CHICAGO — Mayor Brandon Johnson has made little progress hiring civilians to new administrative positions in the Chicago Police Department this year, leaving mostly unfulfilled his promise to move the cops now doing that work to the street to fight crime.
A year ago, the mayor earned plaudits from fiscal watchdogs and policing experts for pledging to create 398 civilian positions in his 2024 budget plan. It was part of a bid to shift desk duty roles away from sworn personnel, thereby freeing up them to do police work while cutting costs.
But as of this month, only 51 of those roles have been filled, according to the city’s budget office.
Those familiar with the hiring process in Chicago government say that’s no surprise given the reality of age-old hurdles within City Hall bureaucracy. And the progressive, first-term mayor has often noted that the reforms he promised in policing and fiscal management wouldn’t happen overnight.
“While progress is being made, successfully filling these roles and providing the necessary training will take time,” Johnson’s budget office spokesperson LaKesha Gage Woodard said in a statement last week. “We are committed to achieving this goal and recognize that there is still work to be done to fully realize the intended results.”
Still, with violence a major concern for residents and the mayor first including rank-and-file police in a new city government hiring freeze to help close a massive budget deficit before changing course to exclude them in the face of widespread criticism, it’s another example of a Johnson initiative that’s seen sluggish movement.
His push follows a long tradition of Chicago mayors embarking on such endeavors, but like his predecessors, Johnson is running into roadblocks that risk imperiling its success. That includes a maze of red tape within the hiring process that has at times averaged half a year but can blow past nine months — and requires coordination among four city departments.
Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation independent watchdog and the former city inspector general, said efforts such as Johnson’s to civilianize police jobs are critically important, but there is “not enough of an indication that it has been prioritized.”
“One reaction is: Disappointing, but not shocking, simply from the perspective of the complexity of the process that CPD has in going about hiring,” Ferguson said. “It’s rather extraordinary. … This is a really cumbersome process in many respects.”
The steps required to bring on a civilian employee at the Police Department start with the budget office approving the position to be filled. Then, the Police Department’s hiring manager must finalize the job description and clear it with the Office of Public Safety Administration and the Department of Human Resources. From there, the posting goes live and DHR oversees minimum screening qualifications before handing a batch of applicants back to the Police Department to conduct interviews.
By the end of the timeline, sources who have worked at the Police Department and City Hall say, many candidates have moved on to other jobs and hiring managers have had to go down as far as their fifth choice.
For the administrative roles in the Police Department, that presents a unique challenge because the most viable solution during the lags is to assign street cops to those duties, which don’t usually match their skill sets and inflate costs because non-sworn employees are typically paid less.
At one point in 2018, CBS Chicago reported that more than 800 officers were assigned to civilian desk jobs in the department.
Ald. Chris Taliaferro, 29th, Johnson’s handpicked chair of the Police and Fire Committee, said those problems were not created by Johnson, but recent inroads the city has made with crime trends signal that his overall vision in this year’s police budget is working. Chicago police statistics show that shootings are down 6% and homicides down 9% compared with this point last year.
“I certainly support the goal of civilianizing some of the positions that are traditionally held by police in an effort to get more officers on the street,” Taliaferro, a former CPD sergeant, said. “I agree that oftentimes it takes a little bit of time to bring folks in those positions. The mayor’s committed to it, and he started that process of doing it, so I completely support him in it.”
The city did not elaborate on the specifics of those 51 new hires. But the 398 civilian roles created in Johnson’s 2024 budget include: 100 non-sworn training officer roles within the Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform, 22 domestic violence advocate jobs in the community policing office, 31 investigators in the bureau of internal affairs to assist sergeants with gathering evidence, 22 crime victim advocates, 21 members of a review unit made up of “retired law enforcement hired to review use of force incidents,” and more.
At the same time that Johnson created those nearly 400 positions, he slashed 833 unfilled street officer positions. His choice for police Superintendent, Larry Snelling, said during last fall’s budget season that he was not concerned about those vacancies being cut because he expects the impact to be offset by new supervisory roles and the addition of civilian positions.
Besides the 400 new civilian roles, Johnson created new sworn supervisory roles such as the addition of 170 field training officers, 100 sergeants, 100 detectives, 20 lieutenants and 10 captains. In total, the $2 billion CPD budget funds about 14,000 full-time positions this year, but only 12,200 of those were filled as of August, 11,700 of them rank-and-file cops.
Before Johnson took office last year, a push for Police Department civilianization by his predecessor Mayor Lori Lightfoot exemplified how uphill the climb can be.
Lightfoot created the Office of Public Safety in 2019 to shift some of the administrative responsibilities, including compliance with the consent decree and partnering with local organizations, away from the Police Department. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, hobbling that vision. Facing a budget crunch, civilian positions went unapproved by the budget office and were once again filled by shuffling around sworn officers.
“It begs the question of why we have the Office of Public Safety Administration, which has never been borne out to actually generate the efficiencies and yield the savings that it was touted as,” Ferguson said. “That’s something that actually could be looked at and may itself be money saving by just getting rid of a bureaucratic structure that isn’t adding much value.”
Gage Woodard, the budget office spokesperson, said “the shift to civilianize administrative positions within CPD remains a commitment of the city.” But the future of spending for Chicago police — the most expensive city department — is up in the air as Johnson stares down a nearly $1 billion budget gap for next year.
To plug the shortfall, the mayor’s Budget Director Annette Guzman already implemented a citywide hiring freeze as of last Monday, though upon backlash the city announced two days later that it would not apply to police and fire employees. Still, progressives may look to vacant positions within Chicago police as places to trim the fat.
“We are continuously assessing the resources available at the CPD,” Gage Woodard said. “We remain focused on reallocating officers from administrative duties to active street patrol, while also identifying ways to optimize staffing to meet the department’s operational needs.”
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