Chicago Spent $510.9M on Overtime in 2024, Including $273.8M for Police, Down Slightly From Last Year
The city of Chicago spent approximately $510.9 million on employee overtime in 2024 — 1.5% less than in 2023, with more than half of the total amount used to compensate Chicago Police Department officers for working extra hours, according to records obtained by WTTW News.
The Chicago Police Department spent $273.8 million on overtime last year, 6.5% less than in 2023 and but still more than two and a half times the $100 million earmarked for police overtime by the Chicago City Council as part of the city’s 2024 budget, according to data published by the city’s Office of Budget and Management.
Mayor Brandon Johnson said at a City Hall news conference Tuesday he was not satisfied with the reduction in spending on police overtime, saying the department has “ways to go.”
“No, it’s not enough,” Johnson said, while praising Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling’s efforts to reduce overtime expenses. “That’s why that number has not been as pronounced and as realized. And so, we’re going to continue to do the necessary work to cut the cost of overtime.”
The amount of taxpayer funds spent on overtime by all city departments, including CPD, dropped in 2024 for the first time since 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic upended the city’s operations.
Even as Chicago Police officers worked fewer overtime hours, the city recorded a 7% drop in the number of homicides and shootings in 2024, city data shows.
However, since 2019, the annual amount spent by CPD on overtime has nearly doubled, despite routine pledges from police superintendents and mayors to rein in the spending, which occurs without any oversight by the Chicago City Council.
More than 290 city employees earned more than $100,000 in overtime alone, on top of their salaries, according to a WTTW News analysis of the data. Of those city employees, nearly 69% are members of the Chicago Police Department.
Between 2019 and 2024, Chicago’s total overtime bill soared 59%, costing Chicago taxpayers approximately an additional $189 million, according to city data. CPD spent nearly three times as much on overtime than any other city department.
In September 2024, officials imposed limits on overtime for all city departments, except for police and the Chicago Fire Department, amid a massive budget crunch.
CPD was the only one of the city’s four public safety departments to spend less on overtime in 2024 than in 2023, according to city data.
The Chicago Fire Department, whose largest union has been working without a contract for more than four years, spent $89.7 million on overtime in 2024, an increase of 4.5%, according to city data.
The Office of Emergency Management and Communications, which includes police dispatchers, spent $11.6 million on overtime in 2024, an increase of 11%, according to city data.
The Office of Public Safety Administration, which was created in 2019 as part of an effort to cut costs in the police and fire departments by combining administrative functions that has yet to realize any savings, spent $2 million on overtime in 2024, an increase of 6%, according to city data.
The Department of Streets and Sanitation, which is routinely asked to use its garbage trucks and salt spreaders to block off streets during large protests, spent $24.7 million on overtime in 2024, an increase of 14%, according to city data.
By comparison, the Department of Water Management, which routinely requires employees to work extra hours in response to broken water mains, spent $47 million on overtime in 2024, a decrease of 4%, according to city data.
City officials were more than three months behind schedule in providing detailed information about how much the city spent on overtime in 2024.
CPD Exceeds Overtime Budget for 6th Year in a Row
CPD exceeded its 2024 personnel budget by approximately $127 million, according to the city’s 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, even though the department has approximately 1,000 vacant positions, records show.
Those personnel costs include spending on overtime, records show.
Police overtime dropped 9.3% in 2024 as compared with 2023 when controlling for inflation, records show.
WTTW News’ analysis relies on a dataset published by city officials that “is subject to updates and modifications due to the course of business, including activities such as canceling, adjusting, and reissuing checks.”
CPD’s spending on overtime dropped in 2024 even as hundreds of officers worked extra overtime to protect the city during the Democratic National Convention in August.
Police leaders have repeatedly told the City Council the need to police special events like Lollapalooza and NASCAR, as well as the dozens of summer festivals throughout the city, accounts for the department’s inability to stay within its overtime budget.
“No one is going to agree that the overspending in this moment is something that we should accept or be OK with,” Johnson told WTTW News at a July 1 City Hall news conference.
Even though the Police Department has exceeded its budget every year since 2019, the City Council once again set aside just $100 million to cover the department’s overtime bill in the 2025 budget.
Inspector General Deborah Witzburg has repeatedly urged city leaders to be more transparent about what police overtime will cost taxpayers during the annual budget process.
The city’s Office of Inspector General has been warning for more than eight years that the money spent to pay officers overtime was “wasted” and fueled burnout, making misconduct and abuse more likely, first in an audit released in 2017 and then in a follow-up audit released in February 2020.
Johnson has vowed to transform the Chicago Police Department into an agency prepared to implement a “holistic” approach to public safety that focuses on the “root causes” of crime, and began that effort by expanding the number of police department members who do not have police powers.
CPD members who do not have police powers earn significantly less, which could help reduce the city’s overall overtime police budget, Witzburg said.
A long-delayed study of whether officers are efficiently and effectively deployed across the city to stop crime and respond to calls for help is underway, as required by the federal court order requiring the police department to change the way it operates.