Acting Police Superintendent Fred Waller told the City Council that the mayor’s office asked for 132 positions during negotiations for this year, as discussed during budget hearings.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s $17.6 billion budget is facing intense scrutiny from civic watchdogs and aldermen alike, with critics arguing the administration is systematically shrinking the Chicago Police Department to balance pre-election fiscal pressures. The current spending plan cuts 132 more officer positions, freezes 368 police vacancies, and replaces dozens of sworn officers with civilian personnel.
A Multi-Year Reduction in Force
The latest cuts continue a downward trend in budgeted police staffing. Downtown Alderman Brendan Reilly (42nd) pressed Waller during day-long budget hearings on the cumulative impact of these reductions.
According to municipal budget records cited during the hearings, the department has seen waves of downsizing. In 2024, 833 police officer positions were eliminated. That contraction continued into 2025 with a net cut of 54 officer positions, followed by the addition of just six officers last year before the latest round of reductions took shape.
“The budget your department has been handed by this administration … has shown a steady decline in budgeted police officer positions,” Ald. Brendan Reilly told Waller during the proceedings.
Department leadership maintains that recruitment struggles compound the challenge of these mandated cuts. Last year, the department hired 539 officers while losing 397 to retirement. Through the current year, CPD recorded 407 hirings against 363 retirements, leaving the agency barely keeping pace with natural attrition.
“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,” Waller said.
Police Academy Maintains Full Year of Recruit Training
Amid the broader reductions, police leadership secured a concession to maintain continuous recruit training. Waller noted that his team successfully negotiated with the mayor’s office to keep the police academy operating for all 12 months of the year, featuring recruit classes of 50 or more, rather than the originally planned eight-month schedule.
First Deputy Police Superintendent Antoinette Ursitti addressed concerns regarding emergency response times, which have suffered most in South and West Side police districts with traditionally high rates of violent crime. Ursitti explained that the push to civilianize non-enforcement roles is intended to put sworn personnel back on the street.
“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,” Ursitti said.
Meanwhile, neighborhood-level concerns extend across the city. North Side Alderman Timmy Knudsen (43rd) highlighted a surge of commercial burglaries along Clark Street, noting that 13 business windows were smashed in a single night. Chief of Detectives Kevin Bruno acknowledged the difficulties in investigating these off-hours break-ins involving masked offenders in stolen vehicles, pointing to video analytics, license plate readers, and cell phone data as primary tools for tracking down the suspects.
