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Happy Friday. End your week with these stories from WTTW News. |
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Chicago Police Department Headquarters, 3510 S. Michigan Ave. (Michael Izquierdo / WTTW News) |
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The Chicago Police Department has fully complied with 22% of the court order that requires CPD to stop routinely violating Black and Latino residents’ constitutional rights by June, according to the court-appointed monitoring team charged with keep track of reform efforts.
The jump of six percentage points in the level of full compliance with the consent decree reached between Jan. 1 and June 30 is the second largest increase in the six and a half years that the federal court order has been in effect. The last report from the monitors found CPD had fully complied with 16% of the consent decree.
U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer praised the efforts of Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling to comply with the consent decree during a hearing Tuesday, and said a “good team” was leading the department.
“I feel like we are going in the right direction,” Pallmeyer said. “It can be slow at times, it can be frustrating at times.”
The department is in preliminary compliance with approximately 31% of the consent decree’s requirements and in secondary compliance with another 40% of the requirements, according to the 12th semiannual report from the team led by attorney Maggie Hickey.
“Our growth in operational compliance symbolizes the trust we are continuing to build in our communities through our reform efforts,” Snelling said in a statement. “This trust can only be built through partnership between our department and the Chicagoans we serve throughout the city.”
More context:
The upbeat report from the monitors came approximately two weeks after the coalition of reform groups told Pallmeyer that a significant increase in the number of times officers have used force against Black and Latino Chicagoans violates the consent decree.
Meetings on that issue have begun, Hickey wrote in the report.
Many of the tasks CPD has yet to complete require the department to be restructured, to allow officers to work with residents to address threats to public safety as part of a reimagined system of community policing.
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Military personnel in uniform, with the Texas National Guard patch on, are seen at the U.S. Army Reserve Center, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025, in Elwood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. (AP Photo / Laura Bargfeld) |
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An appeals court on Thursday upheld a federal judge’s order temporarily blocking the Trump administration from sending 500 National Guard troops into Chicago. A three-judge panel rejected the Trump administration’s request to overturn Judge April Perry’s order.
“We conclude that the district court’s factual findings at this preliminary stage were not clearly erroneous, and that the facts do not justify the president’s actions in Illinois ... even giving substantial deference to his assertions,” the panel wrote. “The administration remains barred from deploying the National Guard of the United States within Illinois.”
That decision means that the hundreds of National Guard troops will remain at a military facility near Joliet, where they arrived Oct. 7, but are blocked by Perry’s order from doing anything other than training on land controlled by the federal government.
What else happened?
One week after U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a sweeping order trying to calm the intense response of federal agents to protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol activities in Chicago, Ellis told both sides to come back to her courtroom to have their own intense discussion.
“I live in Chicago, if folks haven’t noticed, and I’m not blind, right?” Ellis opened the hearing. “So, I don’t live in a cave. I have a phone. I have a TV. I have a computer and I tend to get news.”
The judge said those news reports were leading her to believe the Trump administration may not be following her instructions. “I’m not happy,” Ellis said Thursday. “I’m really not happy.”
Ellis demanded that ICE Field Director Russell Hott appear in court on Monday at 10:30 a.m., “to explain to me why I am seeing images of tear gas being deployed and reading reports that there were no warnings given before it was deployed out in the field.”
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Chicago’s iconic Rat Hole along the 1900 block of West Roscoe Street in the Roscoe Village neighborhood is seen, Jan. 19, 2024, in Chicago. (Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File) |
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A team of researchers has all but definitively answered one of the less pressing questions of our time: Was the famous “Chicago Rat Hole” really made by a rat?
In short: No. Or probably not, with a 98.67% likelihood that the sidewalk impression — which became a viral sensation in 2024 — is that of a squirrel. The case of mistaken identity was revealed in a scientific paper published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
While the study’s lead author Michael Granatosky, an evolutionary biomechanist at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, acknowledged the “playful spirit” of the investigation, his team went to significant lengths to ID the crater-causing critter in question.
Why?
Though the researchers weren’t able to personally examine the “rat hole” — its section of concrete having been removed from its longtime home on Roscoe Street back in April 2024 — they drew on all available images to construct “virtual specimens.”
The measurements match those of eastern gray squirrels, fox squirrels and muskrats, the study noted, and researchers settled on eastern gray squirrel given its abundance in Chicago.
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Back in the Day: October 17, 1931 - Al Capone Convicted of Tax Evasion |
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Al Capone was a notorious gangster who masterminded the mafia organization, the Chicago Outfit, and was behind several Prohibition-era criminal operations in prostitution, gambling, bootlegging, bribery, drug trafficking, robbery, racketeering and murder. He was the city’s most famous criminal. While his list of illegal offenses is long and winding, what ended up being his downfall was, surprisingly, a tax evasion charge. On this day in 1931 — 94 years ago — Capone was convicted by a federal jury for tax evasion and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was fined $50,000 and charged $7,692 for court costs, in addition to the $215,000 plus interest he owed on back taxes. He served his term at three places: Cook County Jail, U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta and Alcatraz. He was released in 1939 because of his deteriorating mental and physical health caused by neurosyphilis and died in 1947. |
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The 2025 Chicago Festival Guide |
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Every Friday, WTTW News highlights the fairs, markets and neighborhood gatherings worth checking out. Click here for the full list.
Until Nov. 2: Jack’s Pumpkin Pop-Up (West Town) | Map
Near Salt Shed is a fun fall pop-up featuring Instagrammable photo opportunities, drinks and thoughtfully curated autumnal decor.
Oct. 17-19: Night of 1,000 Jack-o'-Lanterns (Glencoe) | Map
Head to the Chicago Botanic Gardens “to walk an eerily enchanting path, aglow with artist-carved pumpkins for Night of 1,000 Jack-o'-Lanterns.” Tickets are available here.
Oct. 17-18: All Hallows Eve (Naperville) | Map
Get ready for Halloween with this spooky event happening in the suburbs. Tickets and details can be found here.
Oct. 18: Spooky Zoo (Lincoln Park) | Map
Bring the kids to the Lincoln Park Zoo for costumes, fun, frivolity and free carousel rides.
Oct. 18: Arts in the Dark Halloween Parade (Loop) | Map
A Halloween-themed parade? Sign us up.
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What's your favorite fall activity in the Chicago area? Tell us what, where and why. |
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Email DailyChicagoan@wttw.com with your responses and your answers might be published. Here's what you had to say:
"Bonfires with the Chicago park district." — @viva_la_thrift
"I love fall because that means I can watch both hockey and basketball after work at my neighborhood bar." — Josh Terry, newsletter producer
WTTW News social producer Nicole Cardos also rounded up some of her favorite fall-themed coffee drinks to get you in the seasonal spirit. |
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Want more WTTW News content? Follow WTTW on Instagram to check in with us daily, go behind-the-scenes, and more. |
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Newsletter Producer: Josh Terry |
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