Chicago PD Continues Racial Profiling While Underreporting Incidents of Traffic Stops
by Jo Ellen Nott
The Chicago Police Department (“CPD”) has sidestepped both legal and constitutional mandates of the last 10 years by shifting its focus from pedestrian to traffic stops, a practice which allows the agency to continue racial profiling and commit civil rights violations. This maneuvering came on the heels of reforms initiated in 2015 after the department’s stop-and-frisk practices, like New York City’s notorious program, were found unconstitutional by the ACLU of Illinois.
To counteract the agreement between the CPD and the ACLU, officers pivoted from pedestrian stops to traffic stops, believing they could continue harassing citizens, particularly minorities, without being held accountable under the new rules. The numbers speak for themselves: In 2015, the year of the agreement to curtail pedestrian stops, CPD made 187,000 traffic stops. By 2019, this number had exploded to 600,000, with a slight dip during the pandemic, but by 2022, the department was back to more than 500,000 stops.
An unfortunate majority of those stops targeted Black and Latino drivers. According to CPD’s own data, the number of traffic stops of Black drivers in Chicago is equivalent to almost half the Black driving population, while stops of Latino drivers amount to about one-fifth of that population. In contrast, white drivers faced stops at a rate equivalent to just one-tenth of their driving population. Don’t drive while Black or Brown, the numbers scream.
Even more disturbing about these unwarranted and unconstitutional stops is the absolute lack of public safety benefits produced by them. Contraband was found in only 0.3% of cases, and weapons in an even smaller 0.05%, making these traffic tops largely ineffective at addressing crime but highly effective at infringing on civil rights. The systemic bias is clear: CPD has shifted the racial imbalance from pedestrian stop-and-frisks to vehicle stops, and is perpetuating the same unconstitutional behavior its rank and file is prone to engage in.
Under new Superintendent Larry Snelling, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson in August 2023, CPD has been accused of engaging in widespread underreporting of traffic stops. Investigations by Bolt Magazine and Injustice Watch revealed that CPD officers have failed to report thousands of stops, as required by law, with 20,000 stops per month going unreported. This underreporting skews data on racial profiling and falsely inflates the success of CPD’s crime prevention tactics. By selectively reporting stops that result in contraband findings, the department paints a misleading picture of its effectiveness while concealing the racial bias that continues to infiltrate its practices.
In June 2024, Snelling reported a reduction of 87,000 stops, but hidden behind this figure was a significant number of unreported stops, accounting for one-third of all traffic stops during the first seven months of his tenure. In April 2024 alone, 41 percent of stops went unreported, according to dispatch data analysis. This evasion allows CPD to manipulate its public image while continuing unconstitutional policing tactics. It also allows CPD to make progress in meeting reform goals established by the 2019 Consent Decree order by a federal judge to address the DOJ findings of a “pattern or practice” of civil rights abuses by the CPD.
Despite the growing evidence of civil rights violations, accountability remains a challenge for Chicago. The city’s leadership, including the police oversight board and Inspector General, has failed to impose meaningful reforms. As lawsuits continue to pile up against CPD, only external pressure can force the department to reckon with its discriminatory practices. An examination of federal court records by investigative journalists found the city has settled 24 civil rights lawsuits since 2016 with taxpayers footing the $920,000 tab.
Sources: ACLU of Illinois, Block Club Chicago, TechDirt, WLS-TV Chicago
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