Crime & Law
211K Traffic Stops Were Not Documented by Chicago Police Officers in 2024
Chicago Police Department officials acknowledged to WTTW News a discrepancy in the number of 2024 traffic stops made by officers and the number reported to the state, even as officials work to craft new rules that would limit the ability of officers to make certain kinds of stops.
CPD officials reported officers made 295,846 traffic stops to the Illinois Department of Transportation, which is required by state law to track all stops made by police officers throughout the state. That number represented a drop of 45% from 2023, evidence that efforts by Supt. Larry Snelling to focus on dangerous drivers and criminal activity had reduced the overall number of traffic stops.
However, there were an additional 210,622 traffic stops made in 2024 that were not documented, making it impossible to know whether drivers’ constitutional rights were protected during those stops. State law and CPD policy require the documentation of traffic stops.
In a statement to WTTW News, a CPD spokesperson said the department is working to improve how data is collected and increase supervision of officers’ documentation but declined to respond to detailed questions.
“The Chicago Police Department is continuously working to improve its data collection and documentation,” according to the statement. “In addition to consistent training, we have also made it a priority to enhance supervision to ensure documentation, including traffic stop documentation, is appropriately collected and reviewed.”
Bolts Magazine and Injustice Watch were the first to identify the discrepancy between the number of traffic stops reported to state officials in 2024 and the number called into the city’s police dispatch system.
The team overseeing federal court-ordered reforms of the Chicago Police Department has long been harshly critical of the CPD’s ability to use data to ensure that officers are protecting Chicagoans’ constitutional rights.
“Until the CPD can appropriately collect, manage, and analyze data … the city and the CPD cannot sufficiently demonstrate whether the CPD’s practices have improved,” the team wrote in its latest report, released in November. “This will, in turn, prevent the city and the CPD from becoming a true learning agency, capable of reviewing and revising policies and training in a way that is data driven and specific to the needs of Chicago’s communities and CPD officers.”
It is “way past time” for CPD to address its longstanding problems with data collection, said Amy Thompson, staff counsel for Impact for Equity, a nonprofit advocacy and research organization that has helped lead the push to reform the Chicago Police Department.
“These sort of failures make it hard to trust promises of change,” Thompson said. “It degrades the public trust. Without that data, we are left in the dark.”
CPD’s use of traffic stops has been under intense scrutiny since four officers fired 96 shots in 41 seconds at Dexter Reed on March 21, 2024, hitting him 13 times, shortly after he shot and wounded an officer, according to a preliminary investigation. Reed had been stopped on suspicion for failing to wear a seat belt, officials said.
Given CPD’s “troubling history of covering up misconduct,” Thompson said, the failure to properly document more than 200,000 traffic stops raises questions about whether the department is engaged in an effort to “evade intense scrutiny.”
Surging Stops
The number of traffic stops conducted by Chicago police officers began to surge in 2015, when officers made fewer than 100,000 stops. In 2016, city officials agreed to curtail the use of stop-and-frisk as part of an agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois after the civil rights organization found officers stopped Black Chicagoans at a far higher rate than Latino or White Chicagoans.
While traffic stops plummeted in cities across the nation between 2019 and 2022 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of reported traffic stops increased significantly in Chicago, according to an analysis by the New York Times. Chicago police officers made 202 traffic stops for every 1,000 residents in 2023, the most in the nation, and more than four times the rate in Los Angeles, according to the Times’ analysis.
The ACLU of Illinois sued the city in 2023 alleging the use of traffic stops by the CPD was the latest chapter of the city’s “long and sordid history” of racist discrimination. A status hearing in that case is scheduled for Thursday, court records show.
Police reform advocates have long known that CPD was underreporting traffic stops, said Ed Yohnka, communications director for the ACLU of Illinois.
“It is about time it was acknowledged,” Yohnka said. “It is a real disservice to the public.”
The incomplete data makes sustainable reform impossible, Yohnka said.
“The public deserves policing that is not biased and to not be harassed every time they drop off their child at school, go to work or to the grocery store,” Yohnka said.
Since 2015, Black Chicagoans were six times more likely to be stopped by police while driving than White Chicagoans. Latino drivers were twice more likely to be stopped than White drivers, according to a report from Impact for Equity.
At the time of the report’s release, a spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department told WTTW News in a statement that traffic stops are “not conducted based on race or any other protected class” and all officers must undergo training designed to combat implicit bias.
“Fair and constitutional policing is the foundation of the Chicago Police Department’s efforts to strengthen public safety and trust across the city,” the CPD statement said. “Officers only conduct traffic stops when they have probable cause or reasonable articulable suspicion that a crime, including but not limited to traffic violations, has been committed, is being committed or is about to be committed.”
Approximately 73% of the traffic stops made by Chicago police officers in 2023 were prompted by improper license registration or a broken headlight, taillight or license plate light. Just 27.4% of all stops were prompted by a moving violation, including speeding and failure to stop at stop signs, according to the report.
Just 2.2% of those stops led to an arrest, and a gun was recovered in 0.5% of stops, according to the report. Approximately 4.4% of stops led to a citation, according to the report.
Impact for Equity has called for the CPD to ban stops designed to find evidence of other crimes. A similar policy is in place in Los Angeles, where the crime rate is significantly lower than in Chicago.
CPD should also prohibit officers from pulling over drivers because of improper registration issues or broken equipment, like a single nonfunctioning taillight, according to Impact for Equity. Similar bans are in place in San Francisco and Philadelphia.
In addition, Chicago police should be required to have an independent legal basis before requesting a driver’s consent to search their car, according to Impact for Equity.
Snelling agreed 10 months ago to allow a federal court order requiring the Chicago Police Department to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers, known as the consent decree, to expand to include traffic stops. However, no final agreement has been reached, despite dozens of meetings, sources told WTTW News.
The independent monitoring team charged with enforcing the court-ordered reforms found evidence to suggest a direct correlation between a significant increase in the rate of reported traffic stops by police officers as the number of pedestrian stops dropped, according to a June 2023 report.
Chicago’s police oversight board, the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, has held a series of public meetings to gather feedback on what new rules for CPD’s ability to make traffic stops should look like, but has yet to release its findings.
Focus on ‘Blue Cards’
Traffic stops have long been a flashpoint in the half-dozen serious efforts to reform the Chicago Police Department, since they put officers in close contact with Chicagoans, often under tense circumstances.
CPD’s traffic stop policy, last revised seven years ago, requires officers to document every time they stop a driver regardless of the reason by not only notifying dispatchers but also filling out a form that is better known as a “blue card.”
That paper card, filled out by hand, requires officers to document the reason for the stop, the driver’s name, address, gender, year of birth and “the officer’s subjective determination of the race of the driver of the vehicle.”
Officers are prohibited from asking drivers to identify their race, according to the policy. Each form identifies the officer by name and badge number.
In addition, officers must record the make and year of the vehicle they stopped as well as the date, the location of the stop and the time that the stop began and ended. Officers must also record whether they asked to search the vehicle, whether a search was conducted and the reason for that search, according to the policy.
The officer is also required to document whether drugs, weapons or other illegal items were recovered during the stop, according to the policy.
When initiating a traffic stop, officers must contact the city’s dispatch center, run by the Office of Emergency Management and Communications. That leaves a record of every traffic stop, not just those that result in the completion of a blue card as required by department policy, officials said.
Records published online by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, the agency charged with investigating police misconduct, show officers have been disciplined for making a traffic stop and failing to complete the blue card as far back as 2018, when the policy was implemented.
Note: This story was updated to clarify the points made in the Chicago Police Department's statement.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
