Updated 7 April 2026

The Chicago Police Department (CPD) this month released a long-awaited workforce allocation study (WAS) report. Nearly 10 percent of the report is redacted.

The report was authored by CPD's WAS contractor, Matrix Consulting Group.

Matrix, according to the report, evaluated "staffing needs in every area" of CPD—and made "a number of recommendations in every service area" of the department.

Where it all started: In December of 2023, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance requiring CPD to hire "a qualified third party to conduct a comprehensive staffing analysis."

In November of 2025, CPD released a Matrix-authored document that detailed CPD's current staffing and structure—that CPD had called an "Organizational Profile," but which carried the title, "Descriptive Profile of the Chicago Police Department."

The profile was a precursor to the report of staffing recommendations, which CPD released on (no joke) April 1.

The law passed by the City Council, municipal code 2-84-510, directed CPD to "release a complete copy of the written report and recommendations to the public within 10 days of receipt."

Matrix Consulting Group's "Organizational Profile" (top) shows
staffing detail for CPD's Confidential Investigations Section, while
Matrix's workforce allocation study report (bottom) shows that
detail completely redacted. Source: Chicago Police Dept.

The report that CPD released, however isn't exactly "complete:" Of its 767 pages, 70 pages—about nine percent—are wholly or partially redacted.

Recommendations are blacked out for these CPD units:

• Government Security Section (4 pages)
• Gang and Narcotics Division (34 pages)
• Intelligence Section (9 pages)
• Confidential Investigations Section of Confidential Investigations Division (7 pages)
• General Investigations Section of Investigations Division (9 pages)

In text that precedes some of the redacted parts, the report calls the corresponding CPD unit a "mission-sensitive division."

Current staffing numbers for CPD units associated with at least four redacted parts of the WAS report, however, are publicly available from two sources: Matrix's Organizational Profile of CPD, published last November; and a city of Chicago budget document, the 2026 annual appropriations ordinance.

For example, the Organizational Profile contains staffing numbers for the Confidential Investigations Section of the Confidential Investigations Division; in the WAS report, the whole section is redacted (see the accompanying excerpts).

A CPD spokesperson told Inside Chicago Government that some parts "are redacted because they involve specialized units for which we do not release staffing numbers."

When asked why the WAS report redacts staffing information that was previously made public, CPD did not respond.