freezing 368 police vacancies and replacing dozens of additional police officers with civilians. 

“The budget your department has been handed by this administration … has shown a steady decline in budgeted police officer positions,” downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) told Waller during Council budget hearings.

“In 2024, 833 police officer positions were eliminated. In 2025, a net 54 officer positions were cut. Last year, only six were added back. This budget eliminates 132 more positions. Did the department ask for these reductions?”

Waller replied: “Well, in negotiation for this year, the mayor’s office asked for those 132 positions. But we also negotiated for — instead of just having academy classes for about eight months of the year — we were given academy classes of 50 or more for the whole twelve months” of 2027.

“That will allow us to catch up and have more robust recruitment,” he said.

Last year, CPD hired 539 officers and lost 397 cops to retirement. So far this year, there have been 407 hirings and 363 retirements. The department is barely keeping pace with attrition.

“Recruitment is always a challenge right now for how many officers we actually need,” Waller said. “When I was chief of patrol, I think we had about 14,000 officers, somewhere in that number, give or take maybe 1,000 or so. So we've lost a lot.” 

Response times have suffered most in South and West Side police districts where violent crime has traditionally been highest.

Finance Chair Pat Dowell (3rd) asked what the mayor’s hiring freeze would do to the already gaping difference in response times between districts, and to the time available to devote to community policing.

“We share the same concerns looking at the trends” in response times, said First Deputy Police Superintendent Antoinette Ursitti.

“We're looking district by district, and then digging in even deeper to look watch by watch to see where, if at all, there's bottlenecks and what we can be doing to support that.”

Pointing to the push to civilianize police jobs, Ursitti said, “Officers who are able to do essential duties like respond to a call for service — if they’re in a role right now where that can be fulfilled by a non-sworn member — we’re making that change."

North Side Ald. Timmy Knudsen (43rd) had a more immediate concern: The rash of burglaries hitting businesses along Clark Street. Thirteen windows were smashed on Monday night alone.

“A pretty low amount of cash. A pretty senseless crime. Damage to the business is usually a higher dollar amount than the cash that the burglars can get. I know this is happening citywide,” Knudsen said, demanding to know the department’s “strategic response.”

Chief of Detectives Kevin Bruno argued that retail burglary investigations are “challenging” because they traditionally involve “off-hours” break-ins by “masked offenders in stolen vehicles.”

Bruno promised to “build those investigations through video, through license plate readers, through cell phone data — all of that to track down, identify and disrupt these burglary crews.”

Knudsen complained the number of officers assigned to the Near North and Town Hall Districts is down “quite significantly.”

“It’s really hard to compete with the demands of downtown in the south part of my ward. And up north, there’s nights where officers will be all around Wrigley Field and we can’t get one patrol car down to the north part of my ward,” Knudsen said.

When pressed for information on a long-awaited replacement for ShotSpotter, police department officials refused to provide specifics or name the winner of the ongoing bid process.

Officials also appeared to know little about a pilot program that includes gun detection technology and is launching across the city.

Dan Casey with the Office of Public Safety Administration told Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th) to direct pilot-related questions to the mayor’s chief procurement officer, who announced the program in a letter last week.

“So let's just let the cat out of the bag,” O’Shea said. “We need procurement here, or we need the mayor's office.”