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Today’s numbers: 26.6 percent versus 4.3 percent

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In a study released Monday, the ACLU says that Chicago officers last summer conducted more than 250,000 stops of people who weren’t arrested.

The report, based on CPD data, found that the practice was employed at a rate that was four times as high as New York “at the height” of officers’ use of the practice there.

According to the report, officers are required to write down the reason for stops. However half of the stops reported gave an unlawful reason, or no reason at all.

The ACLU also says that almost three-fourths of those stopped were African-American, though they make up about a third of the city’s population.

* ACLU…

The data analyzed by the ACLU shows that stops most commonly take place in the districts with the largest minority populations. For example, in 2014, police conducted 266 stops per 1000 people in the Englewood area (which is predominantly African American) while the rate in predominantly white Lincoln/Foster district was just 43 per 1000 people.

However, the data also shows that African Americans are much more likely to be the target of stops in predominantly white neighborhoods. Thus, in Jefferson Park where the population is just 1% African American, African Americans account for a full 15% of all stop-and-frisks in that area. In the Near North District, where the African American population is 9.1%, African Americans are subjected to more than one-half (57.7%) of all the stops. The ACLU report concludes that “black citizens are disproportionately subjected to more stops than their white counterparts. […]

The City only records information about stops if there is no arrest or charges. Stops that result in arrest are not identifiable and so the rate of innocent persons stopped cannot be ascertained. In New York, which does keep such data, 88% of persons stopped were innocent (they were not arrested or issued a summons). Also, Chicago records no information about frisks, which prevents the City from computing the rate of frisks resulting in the seizure of contraband. For example, in New York, which records frisk data, only 2% of the frisks turned up weapons.

* In other related news…

The Chicago Police Department is fighting to keep a lid on how, when and where officers have used covert cellphone tracking systems — with an outside law firm billing the city more than $120,000 to battle a lawsuit that seeks those secret details.

Since 2005, the department has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on cell-site simulators manufactured by the Harris Corp. in Melbourne, Florida, records show. The devices — with names like StingRay and KingFish — capture cellphone signals.

Cops can use the technology, originally developed for the military, to locate cellphones. Police agencies in other states have revealed in court that StingRays and similar devices have been used to locate suspects, fugitives and victims in criminal investigations.

But privacy activists across the country have begun to question whether law enforcement agencies have used the devices to track people involved in demonstrations in violation of their constitutional rights. They also have concerns the technology scoops up the phone data of innocent citizens and police targets alike.

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 12:53 pm

Comments

In some circles, the use of StingRay type devices have been a bit of an open secret for some time. Be interesting to see the reaction from the general public …

Comment by RNUG Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 12:58 pm
This is more evidence that racial profiling is a sad reality, not a figment of Al Sharpton’s imagination, as our friends on the right would have us believe.

Comment by nona Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 1:22 pm
According to the report, officers are required to write down the reason for stops. However half of the stops reported gave an unlawful reason, or no reason at all.

If half the stops are correctly written down - then it would be better to only use those in the study. There is no reason to assume that a record of a stop is correct enough to include into the study when they contains obvious omissions.

If officers are required to collect data regarding a stop, then it ought to be required. To accept half of them without completed data is to undermine the overall results.

Stick with the solid data, then note that half of the records could not be used due to incompletion.

If there are obvious problems in reporting, then there are many other problems as well. To accept the universe as it, is to produce questionable results.

That said, what is the breakdown of gender within the City? Why are males stopped more often than female? Are we going to start demanding that the percentage of male/female stops reflect the City percentage?

Comment by VanillaMan Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 1:23 pm
Hey, didn’t the CPD Commander/CPD Deputy Chief from the Englewood District just become the new Director of the Il State Police?

Comment by Anonymous Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 1:37 pm
==- VanillaMan - Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 1:23 pm:==

The point is not to study only constitutional stops and ignore the unconstitutional ones, which make up half of stops overall, it is to study stops overall.

Comment by Precinct Captain Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 2:46 pm
Is the ACLU conflating “stop” with “stop and frisk”? Big difference. And the ACLU observation that “in New York, which records frisk data, only 2% of the frisks turned up weapons” means cops are finding a whole lot of guns on people they stop.
Also check this, about one of Chicago’s high-profile murders, from the Trib’s story on this:

Homicide detectives who spoke to the Tribune said they often rely on contact cards for leads for their investigations. One detective said he’s spent days at a time searching through contact cards to compile information on victims and witnesses and to conduct research on potential suspects and their associates.

Detectives investigating the January 2013 fatal shooting of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton at a park not far from President Barack Obama’s Chicago home combed through months of contact cards and learned that a white Nissan matching the description of the getaway car used in her slaying had been pulled over several times previously near the park. The cards showed Micheail Ward and Kenneth Williams were inside the Nissan during one of those stops. Both were charged in the slaying.

Several veteran police officers and supervisors took issue with the ACLU’s criticism of police for stopping African-Americans at a disproportionately higher rate than Hispanics and whites, especially in predominantly white neighborhoods. They blamed much of that on police making street stops based on crime patterns in certain neighborhoods. If a suspect in a particular crime in a white-majority neighborhood was black, then officers would likely be stopping African-Americans, they said.

In addition, they said, African-Americans are stopped more because most of the department’s 12,000 officers are deployed to high-crime areas on the South and West sides, where much of the black population is concentrated. “Deployment of officers is dictated by where the murders and violent crimes take place,” one source said. “It doesn’t seem to me to be indicative of racial profiling or anything of the sort as much as it’s a product of where officers are deployed.”

Comment by Fight Fair Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 3:00 pm
As spring approaches, it is especially shocking to think that certain minority residents of Chicago can’t go out for a stroll without worrying about getting stopped by the PD for, apparently, nothing in many cases. A completely different kind of life than the one lived in some areas of Chicago, of course, the areas whose crime rate is like that of Switzerland.

We have become far too acclimated to living in a national security state where the lines between the military and the police are blurred and the police act like our military overseers in some communities.

Comment by Cassandra Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 3:28 pm
It’s not just Chicago. I’m in Oak Park, and my sons’ black friends get DWB stops all the time.

These aren’t wannabes or even wannabe wannabes, but college students with jobs who are racially profiled.

Melrose Park and Elmwood Park are the worst. If they go down North Avenue to Johnny’s for a beef or the movies at Cinemark, there’s a good chance they’re going to eat the hood.

My sons have never been treated that way.

Comment by Wordslinger Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 4:41 pm
“As spring approaches, it is especially shocking to think that certain minority residents of Chicago can’t go out for a stroll without worrying about getting stopped by the PD….”

I am a minority and I worry more about being shot by a gang than stopped by the PD.

Comment by Anonymous Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 4:54 pm
===I worry more about being shot by a gang===

In DeKalb? Really?

Comment by Rich Miller Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 4:57 pm
Student, NIU

Comment by Anonymous Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 5:06 pm
Anon 4:54, I simply don’t believe you. What’s the body count of all those gang shootings in DeKalb in recent years?

Comment by Wordslinger Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 5:35 pm
== Is the ACLU conflating “stop” with “stop and frisk”? ==

No, that was you.

Nice try, though.

Comment by crazybleedingheart Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 6:35 pm
When my kids (who are white) were teens in the NW suburbs, they were never harassed by local police. A friend with an interracial daughter who lived in the adjacent suburb told me her daughter and friends were stopped regularly by police. Her daughter wasn’t a gangbanger, but was obviously of black ancestry.

Comment by nona Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 7:06 pm
==I am a minority and I worry more about being shot by a gang than stopped by the PD.==

NIU college student, assuming you’re from a legit dangerous neighborhood, OK, I get that.

Obviously being killed is scarier and less pleasant than the prospect of being stopped by police.

Technically, though I’m extremely unlikely to either be killed by a gang or stopped by police while innocently walking around my neighborhood, I, too, fear the gang shooting more.

Indeed, there are lots of other bad things less scary than being shot and killed. Like police brutality in general. Being beaten up by police is less bad than being shot and killed by a gang.

That doesn’t mean we should allow or encourage our civilian police force to do that, either, even if we “feel” that it might help to keep crime at bay.

Comment by crazybleedingheart Monday, Mar 23, 15 @ 7:31 pm