The head of a civilian oversight commission complained Thursday that proposed changes to the Chicago Police Department’s controversial traffic stop policy would still allow drivers to be pulled over for minor traffic offenses.
The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability said officers should be banned from making stops for certain violations, such as missing only a front license plate, a nonfunctioning headlight or loud music.
“In a city [where] I can get robbed and it takes them an hour to show up on the scene … why would we have police officers pulling people over for a light bulb on the top of their license plate?” asked commission president Anthony Driver.
Such stops are known as “pretextual,” meaning officers use the stops to check for more serious violations, like possessing a gun or illegal drugs.
Traffic stops in Chicago skyrocketed in 2015 as the department scaled back pedestrian stops as part of a settlement that resulted from a scathing report by the ACLU of Illinois.
Stops have disproportionately targeted people of color and have rarely led to the recovery of drugs or guns, according to state data.
In recent years, police department leaders pushed officers to boost their numbers, leading to stops that can put cops and community members in danger.
The new draft would prohibit any form of quotas or bonuses for traffic stops.
It also takes steps to increase reporting. At the end of stops that do not end in arrest, officers would provide a “Stop Receipt” listing the actions taken.
But it would still allow pretextual stops for the kind of offenses Driver said he believes should get a pass.
The commission, which provided feedback ahead of the draft’s release Thursday, said it agrees with the department’s assertion that stops “must balance concerns about public safety with concerns about fairness and public trust.”
Driver emphasized that the group agrees with “90 percent” of the department’s proposed policy.
But he made no apologies for pushing the department to go further in developing trust between citizens and police, which he said is pivotal to solving violent crime.
“If you see somebody driving erratically and they have expired tags, pull them over,” Driver told the Sun-Times. “If there are four people in the car with ski masks and they have expired tags, pull them over.
“But if the only violation is that their tags have been expired for less than six month and you pull them over, a majority of the commission believes that’s a waste of police resources,” he said.
The police department is struggling to get by with nearly 2,000 fewer officers than it had just a few years ago, which also motivated the commission’s stance.
“I’m a person who very strongly cares about public safety and I don’t want to put the police in a position where they can’t keep our community safe,” Driver said.
“We’re never going to get back over 13,000 police officers in the next five or 10 years,” he said. “We’ve been hemorrhaging officers. So we’ve got to do more with the officers that we have. Which means we have to free up some resources.”
Traffic stops have been declining in the last few years as criticism has mounted.
Chicago police officers made 293,150 stops in 2024, down 45% from 2023, according to police data and the Illinois Department of Transportation.
But a Sun-Times investigation found more were ending in violence.
Officers reported using force 787 times during traffic stops in 2024 — the most since 2018, which was the first full year cops were subjected to tougher reporting requirements.
Once finalized, the traffic stop policy could be incorporated into a federal court order mandating sweeping changes to the department’s policies and practices.
The independent monitoring team overseeing implementation of the court order, known as a consent decree, has recommended adding traffic stops among the things it watches.
But some community organizers who have fought for an end to all pretextual stops argue tethering them to the consent decree would only slow down reform.
Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41st), a former police officer, argues that traffic stops can be effective in uncovering more serious crimes. He pushed back against the commission’s proposed limitations.
“As you make your stops based on laws and somebody breaking those laws, other crimes are usually discovered at that time,” Napolitano told the Sun-Times. “It’s called good policing. You’re maintaining and monitoring the neighborhoods you’re sent to.”
Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said he attended two public sessions hosted by the commission but believes his feedback fell on “deaf ears.”
“I say give them the city they want. … Eliminate all of these pretextual traffic stops altogether,” Catanzara said. “Don’t stop nobody. Let’s stop getting guns off the street. Let’s stop getting armed robbers and aggravated battery offenders off the street, because that’s what a lot of these traffic stops lead to. Let’s just stop it all. No problem.”