July 25, 2024

The City of ChicagoOffice of Inspector General(OIG) has published an update to its suite of Sworn Chicago Police Department(CPD) Members data dashboards, along with an accompanying report, Staffing: Sworn Chicago Police Department Members Assigned with Patrol Duties. A longtime resource to media and others looking to understand CPD memberpresence in Chicago's communities, the updated dashboards and map now drill deeper into patrol staffing, including assignments by Beat, present for duty status, and distribution across early morning, daytime, and evening work hours. Updates to the existing suite of dashboards on OIG's Information Portal are intended to provide users with a clearer, more accurate point-in-time view of how many CPD members are working on a given day in a given place, which the accompanying descriptive inquiry report details, including CPD's patrol staffing history and structure; the report also addresses the record-keeping and data limitations which pose challenges to comprehensive staffing assessments.

"OIG's updated dashboards aim to give Chicagoans a better-albeit imperfect-view of what policing looks like in their neighborhoods," says Deborah Witzburg, Inspector General for the City of Chicago. "As Chicago continues to work toward meaningful public safetyreform, to include a thoughtful assessment of which functions belong within the Police Department and how many people are required to carry those out, all of the City's stakeholders need accurate and reliable staffing data."

Assessing CPD's staffing levels can be opaque and multi-faceted as positions are separated into multiple geographic and non-geographic categories, relevant data is stored in different systems by different City departments, and answers to questions such as "How many CPD members patrol my community?" are variable. In the report issued today to accompany the new dashboards, OIG addresses these and other factors that complicate and hinder analysis of CPD's real-world staffing levels.

OIG's new dashboards provide-for the first time-granular data on CPD staffing by Beat levels, present for duty status, and work hours. The dashboards provide an informational, point-in-time snapshot of the number of officers on duty on a Beat for one day each month. As more and better staffing data becomes available, OIG will continue to update the dashboards.

OIG's dashboards were created to make multiple sources of City data, including CPD databases, Chicago Integrated Personnel and Payroll Systems (CHIPPS), and the City's human resources information system, more meaningfully accessible to the public. OIG follows a rigorous protocol to validate and clean data before presenting it in OIG's Information Portal.

Read the Report and View the Dashboards

Read the full report, released on July 25, 2024.

View the updated Sworn CPD Members and Patrol Staffing dashboards on OIG's Information Portal.

###

About the Office of Inspector General

The mission of the independent and nonpartisan City of Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) is to promote economy, effectiveness, efficiency, and integrity by identifying corruption, waste, and mismanagement in City government. OIG is a watchdog for the taxpayers of the City and has jurisdiction to conduct inquiries into most aspects of City government.

If you see misconduct, mismanagement, ineffectiveness, or inefficiency, we need to hear from you.

Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for the latest information on how OIG continues to fight fraud, abuse, and inefficiency in Chicago government.