Despite recording more than 570 homicides in 2024, Chicago actually saw signs of improvement, with that total marking the third consecutive year the city recorded fewer killings than the one prior. In fact, 2024 was the first year since the COVID-19 pandemic that the city had fewer than 600 slayings before the turn of the calendar. The official figure was 571 just before Christmas, but no one is claiming victory. Chicago saw a 7% overall decrease in murders and nonfatal shootings in 2024, a year hallmarked by the Democratic National Convention and another annual uptick in summer gun violence. But each of CPD’s five patrol areas — clusters of districts that blanket the whole city — saw a reduction in killings year-over-year, city data show. “It’s not even just the homicides, but the number of people who have been traumatized by gun violence,” CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling, entering his second full year as head of the department, recently told the Tribune. “The benchmark for me is to get as much control on gun violence and violent offenders as humanly possible, getting them behind bars and getting them held, repeat offenders, and putting a stop to their violent behavior.” Chicago’s decrease in murders is in keeping with national trends and reductions in other major cities, according to the FBI. Citywide, CPD also reported large decreases in robberies and motor vehicle thefts, though the latter remain well above pre-pandemic levels. Mayor Brandon Johnson recently told the City Club of Chicago that a goal for 2025 is to keep the city below 500 murders, but only time will tell. And the crime fighting does not come cheap. CPD’s budget, not including overtime, will surpass $2 billion next year. Chicago cops kept busy in 2024. Once again, more than 12,000 guns were recovered throughout the year, department leaders have said. Officers made more than 33,000 arrests on the year, a slight increase from 2023, according to CPD data. Uneven progress While each CPD area can point to successes, a closer look at district-level data within them shows that the downturn in violence in 2024 was not spread evenly across the city. The Harrison District (11th), home to several open-air drug markets and roughly bounded by Roosevelt Road, Division Street and Western and Cicero avenues, has long been one of CPD’s most violent. In 2023 it saw 79 killings, a figure that dropped to 49 through mid-December this year, according to CPD. But to the south, in the Ogden District (10th), 2024 brought a sharp rise in fatal violence: 48 murders through mid-December, up from 34 in the same period last year. Snelling said a burgeoning gang conflict in Little Village has caused the uptick. Chicago police officers work at the scene following a shooting where a 9-year-old girl was killed and 10 others were injured in the New City neighborhood on April 13, 2024. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune) The highest concentration of fatal violence was found within two beats in the Grand Crossing District (3rd) on the South Side, the district Snelling calls home. This year saw 25 killings in beats 321 and 322, a roughly 1¼-square-mile area bounded by the Dan Ryan Expressway, 65th Street, 71st Street and Stony Island Avenue. Those two beats saw 12 murders in 2023, according to CPD data. “I live in the city of Chicago and I understand the danger as much as anybody, having grown up in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city and then living amongst the people,” Snelling told the Tribune. “I don’t remove myself from that, because everybody in the city is going through something right now,” he said, “and I know that there are people who are looking over their shoulders every single day, worried about some type of attack.” Though killings in the Grand Crossing District went up this year, the district actually saw fewer shootings altogether. Snelling said the increased lethality partly stems from more guns being equipped with “auto sears” or “switches” — small, affixable objects that turn a semi-automatic gun fully automatic, capable of firing several rounds with a single pull of the trigger. “The type of weapons that are being used right now are leading to more fatalities,” Snelling said. “The switches, the extended magazines and assault rifles. We’re seeing a lot more of these homicides being committed with assault rifles, more deadly weapons and weapons that are designed or altered to lead to mass casualties.” Officers slain  Rafael Wordlaw, a 31-year-old Cook County sheriff’s deputy, was at a gas station in Beat 321 in late July when he was fatally shot while trying to protect a friend during a robbery attempt. A man was charged with murder in his death and that case remains pending, court records show. “He was a hero. He was a protector, and he died being a hero and being a protector,” Wordlaw’s cousin Tiffany Davenport said at his funeral. Rosie Henry, right, and her daughter Sherica Henry embrace after family, friends and co-workers of Rafael Wordlaw released balloons in memory of the 31-year-old in Chicago’s Fuller Park on July 31, 2024. Wordlaw, an off-duty Cook County Sheriff’s deputy, died after a shooting and crash in Woodlawn after someone tried to rob him. Rosie is Wordlaw’s aunt and Sherica a cousin. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune) Two active-duty CPD officers were shot and killed in 2024, while a third died of injuries he suffered decades earlier. Officer Luis Huesca, 30, was fatally shot last April near his home on the Southwest Side shortly after he completed a tour of duty. Huesca, a six-year veteran of CPD and friend of another recently slain officer, Andrés Vásquez-Lasso, was shot multiple times in the 3100 block of West 56th Street while off-duty but in uniform early on April 21. Huesca’s gun and vehicle were also taken at the scene of the shooting but were later recovered. A man was charged with murder in Huesca’s death, and that case remains pending, too. Edith Huesca, mother of slain Chicago police Officer Luis Huesca, clutches a folded flag after his funeral April 29, 2024, at St. Rita of Cascia Shrine Chapel. Huesca, a CPD officer for six years, was returning home after a shift in CPD’s Calumet District when he was fatally shot. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune) In early November, CPD officer Enrique Martinez was shot and killed while he and other officers conducted a traffic stop in the Chatham neighborhood on the city’s South Side. A man who allegedly used the type of modified weapon Snelling talked about was later charged with first-degree murder of an officer and first-degree murder, among other felonies, and will remain detained until trial. “Enrique will always be my little brother, but I will always look up to him,” Martinez’s older brother, CPD officer Adrian Martínez Garcia, said at the funeral last month. “His blood runs through my veins, and now he lives through me and I live for him.” Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling, right, listens during a press conference at Public Safety Headquarters as charges are announced against a suspect in the fatal shooting of Chicago police Officer Enrique Martínez, left, on Nov. 6, 2024. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune) James Crowley, a CPD officer who sustained catastrophic injuries in an on-duty car crash in 1987, also died in 2024, according to CPD. As of November, the department had 11,661 sworn officers, according to data from the city’s Office of Inspector General — down by 113 from the year prior. Convention grabs spotlight CPD and other public safety stakeholders devoted much time and attention this year to the Democratic National Convention in late August. Thousands of police officers — Snelling and other CPD leaders among them — were around the United Center and Union Park over the convention’s four days as demonstrators marched and chanted. Dozens of arrests were made, but there were no violent outbursts. Fewer than a dozen misconduct complaints were lodged during the convention, and Snelling later told reporters that fears of police-citizen clashes à la the 1968 DNC could finally be put to rest. “2024 is the new standard, and the men and women of the Chicago Police Department set that new standard out in the field,” Snelling said. Officers stop protesters from walking on Ashland Avenue after activists arrived back at Union Park during the final day of the Democratic National Convention, Thursday Aug. 22, 2024, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune) Misconduct cases involving the Chicago Police Board — the most serious allegations, where an officer faces firing or a monthslong suspension — were slowed to a crawl in 2024 amid an ongoing legal dispute between the city and Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, the union representing rank-and-file officers and detectives. The case, before the Illinois Appellate Court, stems from an earlier award to the FOP that allows accused officers to have their cases heard and decided in private by a third-party arbitrator instead of the police board. In the meantime, six accused officers have opted to have their cases heard by the board, records show. Sixteen other accused officers have requested arbitration, but those cases remain paused as the Appellate Court case progresses. Despite the police board chokepoint, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability recommended CPD fire 53 officers during 2024, according to COPA data. Another 417 officers were recommended for suspensions, though the lengths were not known. There were about 6,200 police misconduct complaints throughout 2024, a slight increase from the year before, according to COPA data. The lion’s share of those — more than 5,000 — fell under the jurisdiction of CPD internal affairs. CPD adjudicates, internally, thousands of less severe incidents of wrongdoing every year with the Bureau of Internal Affairs and Summary Punishment Action Requests — SPARs — issued by mid-level CPD supervisors. SPARs can range from a noted violation or reprimand to a multiday suspension. Data previously obtained by the Tribune through the Freedom of Information Act showed that through late July, CPD supervisors had issued nearly 2,900 SPARs since the start of 2024. Records showed supervisors issued 3,704 SPARs in all of 2023. Discipline changes coming? Kyle Cooper, president of the Chicago Police Board, announced this month that the very rules that govern CPD officers’ conduct could change. In 2025, the Police Board will hold listening sessions and begin a review of those edicts so that “we can bring these rules to the 21st century,” Cooper previously said. “The goal for this year is a preliminary first step of what we anticipate will be a lengthy and complex process and project that will involve input from a diverse group of stakeholders,” Cooper said. “The last thing that (I) as board president or the board is interested in doing is putting forward a set of proposed revisions and rules that are misaligned from the reality of what it’s like to be an active Chicago police officer on a day-to-day (basis).” Police recruits raise their right hand as they take the oath of office at the Chicago Police Department graduation ceremony at Navy Pier on July 30, 2024. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune) CPD also continued its slog toward compliance with a federal consent decree. The independent monitoring team that assesses the city’s adherence found the police department, as of June, had reached “operational compliance” with 9% of its consent decree requirements. Secondary compliance was reached in 37% of monitorable paragraphs in the first half of this year, up from 35% in the last period. Preliminary compliance, though, fell from 46% in the last monitoring period of 2023 to 45% in the first period of 2024, the monitoring team found. The most recent report from the independent monitoring team came as Johnson was considering cuts to CPD’s Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform to balance the city’s budget, though the idea was later taken off the table. “Cuts to policy development, training, officer support, and community policing not only risk slowing the already-behind pace of reform — the cuts risk undoing the progress the City and the CPD have made to date,” the monitoring team wrote last month. “At only about 9% Full compliance with the original Consent Decree, the City should be accelerating the pace of compliance, not just fighting to maintain it.”