Chicago police stop black drivers more often, but speed cameras are less biased

Traffic stops by Chicago police have more than doubled in the last nine years, in what the American Civil Liberties Union calls the “new stop-and-frisk.”

With stop-and-frisk, officers stop and search people based on “reasonable suspicion” that they are involved in criminal activity. The practice has been documented to disproportionately target blacks and Latinos — not just in Chicago, but also in New York and throughout the United States. In Chicago, it has declined sharply since a reform agreement between the ACLU and the Chicago Police Department in 2015.

Meanwhile, the number of traffic stops in Chicago has risen sharply, from fewer than 200,000 in 2016 to more than 570,000 in 2023. And similar to stop-and-risk, Chicago police disproportionately stop black drivers, according to our latest study Investigation into racial bias in traffic enforcement reveals .

For our research, we used data on the racial composition of drivers on each street in Chicago. We then compared who drives on the road, who gets ticketed by the city’s speed cameras, and who gets pulled over by Chicago police.

Our results show that the proportion of tickets issued to black and white drivers closely matches their respective proportion of road users when speed cameras issue the tickets. In contrast, with human enforcement, police officers stop black drivers at speeds that far exceed their presence on the road.

For example, on roads where half of the drivers are Black, about 54% of automated camera alerts receive Black drivers. However, they make up around 70% of police stops.

On roads where half the drivers are white, white drivers make up about half of automated citations — and less than 20% of police stops.

Our research adds to other evidence showing that racial bias is a problem in traffic enforcement – ​​a problem sometimes summarized as “driving while black.”

Traffic stops can be deadly and undermine community trust

During the civil rights era of the 1960s, law enforcement incidents targeting black drivers were common. As scholar and historian Gretchen Sorin explains in her 2020 book “Driving While Black,” the car simultaneously opened up new opportunities for freedom and new dangers for Black people.

In the 1990s, the entire world witnessed the punishment that could await those caught driving while black. In 1991, a black man named Rodney King was stopped and beaten by police after a high-speed chase in Los Angeles. The violent encounter, which was captured on videotape and circulated in local media, became national news.

The officers’ acquittal sparked the 1992 Los Angeles riots, in which widespread unrest and violence killed over 50 people, injured thousands and caused $1 billion in property damage.

In recent years, the police killings of Daunte Wright, Tire Nichols and other black drivers have shown how traffic stops can quickly escalate and sometimes turn fatal.

In September 2024, Miami Dolphins player Tyreek Hill was stopped by local police on his way to a game at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Officers physically dragged Hill from his vehicle and handcuffed him. The incident raised questions about the officers’ aggressive use of force.

All people have prejudices. These prejudices can become dangerous when these people are police officers – agents of the state armed and empowered to make our cities safer. And even when there is no excessive use of force, disparities in enforcement undermine trust between communities and police.

Reforms to de-escalate and decriminalize traffic enforcement

As national discussions about racial bias in policing have accelerated in recent years, many police departments have implemented programs such as implicit bias training to ensure more equitable enforcement. While these initiatives appear to have an impact on officers’ attitudes toward implicit bias, they do not appear to change the racial distribution of those stopped, searched, or arrested by police.

To reduce inequalities in enforcement and improve the handling of traffic violations, more fundamental reforms are likely needed. Several current potential traffic enforcement reforms focus on decriminalization and de-escalation.

Lawmakers in Illinois proposed a bill that would ban traffic stops solely for non-criminal and minor infractions such as improper vehicle registration, seat belt violations or lane usage errors.

Berkeley, California, is considering deploying trained civilians for traffic enforcement to reduce the possibility of escalation. The idea is similar to parking enforcement in many cities, including Chicago, which has unarmed parking units separate from police.

The reason for many police traffic stops is safety, which should continue to be a priority. Between 2013 and 2022, an average of 44 pedestrians, seven cyclists and 78 vehicle occupants died in accidents in Chicago each year. In contrast, the Norwegian capital Oslo had four traffic deaths per year between 2015 and 2019. If Chicago’s streets were as safe as Oslo’s, accidents would kill 15 people each year – not 129.

Greater use of automated traffic enforcement could improve road safety and transform policing.

Cameras can detect dangerous traffic violations such as: B. detect serious speeding and running red lights without the need for immediate police intervention. Automated inspections alone do not guarantee safe streets, but cameras where used, including in Chicago, have significantly reduced the number of fatal and serious injury crashes.

Over half of Chicago police stops in 2023 involved license plates, registrations or equipment. Automated enforcement of such traffic rule violations would eliminate a key driver of police-driver interaction and reduce the risk of bias and escalation. This, in turn, would free up police resources to focus on non-traffic priorities.

And as our data shows, cameras are a level playing field: they have no racial bias and pose no risk of escalation.

Wenfei Xu is an assistant professor at Cornell University. David Levinson is Professor of Transport at the University of Sydney. Michael J. Smart is an associate professor and director of the doctoral program in urban planning and public policy at Rutgers University. Nebiyou Yonas Tilahun is an associate professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Send letters to [email protected]

The views and opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Chicago Sun-Times or any of its affiliates.

The Article was originally published on theconversation.com