Chicago police use stop-and-frisk excessively: ACLU report

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[March 24, 2015]  By Fiona Ortiz
 
 CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Chicago Police Department defended its policing tactics on Monday after the American Civil Liberties Union reported what it said were excessive stop-and-frisk searches compared with other U.S. cities.

The ACLU said that its study of a four-month period last year showed "that African Americans are disproportionately subjected to stops when compared to their white counterparts. Black Chicagoans were subjected to 72 percent of all stops, yet constitute just 32 percent of the city's population."

The ACLU issued the report at a time of increased scrutiny of policing practices and nationwide protests over the shooting and chokehold deaths of unarmed African American men.

The CPD, the second-biggest police force in the country, said in a statement that it has improved training to make officers aware of its prohibition on racial profiling.

When Chicago police stop someone on the street but don't make an arrest, they fill out a contact card about the person and the reason for the stop. The police department sees those stops as part of community policing efforts.

 

The ACLU said half of a sample of 250 contact cards that they examined did not meet the constitutional requirement for a stop - reasonable suspicion that the person is doing or is about to do something illegal.

"Chicago is out of step with other cities in terms of this type of data collection," said Karen Sheley, staff attorney at ACLU Illinois, and one of the authors of the report.

The police response to the ACLU report also said that the racial breakdown of contact cards was very closely aligned with the profiles of suspects identified by third parties in reports on criminal cases.

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The racial breakdown of contact cards is 9 percent white, 72 percent African American and 17 percent Hispanic, while the racial breakdown of suspects in criminal cases is 9 percent white, 73 percent black and 19 percent Latino.

The ACLU called on Chicago to collect data on all stops or contact with civilians and to make it public.

Last summer police in Chicago - a city with 400 to 500 homicides a year - stopped a quarter of a million people who were not arrested, the ACLU said, noting that New York City has scaled back its stop-and-frisk practices due to complaints that it was discriminatory.

(Editing by Alan Crosby)

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