Between 2015 and 2023, the ACLU of Illinois had an agreement (Stop and Frisk Agreement) with the Chicago Police Department (CPD), under which the CPD was to take steps to ensure that CPD policies and practices complied with the Fourth Amendment (which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures) and the Illinois Civil Rights Act (which requires that government policies do not have a disparate impact based on race or ethnicity).

In March 2015, the ACLU of Illinois issued a report outlining the use of stop and frisk by Chicago police officers.  The report found that the practice was widely used in the city – at a per capita rate even higher than the use of stop and frisk by New York police, that Chicago officers regularly could not identify a constitutionally-permissible reason or the stop, and that stop and frisk disproportionately targeted Black and Latino residents of Chicago. That report led to the agreement aimed at addressing these critical issues.

Under the Stop and Frisk Agreement, a Consultant issued a series of reports examining CPD’s stop-and-frisk practices, and particularly their racially disparate impact.  The ACLU and CPD also negotiated a series of changes to CPD’s Fourth Amendment policies and documentation of investigatory stops.

In June 2023, the Stop and Frisk Agreement ended, and CPD proposed transferring oversight of its investigatory stop practices to the Consent Decree in Illinois v. Chicago, through which a federally-appointed Monitor and a federal judge oversee police reform in the City of Chicago.

Chief Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer will take public testimony on August 9, 2023, regarding CPD’s proposal for oversight of investigatory stops under the Consent Decree.

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