Welcome back. It's the hottest week of the year, but you persist. So does this 123-year-old air conditioner, built for the public by a Belfast hospital in 1903. Be like the air conditioner.

This week: a parking meter deal update, what Chicago's "best top cop yet" actually leaves behind, ICE continues to wreak havoc across the country, and a Jurassic Park inspired video for those trying to find the joy in Chicago politics (weird goal, maybe).

Let’s get into this:

When Larry Snelling took over CPD in fall 2023, the department was in compliance with only 6% of the department’s consent decree — a federal court order that’s now seven and a half years old. The consent requires CPD to stop routinely violating Black and Latino Chicagoans' constitutional rights.

Snelling is retiring this Wednesday, with implementation of the consent decree at 25%. That is, by a wide margin, the best anyone has done with this job — or at least, he was the first superintendent to show up at the federal judge's monthly hearings instead of uh… not attending at all. Low bar.

Many have praised him, including the judge who oversees the decree and the attorney general praised him for trying the best he could with — and if hatred from Second City Cop is any indication of a reform efficiency, well, he has that too!

But, as you can imagine, reform groups say that 25% isn’t worth much in terms of actually changing the CPD. "No effective change on the ground," says the ACLU's Alexandra Block, and use of force is up since 2022 — including a 98% increase in force used against children from 2022 to 2024, while taxpayers paid $259 million in 2025 alone to settle police misconduct lawsuits, CPD blew through its budget by $162.5 million, and a $2.7 million early-warning system for flagging repeat-misconduct officers still isn't running.

Arewa Winters is an elected police district councilor in Austin who met with Snelling regularly for three years, and she graded his reform effort a C-minus. "He was a company man," she said. "He did the best he could under the circumstances."

If we can attempt to hold both of these ideas at once, that Snelling was better than other CPD leads of the past, and the best superintendent of the consent decree era couldn't change these circumstances, then what should and can change, beyond the superintendent?

Why It Matters: After Rahm Emanuel's cover-up of the murder of Laquan McDonald unraveled, coalitions like the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability spent six years organizing for civilian control of CPD — and in 2021 they won the ordinance that created the CCPSA and elected police district councils.

That structure now faces a major test: Snelling's exit starts a 120-day clock for the commission to hold listening sessions across the city and put three finalists on Johnson's desk by Nov. 12 — months before he faces reelection.

On July 7 in Houston, an ICE officer shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a homebuilder who'd lived in the U.S. for decades, while he drove his crew to a job site. Then on Monday in Biddeford, Maine, agents killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 26, a delivery driver authorized to work in the U.S. — on Tuesday, ICE ordered officers nationwide to stop vehicle pursuits.

Why It Matters: At City Hall this same week, the council's Rules Committee advanced advisory referendum questions, headlined by whether Chicago should "pursue all lawful means" to recover money from the federal government for the costs and economic damage of Operation Midway Blitz. This Midway Blitz question is Chicago building a formal public record that federal immigration operations are something done to this city, with costs someone should pay.

And Chicago's own accountability tool is on the same shaky ground. Johnson's executive order tells police how to handle federal agents who break the law here, and it's the city's main tool for that. Five months past the deadline to implement it, CPD won't say what exists, and it declined the Council's invitation to Friday's hearing, sending every question to the mayor's office.

As we talked about the last few weeks, Stonepeak Partners' $2.53 billion bid to take over the meter lease was supposed to get a Finance Committee vote Monday, but Chair Pat Dowell called it off.

This happened because twenty-two council members signed a letter saying they'd vote no, taking a hard line on Stonepeak's ownership of Omni Air International, which flew deportation flights for the Trump administration.

Why It Matters: It’s exciting to see that city government saying no to bigger powers in a deal that’s already bad for Chicago, even before its owned by a company assisting with Trump’s deportation racket. Block Club has a smart piece on whether the city could still take back control on the deal altogether, the goal of pretty much every Mayor since Daley himself.

Niles Township opened the People's Prairie — a wetland garden built on what used to be derelict land, now home to about 5,000 native plants absorbing stormwater. The township could have marked this with a press release nobody read. Instead, they made "Life Finds A Way" — a Jurassic Park parody video in which Township Supervisor Bonnie Kahn Ognisanti plays John Hammond, leading an expedition through the prairie with a cast that includes congressional candidate Daniel Biss, his former primary opponent Kat Abughazaleh, and state senate candidate Patrick Hanley.

The pair behind the video: Township Supervisor Bonnie Kahn Ognisanti and her husband Michael Ognisanti, a professional cinematographer who pitched and directed it.

I talked to the two of them about how you get elected officials to commit to a bit, what's growing in the prairie, and why fun is an underrated tool for civic engagement.

Where did this idea come from?

Michael: "I was thinking what would be a fun and dramatic way to reveal the garden. I’m a product of the 90s so of course Jurassic Park was a big deal for me. That scene when they’re driving up in the Jeep and first see the dinosaur. I thought - why don’t we play off of that!

How do you get elected officials to commit to this bit?

Bonnie: "Each of them had been really involved over the three years of creating this project. Patrick and Kat volunteered multiple times to dig out invasive plants. And Kevin [state Rep. Kevin Olickal, who drove the jeep] has volunteered at events as grill master. Because of their investment in this project, it was a simple text ask, and each of them were like, 'Yep… let's do it.'"

What's actually growing in the prairie, and what should people know about it?

Bonnie: "[The prairie] is probably 85 to 90 percent paid for by grants… primarily with different farm bureaus. What was going to be a $10,000 grant became $80,000 over three years." (Rural farm bureaus "adopt" Cook County legislators to build relationships across the state — and Lee County Farm Bureau wanted to fund a pollinator project here.) "We have a ton of flooding here in Skokie and Niles Township, and native plants can help absorb excess stormwater and help with flooding mitigation."

The prairie was cleared and planted entirely by volunteers and partners — and it sits next to the township's food pantry, which serves almost 8,000 people every month as a primary food source. Bonnie wants it to be "a place where people can come and they can rest and they can feel that peace."

Why does fun matter in local government — and what's your advice for people who want to do something like this?

Michael: "The oxygen is taken up by the national level, even state level. … We really wanted to show what was happening here — and it's so close to you, and you can come out and volunteer and really see the effects in your backyard.”

Bonnie: "If you have a passion for something and you can get some people together who will support that passion and you know it's for the common good, just go forward. Don't hold yourself back. You'll be surprised at how willing people are to open up the door for somebody to walk through and make their community better. If you have a heart to serve, then serve!"

The People's Prairie is at Niles Township's headquarters, 5255 Lincoln Ave. in Skokie — go see it, and if you want to get your hands dirty, the township can always use volunteers to keep the invasive plants out. Check out their Signup Genius link to volunteer.

Cook County Jail hit its highest mortality rate on record in 2023 — more deaths than during COVID — and nine more people died in 2025, with Sheriff's officers now under criminal investigation in one of those deaths. The Sheriff's response is a proposal, headed to the County Board's Technology Committee, to buy BriefCam: AI video surveillance for monitoring the jail's population — most of whom are pretrial, convicted of nothing, and unable to opt out.

A Harris Poll for the Guardian found something close to national unanimity: 95% of Americans say the country is in an affordability crisis. Half are struggling to pay for gas and groceries, and the sentiment stands across party lines. The other thing we all agree on: two-thirds, including nearly half of Republicans, don't believe the federal government will do anything about it.

See you next week,

-H