Chicago mayor suddenly exempts police from hiring freeze amid growing pushback

Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson exempted the Chicago Police Department (CPD) from a proposed citywide hiring freeze following a wave of backlash, The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday.

The Johnson administration announced a citywide hiring freeze for government positions Monday, prompting questions from media and city council members if the CPD was exempted, which were not answered at the time, according to the Tribune. LaKesha Gage Woodard, Johnson’s budget team spokesperson, told the outlet that CPD and the fire department were not included in the initial decision to freeze city hiring.

Some city councilmen said they received no clarification from the administration about whether the freeze included the CPD, according to the Tribune. Chicago Budget Director Annette Guzman sent a memo after the original announcement to commissioners and department heads that the hiring freeze would affect all city government departments and positions.

“I didn’t know whether the hiring freeze applied to our first responders, our Police Department and Fire Department,” Chicago alderman Chris Taliaferro, Johnson’s police and fire committee chair, told the Tribune. “I did tell [the Johnson administration] I think it would be a bad decision for us to not exempt our police and fire because we are constantly losing police officers and we can’t keep up with attrition.”

The freeze was meant to make up a $982.4 million shortfall in the city budget projected for fiscal year 2025. The cause for the shortfall is “rising personnel, pension, and contractual costs, alongside ongoing revenue challenges,” Guzman said Monday according to ABC 7.

“Initially, we were told it’s an across-the-board hiring freeze,” Public Safety Committee Chair Brian Hopkins told the Chicago Sun-Times. “They rushed the announcement on a Monday morning without fully vetting it, not realizing that it was something they would have to walk back. There was pushback from the aldermen. They went back and realized there were positions they really needed to exempt from the hiring freeze.”

Johnson has changed his views on the police over the years, saying during his 2023 mayoral campaign that he didn’t want to “defund police” and instead pushed for “smart police.” Johnson seemingly reversed his position from 2020 following the George Floyd riots, when he said that it was his “political goal” to defund police.

The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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