Chicago spent $273M on police overtime in 2024, watchdog says
Chicago spent more than $270M in police overtime in 2024, watchdog says
A new tool released by the City of Chicago's inspector general showed that the Chicago Police Department spent more than $270 million in overtime for officers in 2024.
CHICAGO - The city of Chicago spent more than $270 million on police overtime last year, the city’s watchdog agency reported.
The overtime costs in recent years have "dwarfed" the entire budgets of many other city departments, according to the Office of Inspector General.
By the numbers:
The OIG pointed to the figure as it announced a new dashboard to display data on overtime worked by sworn members of the Chicago Police Department.
Deborah Witzburg, the city’s inspector general, also noted that she’s releasing the dashboard as the City Council begins a "historically challenging budget process for 2026."
"CPD is the City department which, by a gaping margin, occupies the largest percentage of the City’s budget," she said in a statement. "In recent years, CPD’s overtime spending alone has dwarfed the entire budgets of many other City departments."
She added that more than 11,000 sworn CPD members worked some amount of overtime in 2024.
Witzburg said that despite the high costs, data on police overtime costs has been difficult to access and analyze.
The OIG’s dashboard breaks down data for specific ranks, units, timeframes, and even for specific events. For instance, for the Democratic National Convention held in Chicago in August of 2024, CPD members earned about $15.6 million in overtime pay.
Other big events for which officers worked a significant amount of overtime last year included Mexican Independence Day celebrations ($8.2 million), various protests and marches ($5.2 million), and Lollapalooza ($2.1 million), according to the dashboard.
Some CPD members earned as much as $150,000 in overtime last year, with the top earner netting $176,265.
Why you should care:
Wirtzburg said she hopes the new tool will be used by officials as they craft next year's budget.
The City Council is anticipating having to close a more than $1 billion budget deficit for 2026, and one city official even floated a possible property tax increase.