>> 5 and a half years ago, the Chicago Police Department agreed to extensive oversight from a federal judge to address its record of brutality and civil rights violations.

There've been hundreds of court hearings and hundreds more meetings.

But according to a joint investigation from W T Tw News and ProPublica, the record of actual accomplishment is meager.

Joining us now with more our own Heather Sharon and on Zoom, Vernal, Coleman reporter with ProPublica.

Thanks to both for joining us.

Heather, let's start with you.

Tell us exactly what this court order.

The consent decree is designed to do well.

A federal investigation found that Chicago police officers were routinely violating the civil rights of black and Latino Chicagoans.

And this court order in its simplest form.

>> Is designed to lay out a roadmap to correct those problems.

But as you said, more than a 5 and a half years later, the city has yet to address the central tenants of that agreement which require the city to do 3 basics, things one create a plan for real community policing that links officers with community members to address public safety threats that conducts a study to determine whether officers are properly deployed to fight crime and 3 to create a system that flags officers who are the subject of more than one misconduct complaint or lawsuit and gets them retraining discipline or sanctions, OK?

And just yesterday, we know that the federally appointed independent monitor Maggie Hickey shared more information about the progress of consent decree.

Compliance.

>> Cpd has fully complied with just 9% of the consent decree requirements.

We can see from the graph on the screen.

37% in secondary compliance and preliminary compliance.

Only 45%.

just 9%.

That's not in compliance at all.

Vernal who's responsible for this very slow pace of reform.

>> As we put on the the authorities that position of influence oversight of the consent decree have effectively pushed the city its like progress.

There's several departments have come and gone since working of the crew began with or without significant progress.

There's the city council which oversees the city budget, which is not really use its collective voice to call out the slow pace of reforms or are you in the city funds allocated to the effort going unspent?

There's the monitoring team that oversees the create that shes not call for sanctions against city for its lack of progress.

But the book May stop with Mayor John, where Brandon Johnson, who campaigned on succeeding, where his predecessors did not quickly implementing the consent decree.

>> That progress yet to materialize and with proposed cuts in the budget.

It's really unclear if it ever will.

Essentially there's just a lack of progress.

Yeah.

>> City officials they have set aside as you report, of course, hundreds of millions in Chicago taxpayer dollars for this reform effort.

Heather breakdown the cost.

So since 2020 budget documents show the city is set aside a total of 667 million dollars to implement these reforms.

But >> in a first of its kind analysis by W t Tw and ProPublica.

We found that each of the past 3 years the city has left nearly a quarter of unspent.

And that has certainly contributed to the delays.

And we know that pattern is set to continue into this year as Mayor Brandon Johnson is rental site has proposed slashing 79.

They can positions.

And since those big positions are vacant, we know that they have not been making progress on these really important reforms a work setting aside, hold of this money.

So it hasn't vernal.

And I talked to police reform advocate who say that this is really at a tipping point that they are losing faith that reform is at the end of this road and that there's a real sort of sense that an opportunity for reform is slipping away and that's shown in what the monitors, which are charged with implementing the consent decree.

If out surveys show people are losing faith in Chicago that anything will change with the police department.

And even though excessive force complaints against Chicago police officers have dropped overall complaints have risen.

Vernell, you spoke with residents on the city's far south side about whether the reforms have had impact in their real lives.

What did you find?

>> You know, I think they're frustrated.

I think for a lot of them job number one for the city's police department is reducing crime.

But some of the folks that I spoke to said that that's impossible.

That better relations between the department and the communities that they serve and you really can't create that bond when this problems like disparities in traffic stops, some of the other constitutional policing issues that the Koreas intended to address and alleviate.

>> The consent decree, it's been expanded 3 times each time.

Heather in response to evidence of pervasive and ongoing misconduct by members of the Chicago Police Department.

>> It hasn't.

We all remember in Jeannette Young who was left naked and pleading for help when officers raided her home mistakenly back in 2019, she had hoped that the consent decree process would allow her to advocate for real change to make sure that nothing like happened to her ever happen to anyone else.

But after years of negotiation, it didn't.

It didn't really result in any significant changes.

And she told us that the city needs a plan B for police reform because the consent decree isn't working.

A similar thing is happening with the shooting of Dexter Reed who was killed during a traffic stop.

His sister, Porsche Banks desperately wants to stop Chicago police officers from stopping the same from stopping people as her brother was stopped.

But she's not convinced the consent decree is the path to do it.

But ultimately she doesn't care.

She just wants better things in place to prevent similar killings.

We also know that former President Donald Trump opposes federal efforts to reform local police departments frontal.

What does that mean for Chicago's consent decree?

>> I think there are some authorities and people within the administration that are we know with a second Trump administration coming in that there's a chance to clear the slate.

But there's really any number of ways a second Trump administration could make life more difficult for city Hall.

We worship for especially if they come heads over some other issue.

This I'm excited that the new administration could could on certain streams of funding cities.

Chicago Police Department many other barge police departments relies feb.

It wants to provide service and should there be any animosity or any disagreement between?

White House and host Chicago City Hall that funding potentially could be in danger Sparta.

Some sort tell retaliatory effort by Trump administration.

Heather, what happens now?

>> Well, Mayor Johnson is under incredible amount of pressure to reverse the cuts.

These proposed to the consent decree, implementation process.

So we will be watching very closely how that shakes out in the final budget to create.

But whatever happens unless significant change happens, the city is on track to spend in the neighborhood of 200 million dollars every year indefinitely until they get these reforms in place to the benefit of the federal judge, who, of course, at any moment could order sanctions or other punishments for the city for failing to live up to what it promised it would do in the consent decree that the snail's pace indefinitely certainly seems like a possibility.

Hope it doesn't come to that.

Heather Sharon Vernal Coleman, thank you so