Crime & Law
CPD Working to ‘Fix’ Problem That Led to 211K Undocumented Traffic Stops, Police Official Tells City Panel
Chicago Police Department officials are working to “fix” the “discrepancy” that led to 210,622 undocumented traffic stops in 2024, a high-ranking Chicago Police Department official told a key city panel.
CPD officials reported officers made 295,846 traffic stops in 2024 to the Illinois Department of Transportation, which is required by state law to track all stops made by police officers throughout Illinois.
But the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications recorded that officers made an additional 210,622 stops in 2024 that were not documented as required by state law and CPD policy, making it impossible to know whether drivers’ constitutional rights were protected during those stops, as WTTW News reported in March.
Ald. Desmon Yancy (5th Ward) pressed Noe Flores, the deputy director of CPD’s Office of Analysis and Evaluation, which is part of the department’s Strategic Initiatives Division, for answers about the apparent discrepancy during a June 26 hearing before the City Council’s Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee.
Flores acknowledged there are “differences” between the number of traffic stops reported by CPD to state officials and the number of traffic stops recorded by dispatchers working for the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, known as OEMC. Those are “almost two different data sets,” Flores said.
“It looks like what may be happening is that they are being marked down on traffic stops but they’re not really down on traffic stops,” Flores said. “There’s traffic stops that in maybe in the classical sense don’t constitute to the level of where they have to fill out a card, whether it be a vehicle that was pulled over for the commission of a crime, or if you’re doing seat belt missions or if you’re doing other missions or let’s say you went down on a traffic crash. They may be marked down as being on a traffic stop but they are not on an actual traffic stop.”
Flores’ remarks represent the first time a high-ranking official has discussed, in detail, questions about the apparently unreported stops.
In a statement to WTTW News in March, a CPD spokesperson said the department was 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.”
Flores told alderpeople that police brass had yet to get to the bottom of the issue, three months after WTTW News’ story was published. 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.
“Does that make up the whole discrepancy? I’m sure it doesn’t, but I think that’s part of it,” Flores told alderpeople.
Efforts are underway to resolve the issue, Flores said.
“In terms of fixing it, yes, we are in the process of making a, like, one-stop shop, if you will, no pun intended, report for all these different stops” including investigatory stops and traffic stops, Flores said. “What we’re hoping to do is kind of consolidate everything in one spot and hopefully reduce some of those kinds of differences and fluctuations in the data.”
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.”
Any changes to the way that CPD reports and documents investigatory stops would have to be approved by the independent monitoring team. CPD officers are allowed to detain and search people when they have a “reasonable articulable suspicion that the person is committing, about to commit, or has committed a criminal offense,” according to CPD policy.
CPD officers made nearly 82,000 investigatory stops in 2024, according to records maintained by the Office of the Inspector General.
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 OEMC. 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.
Debate Continues Over New Traffic Stop Policy
Flores’ remarks came during a hearing called by Ald. Daniel LaSpata (1st Ward) to determine whether CPD officers should be banned from making traffic stops based on minor registration or equipment violations that are designed to find evidence of “unrelated” crimes.
Supt. Larry Snelling has said police officers must be allowed to continue stopping drivers for improper or expired registration plates or stickers and headlight, taillight and license plate light offenses to ensure that Chicago’s streets do not become more “dangerous for everyone who are driving.”
However, a majority of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability believes those stops, which the department acknowledges are designed to find evidence of “unrelated” crimes, “do more harm than good” and should be banned in most cases.
The commission, known as the CCPSA, has the authority to approve new CPD policies.
Chicagoans can weigh in on the proposed policy until July 14, officials said.
Yancy, a Black man who represents Hyde Park, said he has frequently been pulled over by CPD officers while driving.
“Like many of my constituents, I have experienced humiliation, fear and frustration of being pulled over for something as minor as a broken taillight, cracked windshield or simply the perception of looking suspicious,” Yancy said. “These aren’t just traffic stops. They are reminders that in certain neighborhoods, especially Black and Brown communities like mine, we are policed differently.”
Pretextual stops show “no meaningful public safety benefit” and “divert critical resources away from serious crimes like carjackings, robberies and gun violence that devastate our communities,” Yancy said.
More than 44% of all drivers stopped by police officers in 2024 were Black, and nearly 35% of drivers pulled over by Chicago police officers were Latino. By comparison, just 14.8% of drivers stopped by Chicago police were White, according to a report from a coalition of groups that want CPD to stop making pretextual traffic stops.
The population of Chicago is 31.4% White, 29.9% Latino, 28.7% Black and 6.9% Asian, according to the 2020 U.S. census.
Black drivers were more likely to be searched during a traffic stop and Black drivers represented more than 56% of people arrested by CPD after a traffic stop, according to the report.
“These stops rarely lead to citations, arrests or the discovery of contraband,” Yancy said. “But what they do do is lead to the erosion of trust, the criminalization of poverty and the unnecessary harm to Black and Latino residents who are disproportionately targeted.”
But Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd Ward) said it defies “common sense” that prohibiting CPD officers from making tens of thousands of traffic stops would not have a profound impact on public safety.
“I just don’t understand what we are trying to do here,” said Hopkins, calling for CPD officers to be better trained to protect drivers’ constitutional rights.
“We need to make those changes with an eye toward better enforcement not abandoning enforcement,” said Hopkins, who represents Streeterville and the Gold Coast and has championed measures designed to expand CPD’s power.
Ald. Ruth Cruz (31st Ward), a member of the Progressive Caucus, said she was concerned that any change in CPD’s traffic stop policy would result in fewer illegal guns recovered by officers and taken off the streets.
Traffic stops led to the recovery of approximately 2,100 illegal guns in 2024, according to CPD data.
“That means a lot to our communities,” said Cruz, who represents Belmont Cragin and parts of Portage Park. “Anytime you take a gun off the street, that’s a win.”
A gun was recovered in 0.75% of traffic stops in 2024, according to department data.
Amy Thompson, staff counsel for Impact for Equity, a nonprofit advocacy and research organization that has helped lead the push to ban pretextual stops, told Cruz CPD should prioritize efforts that have a higher likelihood of finding illegal guns than traffic stops.
“Is there a way that we can use police time efficiently to get 4,000 guns, 6,000 guns?” Thompson said. “What are the other ways we are actually trying to achieve public safety and other ways that address the root causes of crimes rather than responding after the fact?”
CPD officers should “focus on behavior that is criminally suspicious or that is actually dangerous driving rather than searching for a needle in a haystack,” Thompson said.
Just 4.5% of CPD traffic stops in 2024 led to an arrest, while approximately 8.6% of stops led to a citation, according to department data.
Snelling agreed 13 months ago to allow a federal court order requiring CPD to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers, known as the consent decree, to expand to include traffic stops.
That will require any new traffic stop policy to win the support of not just the CCPSA but also the Illinois Attorney General’s Office as well as the independent monitoring team charged with enforcing the court-ordered reforms. U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, the judge overseeing the reform push, has the power to resolve any disputes.
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.
Officer Enrique Martinez was killed during a traffic stop in November, and Officer Ella French was killed during a traffic stop in August 2021.
During a March 2024 traffic stop, four officers fired 96 shots in 41 seconds at Dexter Reed, hitting him 13 times, shortly after he shot and wounded an officer, according to a preliminary investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, known as COPA. Reed had been stopped on suspicion for failing to wear a seat belt.
The city is facing a class-action lawsuit that accuses CPD of targeting Black and Latino drivers with a massive campaign of traffic stops in the latest chapter of the city’s “long and sordid history” of racist discrimination.
Three of the named plaintiffs in that case have been stopped repeatedly since they filed the lawsuit in July 2023, court records show.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
