Welcome to Newswire — your weekly guide to Chicago government, civic action and what action we can take to make our city great, featuring public meeting coverage by City Bureau’s Documenters.
Quote/Term of the Week
Empower Communities for Public Safety Ordinance / noun
Passed in the summer of 2021, the ordinance established structures for both citywide and hyperlocal input on Chicago’s public safety infrastructure via the seven-member appointed Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) and the 22 elected police district councils.
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Do you want to run for a Police District Council?
Chicago’s municipal elections are right around the corner, which means the seats across Chicago’s 22 Police District Councils are up for grabs.
But first, a quick refresh:
Police District Councils are the result of the Empower Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance, passed by City Council in July 2021. It created two types of bodies: a citywide Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability and District Councils, which are elected in each of Chicago’s 22 police districts.
While the citywide commission can hire or fire public safety officials and oversees policy issues affecting the entire department — such as discussions around CPD’s use of traffic stops — the district councils discuss policing issues specific to their area, inform the community about what the citywide commission does, gather input from neighbors about public safety and develop community policing initiatives. For example, Chicago Documenters have covered District Council meetings that tackled issues of migrants sheltering inside stations, opened discussions about public safety goals and resulted in a no-confidence vote in a high-ranking police official.
The goal of both the CCPSA and the district councils was to give Chicagoans a meaningful new role in police oversight, and explore and advance alternative effective approaches to public safety.
Have any interest in running for your local Police District Council? Organizers who helped create these positions are looking for potential candidates who want to ensure that community priorities drive policing initiatives in their neighborhoods. If this could be you, fill out the interest form here.
Keep an eye out for our teach-ins about how to run for Police District Councils. Those will be taking place July through September.
What you can do:
Catch up on the headlines:
Can the neighbors we elect to Police District Councils redefine public safety? | City Bureau
What do police district councils do? | Chicago Reader
14th Police District Council Grapples with Fierce Divisions | South Side Weekly
Find all past Documenters coverage of Police District Councils here.
Find your Police District Council and attend a meeting:
Find your local police district here.
Head to chicago.gov and select your district’s specific page.
Get acquainted with your district council members. Check out the Chicago Reader’s deep dive into each of the police district council candidates.
Attend a CCPSA meeting: Check for upcoming CCPSA meetings here at the City of Chicago website. Anyone may submit a written public comment by delivering it to the public meeting or by emailing it to CommunityCommissionPublicComment@cityofchicago.org.
A version of this story was first published in the June 24, 2026 issue of the Newswire, an email newsletter that is your weekly guide to Chicago government, civic action and what we can do to make our city great. You can sign up for the weekly newsletter here.
Have thoughts on what you'd like to see in this feature? Email Civic Editor Dawn Rhodes at dawn@citybureau.org.