On March 27, 2026, the Chicago Police Department released the “Report on the Workforce Allocation Study,” a document prepared by Matrix Consulting Group that is meant to answer one of the most consequential questions in Chicago policing: how many officers does CPD need, and where should they go?
That’s the kind of question that shapes budgets, staffing decisions, and — ultimately — how policing happens in every neighborhood in this city. It shouldn’t be answered behind closed doors, and it shouldn’t be taken on faith. The public deserves to see the data the consultants worked from, not just the conclusions they reached.
That’s why the Chicago Justice Project has filed ten Freedom of Information Act requests with CPD, seeking the underlying records, datasets, and communications that informed the Report.
What We’re Asking For
Our requests go directly to the raw material behind Matrix’s analysis:
- Calls-for-service data — the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) records for all of 2024, broken down by hour, day, month, district, and beat, that Matrix used to model workload.
- Caseload data — the investigative unit caseload figures referenced in the Report, both before and after CPD “filtered” them to remove duplicate, suspended, or unassigned cases — along with whatever criteria or scripts were used to do that filtering.
- Overtime data — records showing how overtime was categorized and used across the department in 2024.
- Personnel and assignment records — the data used to match employee ID numbers to CAD records for unit assignment, plus leave-usage records (vacation, sick, injury, military, and other categories) that fed into CPD’s “net availability” calculations.
- Staffing tables — CPD’s table of organization and current filled/vacant position counts by unit, assignment, and rank.
- Comparative survey data — the 2022–2023 survey of other jurisdictions that Matrix says it developed for the project, including the survey instrument itself and the responses received.
- Earlier project phases — the “Descriptive Profile” and “Framework” reports that reportedly preceded the final Staffing Analysis.
- Contracts and financials — the agreements, invoices, purchase orders, and any non-disclosure agreements tied to Matrix’s work.
- Correspondence — internal and external emails, with attachments, related to the Report and Matrix’s work on it.
- A record of CPD’s search efforts — documentation of how, where, and by whom CPD searched for these records, and what was found but not produced.
Why This Matters
Workforce allocation studies are frequently treated as neutral, technical exercises — spreadsheets and formulas that simply tell a department what it needs. But every dataset involves choices: what counts as a “call,” how caseloads get filtered, which comparison cities get chosen, what counts toward “availability.” Those choices shape the conclusions just as much as the raw numbers do.
When a report like this is used to justify staffing levels, deployment strategies, or budget requests, the public and independent researchers need the ability to check the work — not just read the summary. That means access to the data itself, not only the narrative built on top of it.
CPD has five working days under the Illinois FOIA, 5 ILCS 140/3, to respond. We’ll share what we receive — and report on what, if anything, is withheld — as this moves forward.
Have information relevant to this study, or experience with how workforce allocation studies have been used elsewhere? We want to hear from you.
