August 26, 2025

City Club event description:

Speaker

Inspector General Deborah Witzburg
Deborah Witzburg serves as Inspector General for the City of Chicago, having been appointed to her first term in April 2022. Previously, she served as the City’s Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety, overseeing independent, objective evaluations and reviews of Chicago’s police and police accountability agencies, with the goal of enhancing public safety, protecting civil liberties and civil rights, and improving the relationship between the police and the communities they serve. She also served as OIG’s Chief Investigator for the Public Safety section, leading efforts to screen and review closed police disciplinary cases, as well as OIG’s Associate General Counsel for Public Safety, advising on legal and constitutional matters. Witzburg first joined OIG in 2016 as an Assistant Inspector General, providing legal and strategic counsel for investigations of misconduct by City of Chicago employees.

City Club video

Witzburg previously worked as an Assistant State’s Attorney in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, where she prosecuted a wide range of misdemeanor and felony cases. She served in the State’s Attorney’s Community Justice Center, focusing on the vertical prosecution of cases of greatest concern in Chicago’s 11th and 12th police districts. There she helped develop and institute crime prevention programs in partnership with schools, community groups, and neighborhood organizations.

She is a Certified Inspector General by the Association of Inspectors General and a Certified Practitioner of Oversight by the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. Witzburg earned a BA in Anthropology from Brown University and a JD from Northwestern University School of Law.