CHICAGO — The city will save mental health support positions for police that Mayor Brandon Johnson has proposed cutting as a cost-saving measure, Supt. Larry Snelling said Friday.

Under the mayor’s 2025 budget plan, nine vacancies for clinical therapists in the Chicago Police Department would have been cut, with the 13 people already in those roles keeping their jobs — ending a long-running effort to have one therapist for each of the city’s 22. police districts.

But at a City Council budget hearing Friday, Snelling said he has since spoken with the mayor, who has agreed to keep all of those positions.

“That has been taken off the table now. … We’re back to where we need to be,” Snelling said. “These positions are extremely important to us.”

The reversal is coming the same day Block Club Chicago reported on the cuts. Police reform advocates have rallied around the issue, saying a healthier base is a necessary step toward safer policing.

City Hall said in a statement: “That is correct. We are working to move these positions back because officer well-being and mental well-being are important to the mayor.”

Between 2016 and 2023, 31 police department employees committed suicide, including seven in 2022 alone, according to the Sun-Times. Three officer suicides occurred in one monthreigniting a push to expand mental health services as a short-staffed force worked through canceled days off.

A 2017 US Department of Justice report found that Chicago police officers had a 60 percent higher suicide rate than other law enforcement agencies. A 2022 Report of the City Inspector General criticized the department for inadequately training supervisors to identify officers who need help.

Ald. Chris Taliaferro, 29, a former police officer, told Friday’s hearing that he hopes the Johnson administration will honor former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s pledge to hire a clinical therapist for every police district following the devastating suicide of three officers in a month in 2022.

“I find this worrying in the light we open two or three mental health clinics, we see the need for mental health treatment in the city of Chicago, but we are filling the vacancies in the budget with our police department,” Taliaferro said.

Snelling said it is the department’s “responsibility” to support the well-being of its officers.

“When we talk about wellness for our officers, again, it’s extremely important that our officers have people to talk to,” Snelling said. “They deal with PTSD on a regular basis.”

Chicago police they were slow to progress in federal court consent decree which led to the creation of his Bureau of Policing and Constitutional Reform, under which the therapist positions fall.

Prompted by the police killing of teenager Laquan McDonald a decade ago, the 2019 consent decree includes a section on “officer well-being and support,” an area the department has recently dabbled in. “a few steps forward to full compliance”.

But the police department struggled to fully employ clinical therapists even when they were budgeted.

Alexa James, Executive Director of National Alliance on Mental Illness Chicago and former police department wellness advisor, said therapists are in high demand and can often command higher salaries in private practice or corporate positions, while the city has a process that makes it notoriously “slower to hire.”

On Friday, Snelling said he wouldn’t rush to put someone in a position just to fill that position.

But the Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform faces a 45 percent cut as Johnson tries to reduce vacancies in the city to address an estimated $1 billion budget shortfall.

Johnson’s proposal to raise property taxes by $300 million was voted unanimously by the City Council on Thursday, although residents have yet to vote on any of the proposed cuts.

The potential cuts to the corrections office drew concern from Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who sent a letter to Johnson on Thursday warning that it could put the city “at significant risk of being held in contempt of court.” according to the Sun-Times.

Supporters of police reform, including Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation, and Anthony Driver, president Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountabilityjoins the call to recover cuts as political and legal rejection it unravels.

moved, Johnson’s choice for superintendent last year, he did not elaborate when asked about Friday’s reform office cuts.

“We made sure to fight for every position that we knew would be of the greatest importance to moving the consent decree forward,” Snelling said.

Block Club’s Mick Dumke and Manny Ramos contributed reporting.

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