Chicago Police Stop More Black Drivers, But Cameras Are Unbiased

Traffic stops by Chicago police have more than doubled in the past nine years, in what the American Civil Liberties Union, a civil rights group, is calling the “new stop and frisk.”

Stop and frisk is when officers stop and search people based on “reasonable suspicion” that they are involved in criminal activity. The practice has been documented to disproportionately target Black and Latinx people – not just in Chicago, but also in New York and across the United States. In Chicago, it has declined dramatically since a 2015 reform agreement between the ACLU and the Chicago Police Department.

Meanwhile, traffic stops have increased in Chicago, from fewer than 200,000 in 2016 to more than 570,000 in 2023. And as with stop-and-frisks, police disproportionately stop Black drivers in Chicago, according to our latest study that examines racial prejudice in traffic enforcement.

Drivers, automated inspection and police stops

Our research, published in June 2024, used data on the racial makeup of drivers on all Chicago streets. We then compared who is driving on the roads with who is being ticketed by city speed cameras and who is being stopped by Chicago police.

Our findings show that when speed cameras are issuing tickets, the proportion of tickets issued to black and white drivers closely aligns with their respective share of road users. With human enforcement, in contrast, police officers stop black drivers at a rate that far exceeds their presence on the road.

For example, on roads where half the drivers are Black, Black drivers receive approximately 54% of automated camera citations. However, they represent about 70% of police stops.

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

Driving while black

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

The civil rights era of the 1960s was rife with incidents of law enforcement targeting black drivers. As academic and historian Gretchen Sorin details in her 2020 book “Driving While Black,” the car simultaneously opened up new possibilities for freedom as well as 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 after a high-speed chase and beaten by police in Los Angeles. The violent encounter, captured on video and shared in local media, became national news.

The officers’ acquittal triggered the 1992 Los Angeles riots, in which widespread unrest and violence killed more than 50 people, injured thousands, and inflicted billions of dollars in property damage.

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

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 pulled Hill from his vehicle and handcuffed him. The incident raised questions about the aggressive use of force by police officers.

Fairer inspection and safer streets

All humans have prejudices. These prejudices can become dangerous when these humans are police officers – agents of the State who are armed and trained to make our cities safer.

And even when there is no excessive use of force, the application of disparate measures erodes trust between communities and the police.

In recent years, as national discussions about racial bias in policing have accelerated, many police departments have implemented programs like implicit bias training to establish fairer enforcement. While these initiatives appear to have an effect on officers’ attitudes toward implicit bias, they do not appear to change the racial discrimination of those police stop, search, or arrest.

To reduce disparities in law enforcement and improve the way traffic violations are handled, more fundamental reforms are likely needed.

What can more ambitious political reforms look like?

Several recent potential traffic enforcement reforms focus on decriminalization and de-escalation.

Illinois lawmakers recently proposed a bill that would prohibit traffic stops solely based on minor, non-criminal infractions such as improper vehicle registration, seat belt violations or lane usage errors.

Berkeley, California, is considering using trained civilians to enforce traffic to reduce the opportunity for escalation. The idea is similar to how parking enforcement is handled in many cities, including Chicago, which has unarmed parking units separate from police.

The reason for many police traffic stops is safety, which must remain a priority. Between 2013 and 2022 in Chicago, crashes killed an average of 44 pedestrians, seven bicyclists and 78 vehicle passengers 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 a year – not 129.

Greater reliance on automated traffic enforcement could improve traffic safety and transform policing.

The cameras can detect dangerous moving violations, such as serious speeding and running red lights, without the need for immediate police involvement. Automated enforcement alone will not ensure safe streets, but cameras have substantially reduced fatal and serious injury accidents where they have been deployed, including in Chicago.

More than half of police stops in Chicago in 2023 were related to license plates, registrations or equipment. Automating the enforcement of such immobile violations would eliminate one of the main reasons for interaction between police and the driver, reducing the potential for bias and escalation.

This, in turn, would free up police resources to focus on non-traffic priorities.

And as our data shows, cameras are equal opportunities: They are racially biased and pose no risk of escalation.

Wenfei XuAssistant Professor, Cornell University; David LevinsonProfessor of Transport, University of Sydney; Michael J SmartAssociate Professor and Director, Doctoral Program in Urban Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers Universityand Nebiyou Yonas TilahunAssociate Professor or Urban Planning and Policy, University of IllinoisChicago.

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