New data shows increase in police traffic stops in Illinois in 2023

Illinois police departments collectively conducted more traffic stops in 2023 than the previous year, according to a new report from the Illinois Department of Transportation. The report also shows that police continue to stop Black and Latino drivers at disproportionate rates and that dozens of police departments are not reporting traffic stop data as required by state law.

“It’s really disappointing that after all the attention that’s been paid to racial disparities in traffic stops, we’re seeing not only persistence of these racial disparities, but an increase in the number of stops,” said Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

There were 2.26 million stops in 2023, a 12% increase from 2.01 million stops in 2022, according to IDOT’s 2023 Illinois Traffic Stop Study, released this week.

The study also found that 18% of police departments did not submit a full year of stop data or did not submit any data at all, an improvement from the 21% that did not fully comply with the law in 2022.

Of the 997 Illinois police departments that were active at the end of last year, 158 did not submit traffic stop data to IDOT. That list is largely made up of smaller police agencies in the southern part of the state, but it also includes some agencies in the Chicago metropolitan area, such as those in Dixmoor, North Chicago and Round Lake Heights. North Chicago also did not report its traffic stop data for 2021 and 2022, records show.

According to the IDOT report, 23 agencies, including the Harvey Police Department in the south suburbs, submitted some but not all of their stops for 2023. Harvey police did not submit their traffic stop data to IDOT for 2021 and 2022, records show.

“State law has required traffic stops and pedestrian stops to be reported since 2004. So the infrastructure is there, the precedent is there,” said Loren Jones, director of criminal justice systems at Impact for Equity, a Chicago-area public interest law and policy center. “I don’t think there’s any excuse for police departments not to comply with the requirement to report racial demographics.”

Additionally, racial disparities in traffic stops remain significant across most police departments in the state. Black drivers were stopped at higher rates than white drivers in 95% of departments that reported at least 50 traffic stops in 2023, the report notes. The stop rate for Black drivers was at least twice that of white drivers in 69% of those departments. Latino drivers were stopped at higher rates than white drivers in 81% of departments that reported at least 50 traffic stops last year, the data show.

According to the study, not only were black drivers more likely to be stopped by police, they were also more likely to be stopped multiple times.

Among drivers stopped by police in 2023, Black drivers were 36% more likely than white drivers to be stopped two or three times, the study found.

Additionally, black drivers were also three times more likely than white drivers to be stopped four to 10 times by police last year, the study found.

The study noted that the results suggest the possibility, but do not prove, that “racial profiling was a factor in a number of traffic stops.”

Civil rights activists have long argued that the impact of mass traffic stops on black and Latino communities is profound and long-lasting, and that the costs of these negative interactions far outweigh any benefits such stops provide for protecting the public.

“Black and brown motorists are disproportionately stopped, we know they bear the greatest burden, which continues to widen this gap of distrust between police and the communities they are supposed to serve,” Yohnka said.

“I think that’s really, in many ways, the saddest part of this because it doesn’t do anything for public safety,” Yohnka added. “In fact, it takes us further away from the kind of cooperation that communities can have with the police because they don’t trust them, and it doesn’t move us any closer to the kind of communities that we all want.”

The study also found racial disparities in the reasons police conducted traffic stops. Among people stopped by police in 2023, Black drivers were the least likely to be stopped for traffic violations and the most likely to be stopped for license or registration issues compared to drivers of other racial or ethnic groups. Civil rights advocates say traffic stops for non-traffic violations that have little to do with traffic safety — such as an expired license plate — are often used by law enforcement as a pretext to investigate drivers for more serious offenses that have nothing to do with the stop.

“We need to end minor, low-level traffic stops that could be used as a pretext to investigate criminal activity,” said Jones of Impact for Equity. “It’s important to show that we’re not going to rely on these ineffective and harmful stops that target Black and brown people.”

The Chicago Police Department also reported an increase in traffic stops. From 2022 to 2023, traffic stops conducted by the CPD increased about 4.6%, from 511,738 to 535,088, according to the report. Last year’s total is the second-highest number reported by Chicago police for a year since 2004, the first year for which data was collected. Chicago police reported conducting nearly 600,000 traffic stops in 2019.

Black drivers were the subject of 51% of Chicago police stops in 2023, down from 57% the previous year. However, the share of Chicago police stops involving Latino drivers increased from 25% in 2022 to 31% in 2023, according to the study data.

Some agencies that patrol suburban areas reported a much larger increase in traffic stops last year. The Evergreen Park Police Department saw a 41% increase in total traffic stops from 2022 to 2023. Black drivers were the subject of 58% of police stops in 2023, compared to 60% in 2022. Meanwhile, the percentage of stops involving Latino drivers increased slightly, from 7% in 2022 to 8.6% in 2023. In total, Evergreen Park police conducted more than 14,000 traffic stops last year in the small southwest suburban village of about 19,000 people.

The Cook County Sheriff reported conducting 41,435 total traffic stops in 2023, a 63% increase from 2022 and the agency’s highest total since 2004, the first year data was collected.

The state’s Racial Profiling Prevention and Data Oversight Board, which was created to help improve traffic stop data collection and make recommendations for reform, continues to struggle to maintain a consistent membership. Since May 2022, the board has met a total of 10 times, with two more meetings scheduled for later this year. However, at four of those 10 meetings, the board did not have the eight members needed to form a quorum.

Long delays in the appointment of council members by state officials have prevented the body from meeting regularly since its creation in 2008.

As of July 2, 2024, the 15-person board had four vacancies — two of which must be appointed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, one must be filled by Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, and one by House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savannah — according to the IDOT website.

“Unfortunately, when these boards and oversight bodies are embedded in bureaucratic systems, they always take longer to get up and running than we would like,” Jones said. “But I think it’s important for people like us, like the media, that advocates really put pressure on the people who can pull the levers to make sure that these boards are fully equipped and have the resources they need to do their jobs.”

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Jessica Alvarado Gamez is a Roy W. Howard Fellow for WBEZ. Follow her @AlvvJessAmy Qin is a data reporter for WBEZ. Follow her @amyqin12.