CPD underreports 2024 traffic stops, Blacks 6 times more likely to be
stopped
[April 05, 2025]
By Glenn Minnis | The Center Square contributor
(The Center Square) – American Civil Liberties Union Policy Director Ed
Yohnka views news of Chicago police underreporting the number of traffic
stops in 2024 as a dereliction of duty.
Senior CPD officials now admit that the 295,846 stops reported by
officers as required by law last year only tell half the story, as
Illinois Department of Transportation data shows an additional 210,622
stops were never documented, making it impossible to know if the
constitutional rights of any of those motorists were violated. This
comes at a time when lawmakers are working on crafting legislation aimed
at limiting officers’ ability to even make certain kinds of stops.
“The reason that Illinois began collecting and reporting data publicly
about traffic stops was in order to create a mechanism for transparency
so that the public could see the way in which law enforcement was
engaged in traffic stops,” Yohnka told The Center Square. “By failing to
report thousands of stops, CPD has really denied residents the
opportunity to engage in that assessment. We can infer that these were
just thousands of stops that did nothing more but sort of harass and
delay people from going about their day in the city of Chicago.”
The 295,846 documented encounters alone continue a trend that has seen
the number of traffic stops conducted by CPD steadily rise over the last
decade, including in 2023 when officers made 202 stops for every 1,000
residents, equating to the most across the nation and more than four
times the rate in Los Angeles.
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Chicago police officers monitor protesters at the Democratic
National Convention in Chicago
Greg Bishop | The Center Square
That same year, ACLU of Illinois sued the city alleging the stops
represent the latest chapter in the city’s “long and sordid history”
of racist discrimination. Since 2015, Black Chicagoans have been six
times more likely to be stopped by police while driving than white
Chicagoans, while Latino drivers are twice as likely.
In the minds of many, Yohnka said such discrepancies have almost
come to be expected.
“Among our clients and among other people that we talked to in the
community, the fact that they were underreporting stops was not
really a mystery or was not really unknown,” he said. “In many
communities, it suggests that they don't matter, that they don't
count, that police feel like they can stop them and harass them
without any kind of consequence.”
In 2023, nearly three out of every four traffic stops made by CPD
were prompted by improper license registration or a broken taillight
or license plate light, compared to just 27.4% stemming from a
moving violation. In addition, only 2.2% of those stops ended in an
arrest and just a shade over of 4% of them led to a citation being
issued. |
