The city of Chicago announced a hiring freeze on city employees on Monday, leaving an overburdened and understaffed police department currently battling rampant crime in the city.

The administration of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat, is aiming to use the freeze to close a $982.4 million shortfall in the city's fiscal year 2025 budget, which includes the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the fire department. According to The Chicago Police Department is already struggling with staffing shortages under Democratic leadership and is also facing rising crime and record declines in arrests, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. (Related story: 'A catastrophe': Black Chicagoans accuse Democrats of prioritizing immigrants and ignoring them)

“It's clear that the Johnson administration is hostile to police,” Rafael Mangual, a public security fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “That was central to his campaign. He's positioned himself as an opponent of police, so it's not at all surprising that he would behave like this.”

Johnson has pledged to run for mayor in 2023, instead of “defunding the police,” to promote “smart policing.” According to “The pledge marks a shift in Johnson's position in 2020 after the George Floyd riots. Johnson said defunding the police is a “political goal.” According to From a 2020 interview on The Santita Jackson Show.

Chicago Police Chief Larry Snelling said in May that the department was down by “nearly 2,000” officers, calling the shortage a “great concern” ahead of the Democratic National Convention. According to Johnson cut 833 street police officers in his 2024 budget during his first year in office, according to CBS, but the city has 1,600 fewer officers than when Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office. According to to the Illinois Policy Institute.

“The Chicago Police Department has been dealing with serious staffing issues for the last few years, resulting in officers arriving at shifts with a backlog of 911 calls and not clearing the backlog by the end of their shift,” Mangual told DCNF. “This has been a trend we've seen across the Chicago Police Department for quite some time, and it's a very serious issue.”

Police set a record for overtime hours in 2023, with overtime hours soaring from just over 1.4 million hours in 2022 to a staggering 4.5 million hours in 2023. According to CBS. The extra overtime payments ended up costing taxpayers nearly $300 million.

“We don't want to have tired or burnt out officers on patrol. We want our officers to be well,” Mangual told DCNF. “We want our officers to have the ability to do their best work, but that's going to be more difficult the longer officers are asked to work. [The CPD] There just aren't enough police officers.”

Reports of burnout due to long hours have emerged as early as 2022 among Chicago Police officers, who work shifts of up to 12 hours with no days off, sometimes for weeks at a time. According to Former Chicago Police Officer Amy Hurley told CBS Chicago that after the George Floyd riots in 2020, her hours increased and her days off were regularly canceled.

“You're like a zombie,” Hurley told CBS Chicago. “You're not even having a proper conversation. You're just going through the motions.”

Crime continues to plague Chicago, with several metrics expected to rise from 2022 to 2023, as Chicago Police Department forces continue to struggle with numbers.

While only 10.8% of violent crimes committed in 2023 resulted in an arrest, violent crime increased by 11.5% from 2022 to 2023. According to A report submitted to the Illinois Policy Institute in March found that robberies increased 23% from 2022 to 2023, while auto thefts increased 37% over the same period. According to Up to 2023 CPD year-end data.

“With a high probability [a criminal] “There's a concern that they're not going to get caught for committing a crime, which is a problem that the Chicago Police Department currently faces due to understaffing,” Zach Smith, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told DCNF. “And there's also a perception that if they do get caught, there won't be any punishment for the crimes they committed.”

Mangal said the normalization of face coverings due to the COVID-19 pandemic could make it harder to use video evidence and lower the rate at which perpetrators are prosecuted, or so-called clearance rates.

“The more suspects and crimes are caught on film, the harder it is to identify the perpetrators,” Mangal said. “More people are wearing masks, so I think this is definitely part of a post-2020 phenomenon in terms of clearance rates.”

Chicago had the highest number of murders of any city in the nation in 2023, with a total of 617. Philadelphia had the next highest number of murders, with 408. Chicago's murder rate decreased by 12% in 2023, but remains higher than it was nearly a decade ago.

By 2024, Chicago will have 401 murders. According to In the Chicago Tribune.

“If Brandon Johnson and politicians continue with the soft-on-crime policies they and others have supported, Chicago will continue to have high violent crime rates,” Smith told the DCNF. “We know how to fight violent crime: by putting more police on the streets, empowering them to do their jobs accountably, and prosecuting and holding accountable those who break the law.”

The Chicago Police Department referred DCNF's request for comment to the mayor's press office, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

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