Chicago Justice Podcast
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Chicago Justice Podcast
ACLU on CPD Traffic Stop Lawsuit
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Welcome to the Chicago Justice Podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Siska. Today we feature an interview with Alexandra Black, Senior Supervising Attorney at the ACLU of Illinois, where we discuss their lawsuit regarding traffic stops by the Chicago Police Department and the disproportionate impact on the people of color in Chicago. Real quick, if you want to get involved in our work, cjpnation.org. If you want to get access to unprecedented exclusive videos that we're producing, um, go to our Patreon. You can also support our work there. We'd really appreciate it. If you're listening to the podcast, please subscribe. If you're uh listening, also quick programming note, subscribe to our YouTube channel for new streams of content posting weekly. If you're watching us on YouTube, smash that subscribe and like button. Thank you. It really helps out this channel. So let's get into it. In 2020, the state's attorney's office, Cookie State Attorney's Office, produced a webinar that said Chicago Police Department is arresting the wrong people on hand since about 2015. When they started moving away from pursuing gun offenders, people used the gun to commit crimes and started pursuing gun possessors. That's all right. The start of 2015, the date is important. Now I confirmed this with a high-ranking police source. So we know this is actually happening, and this SAO data proves it. It made some news, but it basically disappeared from the news pretty quickly. You know, it was the pandemic and everything. The ACL ACLU lawsuit seems to prove that the CPD moved from pedestrian stops to traffic stops around 2016. At least that's when they looked at the data. Now we get into all of this in our discussion with Alexandra and how it all ties together. I'm back with you to wrap this up after the interview. Enjoy. Alexandra Block, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01Thanks so much for having me, Jason.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so I want to start kind of like going back a few years and then start talking in detail about your lawsuit because I don't think you can look at the lawsuit in without the context of what the ACLU has already previously done. So if my memory serves me right, and I was in Chicago and uh working with the ACLU at that point, um there was a settlement agreement years ago, maybe about a decade ago, regarding disproportionate stops and minority pedestrians. Uh basically a stop and frisk, kind of Chicago version.
SPEAKER_01That's right. That was a 2015 settlement agreement between the ACLU of Illinois and the city of Chicago.
SPEAKER_00All right, can you give us in broad, just broad strokes, what was the general complaint? What were the CPD doing at that point, and what was the settlement, uh, what was reached in the settlement there?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. So um in early 2015, the ACLU of Illinois published a report based on um data that we had gotten from CPD under the Freedom of Information Act. Um and it showed um first that CPD officers were conducting hundreds of thousands of street stop and frisk encounters every year, um, and that uh black people especially were significantly and disproportionately affected. Um, these are what's known sometimes as Terry stops or investigative stops. Um, so when officers would come up to people on the street and start asking them questions, um, where are you going? What are you doing? Who are you with? You got anything in your pockets? Um, and often escalating these encounters, you know, throwing people up against a wall, throwing people up against a car, you know, sticking their hands down their pants, like really rough and violent and humiliating and embarrassing encounters, mostly on the street, you know, or in the park, on the corner, on the stoop. Um, and that was what was going on uh in the, you know, around the you know, 2010 say to 2015 time period, similar to what was going on in other cities like New York City. Um, but the ACLU's investigation at that time in 2015 found that per capita stop and frisk was actually four times more common in Chicago than New York at the height of New York's um stop and frisk. Um so this um report eventually led to a settlement agreement that we that we entered with um with the City of Chicago and the Chicago Police Department that required uh a number of things, um, including more documentation of investigatory stops and pat downs and an ongoing um monitoring by somebody who was uh called a consultant of whether CPD was complying with the with the law, both in terms of the Fourth Amendment, you know, were were they justifying these stops correctly based on the law? And also under the Illinois Civil Rights Act, were the stops having an unjustified, disproportionate impact on people based on race or ethnicity.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so let's leap forward because that context is very important. So I think something that got a little bit of press um during COVID, but not anywhere near as enough as I think it should have. And I think it plays right into your lawsuit is that the Cook County State's attorney had their chief of uh data, chief data officer, Matthew Saney, do a webinar. And in the webinar trying to teach journalists how to use their data. Um, in the webinar, he basically states, hey, the CPD at the end of 2014 switched from doing these pedestrian stops on the street. Um well, yes, and switch from also, but switch from pursuing gun uh offenders, people who were using guns for crime, committing crime, and switch to pursuing gun possessors. And you know, there was a big article that the States Attorney says the police are arresting the wrong people. But in that switch, was it do we think the CPD switch and then started doing these traffic stops? Because this is about the same time the traffic stops skyrocket rather than the foot pedestrian stops. Is um because I I know I had a highly flexed source in the department, and that source confirmed to me, yes, we made that switch on purpose. Um, it was a strategic one. That seems to tie together. I don't think the media's picked up on that. I just want to hear your thoughts about that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's very interesting. There's certainly some academic research that we cite in the complaint in our traffic stop lawsuit that draws the same conclusion that CPD basically swapped out pedestrian stops for traffic stops, um, possibly in part because of the ACLU settlement agreement made them fill out more paperwork for investigatory stops. There was also just more scrutiny. Um and uh and um there wasn't the same monitoring of of traffic stops uh because those were not included in the 2015 stop and frisk agreement with the ACLU. Um so we do allege in the lawsuit, and you can you can see in the data, there's kind of a almost a um proportionate increase in traffic stops at the same time that there is a decrease in um in pedestrian stops. Uh, but the number of total stops year to year, uh taking away the you know to 2020 period where the the pandemic um affected policing activity um uh remained fairly fairly consistent in in total.
SPEAKER_00So your lawsuit examined 600,000 traffic stops. Over what period of time were those 600,000 traffic stops? How long, you know, what period of time did they occur?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, so we examined the period um 2016 to 2022, 2016 being the the year after the ACLU stop and Frisk Agreement when when we allege you know traffic stops really started to skyrocket. Um, 2022 being the latest uh data that we have for a full year. Um and in that period, there were about 2.6 million traffic stops that CPD reported to the Department of Transportation. Um and we believe that is probably um an undercount because there were a lot more traffic stops that CPD radioed into dispatch, you know, the dispatchers at the Office of Emergency Management Communication than they actually recorded. And we know based on the allegations from our five clients who brought this lawsuit, some of the stops that they experienced were not actually reflected in um records about them that we got back from CPD under FOIA. Um, so we think there's an undercount, but um they did you know um report close to um say 600,000 traffic stops in 2022 alone.
SPEAKER_00600,000 in a year. Right. Mind-bogglingly number for um wow, 10. If you think 10,000 officers, 10, 60 traffic stops an officer. Basically, if you're thinking 10,000, 10,000 officers, right? If you're not talking support personnel. Okay, so your your lawsuit um says that one one percent one percent of those stops results in the discovery of drugs, guns, or an arrest. Do we also it's it's mind-boggling that that's the reality. So do we have any idea how many of the other stops the CPD issued a citation?
SPEAKER_01Um, the citation rates are extremely are extremely low. Um and I will have to find the um exact numbers, but something like two-thirds uh, first of all, to about two-thirds of the stops are for non-moving violations, you know, equipment, um, registration, licensing, tags expired, headlight cracked, something like that. Um, so that's the vast majority of current stops. Um and uh among those, um, as well as moving violations, the the citation rates um are extremely low. And that's that's atypical. Um, you know, in in other large cities like say New York City or Houston, um, most stops result in a in a ticket. But um what we show in this lawsuit is that in Chicago, um these stops really are protectual. They're not looking to make stops to ticket people or to make money off of ticket revenue, they're using these stops as a fishing expedition to look for guns, exactly as you mentioned um earlier, the with the comment from the person from the state's attorney's office.
SPEAKER_00Wow, that's pretty mind-boggling. Like they're pulling you over for a violation. They should even if they're you would think to cover their their butts, right? They would, if they're stopping you for something, they can give you a ticket. They would give you the ticket. Right. And then if they can't search or that you the search ends up nothing, fine, they can still say they if you like um they pulled you over for a uh legitimate reason and you paid the ticket. Um that's pretty mind-boggling. So what is what is the ACL's view on on this one percent? Is that a success rate? Is that a good rate? I mean, and then do you have any comment or have you heard anything from the CPD about are they happy with that number? Do they think it's right?
SPEAKER_01The CPD has never publicly come out with any justification for its um traffic stop. Um what we call a hit rate, meaning how many stops result in finding contraband. Um, nor has it come out with any public justification for the extreme racial and ethnic disparities that we allege in this lawsuit, which is, you know, over 85% of these traffic stops are of Black and Latino drivers, um, even though they only make up about um 60% of the overall driving population. Um, you know, we I think they that we we've seen in public statements from various city and CPD officials that this is some kind of like generalized crime fighting strategy, but they've never been clear about what that strategy really is or whether the um extreme harm that results from all of these harassing traffic stops, 99.5% of them that turn up absolutely nothing, um, you know, it is outweighed by the very, very, very minuscule likelihood that they will actually find a gun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, it just seems like a moving version of stop and fresk.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that's what we allege in this lawsuit. It's it's essentially the new stop and fresk. The, you know, harass black and Latino people as uh, you know, supposedly as some sort of public safety um strategy. Um, but what we allege in the lawsuit is it doesn't work, both because they are very unlikely to find guns, um, or secondarily, I think they're looking for drugs, um, but mostly because it destroys the relationship between the police and the communities that they're supposed to be protecting, um, because people feel so targeted and racially profiled, discriminated against, harassed, um, and you know, unfairly singled out uh um for for these really discriminatory traffic stops.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, you one would not know we're in the midst of a consent decree. You wouldn't know that, right? Um, and I've argued those are only, I know academic research is something like 50% successful. I've always had my doubts on what it would do in Chicago. Um, I want to get to uh um an example. You you citing the law student that's in the article, at least one of the articles covered covering it. Um, so it's uh Jose Manuel Amanza, I think I'm okay. My uh Mexican wife would be proud of me. Um 30 for 35-year-old from Little Village, uh community activist, pulled over searched, car searched, no ticket. Also, when he tried to get the records of the stop, there were none. And this hit home for me because I've always said that the CPs, one, poorly trained, but two, they benefit from that poor training because it hides their misdeeds. That's why, because I honestly think if the if the keeping all these records would help them and they would police better, that over the last 50 years they would have gotten stuff in line and and kept these records. And it brought me back to a uh class when I was in grad school at UIC. We had someone from the data office in the program in the class with a guy from a special unit, an officer from a special unit. And he was he started talking about the data guy would complain about how people don't follow the rules and they don't talk and they don't fill out the data they should. And this guy started saying something about a, I think, a pedestrian stop or a traffic stop, and about whether or not, depending on why he did it, whether or not he had to fill out a contact card or some kind of form. And the data guy goes off and goes, that's it right there. That's it. He's wrong. He's wrong. He's in a special unit. He got promoted, more or less. He's wrong. He doesn't know what he's talking about. That is all completely wrong. None of that is in guidance with it. Yeah, everything you've done should have been documented. That's all should have been documented for the last three years. What are you talking about? Um so I to your comment, how much worse do you think it is? How much greater do you think the disparity is than what's recorded in the data?
SPEAKER_01The only uh way we so we so far have of quantifying this is um, as I alluded to earlier, the difference in the number of traffic stops that are radioed into OEMC versus reported um to the Department of Transportation. And it's something like 100,000 stops per year, um, unique stops per year. That um, you know, there there's some indication that the the call was radioed into OEMC, but there wasn't a corresponding traffic stop, quote unquote blue card, I think is the CPD terminology that gets a stop actually into the data system that goes to the Department of Transportation. Um now, uh again, we can't really vouch for that data. This is just you know data that we've gotten from public sources, um, both from OEMC and from you know CPD itself, from what it reports to the Department of Transportation, but there is a significant, very significant disconnect on the order of tens to hundreds of thousands of stops, traffic stops every year.
SPEAKER_00So it has to be that the CPD must think that these traffic stops are effective. Right? This is why they must think it's effective. This is why they're doing it. Right? I mean, it kind of it kind of boggles the mind when they're only getting an arrest or guns or drugs in less than one out of every hundred or less than one percent. Seems kind of mind-boggling if they would keep doing this despite it being so um, to be generous, questionably constitutional.
SPEAKER_01Well, let me first say we allege that what they are doing is unconstitutional, because uh, in part, uh, we don't know of any evaluation that CPD has ever undertaken um to justify their mass traffic stop program. That's the terminology we use in the lawsuit that this this whole um you know uh program of both traffic stop quotas targeting neighborhoods that are predominantly black and Latino for traffic stops, targeting people who are black and Latino for traffic stops, especially when they drive through white neighborhoods. Those three factors are what we call this mass traffic stop program. And we don't know of any um evaluation or audit or justification from CPD that would say that uh this mass traffic stop program decreases crime, increases public safety in any way. Um and the fact that they have known about these racial disparities and data that they've been reporting to the Department of Transportation since 2004, which is almost 20 years, and yet they haven't done anything about it and they haven't even studied whether there's an actual public safety justification suggests intentional discrimination. You know, not that they are doing this for public safety purposes, but they are doing it because it disproportionately harms Black and Latino Chicagoans. That's the allegation among the allegations in our lawsuit.
SPEAKER_00So there's a great quote, um, I guess, out of an email that uh Ernest, I think it's Ernie Cato III, who was then deputy chief of Area 4 sent out. And I want to read this so people understand. Like this is a concerted effort by the department and the management of the department to get traffic stops. And this is what it was for contact cards back 10, 15 years ago. It's the same thing. Um and this also, just real quick, is kind of the problem if there's a bad side to um um the uh policing by data. This is one of them because it's very easy for superiors to see um to get people to generate the numbers to make it look like they're doing things. Um so here's the quote look at your traffic stop strategy and prepare to address how you will utilize traffic stops to address violence. And then he goes on. This is from September of 2020. And the end in the end quote here is effective traffic stops decrease violence. So basically, well, first of all, I don't know any scientific evidence that shows that, but also it looks like the deputy chief of area four was pushing unconstitutional policing on in writing.
SPEAKER_01That's what we allege in in the lawsuit that these traffic stop quotas that uh you know we we we allege evidence, uh at least in in area four, which is on, you know, three police districts on the west side, and um in the community safety team, which is a citywide team, we suspect that quotas are in place in in other areas, and on other teams um will have to develop that evidence and discovery. Um but what we allege in the lawsuit is. The push for numbers of traffic stops leads to racial profiling and unfairly targeting Black and Latino drivers, which in itself is unconstitutional and in violation of the Illinois Civil Rights Act. I think you're exactly right. It has been for a number of years a push for quantity over quality and just numbers, numbers, numbers, which results in, you know, saturating black and brown neighborhoods with uh traffic stops and um disproportionately pulling over black and brown people, even when they're driving through, you know, downtown or predominantly white neighborhoods like the near north side and things like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and this is why I try to tell people who are pushing for reforms of the department. I know there was a string of um members of the religious community writing op-eds in the Tribune, um, pushing the police to um clear more cases involving uh black women uh murder uh who have been murdered and have disappeared. And like, hey, I'm 100% for that. Like, absolutely. However, you got to step back, ladies and gentlemen, because when you're when you anything that gets measured in your job, you're going to work towards it. So I call it policing to the numbers. And then you have to worry about what they're doing to get those numbers and what is the impact of what they're doing. You think I think it's um logical but yet naive of people who aren't in the reform movement to think like, we'll just put a number up there, they'll have to hit it, life will get better, right? And yes, we want those clearances better, but at what cost to communities um to get those clearances? Um, right? Like you look back at John Burge back in the day in Chicago, he could close cases, just a little torture, Russian roulette, electric shock, he could close them. But if people were claiming clamoring for numbers, he would get you the numbers, he'd get you confessions, and he'd get the gold star, and everyone would be happy because they claimed they wanted more closures. There you go, you got them. One impact on the community, though. So it's very tenuous when you when you push for that. Um, and I try to tell people be careful, you don't know what you're doing. Um, and policing, I think there's a lot of fields, but since I'm in the criminal justice field, policing and prosecuting and judging jails, it's like very serious because it's an immediate impact on people's lives and their freedoms and entire communities. Okay, there's my rant for that. So, can if you said I want to get to this community safety team because uh I believe the lawsuit doesn't. I know the article talks about Lieutenant Frank Paz, pause, if I'm pronouncing that right. Um, what role does he play? Because I know I think he filed the lawsuit against the police department. What suit does what does his suit have to do with your suit?
SPEAKER_01We don't represent uh Lieutenant Paz. Uh we just were able to obtain some depositions that were taken in his case. Uh so he filed a separate lawsuit represented by other attorneys in um the circuit court of Cook County, alleging whistleblower retaliation, because he says that he spoke up against uh traffic stop quotas in the community safety team, and that uh his commander retaliated against him and I believe um demoted him, if I'm remembering correctly. Um and that case is still ongoing. As far as I know, it hasn't been resolved. But um, as part of the discovery in his lawsuit, they questioned a number of sergeants on the community safety team uh about whether there really were these traffic stop quotas. And uh the evidence that um we received and that we alleged also in our um federal court complaint is that these quotas were widespread and widely known that the community safety team expected traffic stop numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. Um that everyone likely knew that the push for numbers um would uh increase racial disparities and targeting of racial minorities. Uh, but that that's you know our additional allegation in our lawsuit that is not in Lieutenant Paz's lawsuit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it years and years and years ago, the I believe it was Lovey in a lawsuit, they asked the CPD or required the CPD to present the person who most knew most about um promotions and special unit assignments. And the captain or whatever it was at that point said it's based on based a lot on humper activity. And for the translation, ladies and gentlemen, that means numbers. What can you demonstrate that you're you're being productive? And to in policing, that is numbers. How many stops you making? How many arrests you're making? And I remember a friend of mine got it like a 10 years ago or so. We were talking about his job. He's on a he's been on the job for many years now, and he was just like, God, I haven't made it, I haven't made a meaningful arrest in like five years. And I was like, wow. He goes, you know, the one I did and I got all these accommodations for. There was a shooting. I was like on a walking beat like five blocks away, and the car looked odd. Whatever that meant. And he looked in the seat, and the guy sitting in the front seat had a gun in the open in the back seat, and he made an arrest and ended up being the guy who committed a homicide. Um, but it just shows you, he's like, Yes, I we put we all have to produce numbers, but what are those are they meaningful? And he ended up in a special unit many years later. And um, when he started voicing some less than full-throated support for what the units were doing, um, just about how long-term effective it actually was, they made sure he was gone. He was it was a couple of months and he was he was out of there. So that's how the police department works. So here's my last question. It seems like it's almost endemic into policing in Chicago that they have to do some kind of mass stop um strategy, whether it's on foot or stopping people in cars, um, to what they would deem make any impact on crime. Because they're doing it because they think it's successful for whatever reason, whatever metric. They wouldn't be doing it otherwise. Does this mean that the only way the CPD is going to have an impact on crime is through these stops? Like I'm not trying to uh endorse them, but if that's the if that's what we're stuck with, that reality, then we're doing something wrong if we're relying on the police to solve all these problems.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's a that's a difficult question to answer in in some ways, because I there are so many other things that police officers can do. Some of them are required by the existing consent decree. The community policing um provisions of the existing consent decree require them to completely overhaul how they distribute officers and what those officers are doing in terms of routine um positive contacts with the with the community. Um there's also, you know, there's there's nothing in any police best practice from you know other jurisdictions that I know about, for example, that says that mass stops are the only way or the best way to to fight crimes. Um as far as I personally am aware, I think Chicago is a significant outlier in really relying on these mass stop tactics. And I agree with you, it does seem to have been endemic in Chicago police practice for decades, um, as a number of ACLU lawsuits going back to the 1990s established. You know, first it was um loitering arrests, then it was gang loitering, then it was stop and frisk, now it's traffic stops. And, you know, at each turn, um we've managed to either get a get a settlement or or even in you know, in the gang loitering case, take it all the way up to the US Supreme Court and get the city of Chicago's ordinance declared unconstitutional. Um But the fact is that Chicago also has higher crime rates than many other jurisdictions. So if what they were doing was effective, we should have lower crime rates than other big cities, and we don't.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's that weird, um, it's that weird negative correlation almost, right? Right. That um right, we do these things and it doesn't solve the problems. Um, and I I try to tell everyone, I try to tell all the journalists, like, stop looking for this like direct connection from a policing strategy to a change. Um, I know Rom um started hiring the he was gonna hire a thousand new lawyers, uh new new officers to the department at 16. Okay, well, I talked to some people in the department, they're like, yeah, crime's going down next year. 2016's a blip. Don't worry, it's gonna go down. But now Rom is gonna say, and he would have if he stuck around, his thousand new officers brought crime down. Just like the police in every district say, it's our strategies, we're doing it. And the superintendent says our strategy, and the state attorney says it's what we're doing. And in reality, it probably has very little to do with any of it. And I people hear this and say it's bashing officers. It's not, they only have so much power. Can we be more honest about what they can actually achieve? Would it make their experience on the job better, their working conditions better? It's really to my view, it's anti-copy. Uh just heaping all of our problems around crime and violence on them and saying, please solve all these problems. And when you do this, as Chicago has proven over and over now, this is what we get. We get unconstitutional policing as a result. The more you squeeze them, the for reductions in the numbers, the more you're gonna get some kind of unconstitutional policing. It's just, and we we're a city of insanity. Chicago's a city of insanity. Why? Because we keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, right? And the public, and I'm happy with the recent mayoral election, but most of the time the public just the crime gets to whatever point that's on TV enough that they just close their eyes and tell the CPD to do whatever you have to do. Um, it's so sad. Okay, Alexandra Block, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
SPEAKER_00Again, I'd like to thank Alexandra Block from the HCLU for coming in and jumping on the pod with us. We really appreciate the time. It was a great discussion. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, the CPD is all in on this, right? Despite the 1% success rate. Emails they uncovered seem to prove it. The lawsuit from the other officer seemed to prove it. Can the CPD actually do their job constitutionally? It seems like a never-ending pattern with the CPD to some degree. There was like loitering, then gang loitering, then pedestrian stops, and now traffic stops. All with kind of the same pattern. Unconstitutional concentration on people of color. It's a change in the approach, but the same underlying tactics, more or less, right? Scoop up and get involved in the lives of as many black and brown young men as possible. Can they do it constitutionally? That's a question for another day and another pod. Thank you so much for listening. Once again, check out our Patreon for new content weekly. The latest posting was an explainer video. It's a new series there. We go deep on how the CPD defines a cleared case and how that stat is manipulated and how all the media misinterprets clearance rates, and what all goes into that. Thanks again. I'll be back with you soon.