CHICAGO – Leaders from across the Chicago Police Department and City Hall – from the Mayor’s office down – have intentionally created and perpetuated a racist mass traffic stop program that purposely targets Black and Latino drivers and the neighborhoods where they reside for large numbers of pretextual traffic stops. That conclusion was shared today with a federal court in Chicago which is considering a legal challenge to CPD’s mass traffic stop program.
The filing comes in Wilkins v. City of Chicago, a lawsuit filed in 2023 on behalf of five Black and Latino drivers in the city who have been subjected to repeated stops – including multiple stops since the lawsuit was filed. Lawyers for the drivers are seeking to expand the challenge to represent the entire class of Black and Latino drivers targeted since June 2021 by the City’s mass traffic stop program or who will be targeted in the future.
The motion also asserts that CPD officials pressure officers to meet activity targets that can be seen as “quotas” for the number of traffic stops conducted each day, and even recommend demotion for officers who did not produce enough “activity.” This matches evidence previously alleged that former Superintendent David Brown demanded CPD officers conduct at least 10,000 traffic stops each week. This pattern and testimony led the former Salt Lake City police Chief (and expert in the case) to conclude that “CPD’s instructions for officers to increase their activity or productivity and setting goals and targets functions as a quota system that requires officers to conduct a high number of pretextual traffic stops.”
“It is alarming to see that the traffic stops I – and other Black and Latino drivers – have experienced were part of an intentional strategy to target the folks who live in neighborhoods like mine in Roseland,” said Eric Wilkins, a community organizer and lead plaintiff in the case. “It is clear that City leadership has been working for years to flood neighborhoods where mostly Black and Latino people live with pretextual traffic stops.”
The brief filed today by lawyers for the plaintiffs also establishes that the traffic stop program escalated dramatically after the City of Chicago entered into an agreement to limit the use of stop and frisk – which disproportionately targeted Black and Latino residents in Chicago. The number of investigatory stops plummeted from more than 600,000 in 2015 to around 100,000 in 2016, after the agreement was reached. But CPD leadership simply substituted mass traffic stops -- more than half a million every year in 2017-2024. The brief also shows that CPD has consistently failed to report about 200,000 traffic stops per year each year since 2015.
These stops were concentrated – by design – on the South and West sides of Chicago, areas that are predominantly populated by Black and Latino residents. A data expert cited in the filing shows that residents of ZIP codes with more Black and Latino residents are more likely to be stopped than drivers from predominantly white ZIP codes.
Data in the filing also shows how inefficient and ineffective the stops have been. Under pressure from City officials to make more traffic stops, CPD officers are actually writing fewer citations for violating traffic laws. CPD officers, specifically, are one-eighth as likely to write a citation during a traffic stop in 2024 compared to 2025.
The plaintiffs’ data analysis also shows that only 0.4% (4 of every 1,000) traffic stops results in the reported discovery of any contraband, and CPD finds a weapon in only 0.07% (7 of every 10,000) of traffic stops.
“Having been stopped for no good reason, taken from my car and handcuffed by police – only to be released with no ticket– it has always been clear to me that CPD traffic stops were not about road safety,” added plaintiff Mahari Bell. “Instead, I feel like officers are racially profiling Black and Latino drivers throughout the city and especially when we drive in white neighborhoods.”
“Having been stopped repeatedly – even after we filed this lawsuit – and not issued a ticket or warning of any kind, it is hard to see how this program has improved safety in the City of Chicago,” added Jacquez Beasley, another of the plaintiffs. “It is clear that folks who look like me or live in my neighborhood on the West side have been targeted again and again based on the false view that we are more likely to be dangerous or have weapons in our car.”
“Being stopped by police repeatedly has made me fearful every time I get behind the wheel,” said José Manuel Almanza, Jr., another of the plaintiffs in the case. “But hearing that police were using quotas to target traffic stops makes it clear that those of us who came together to bring this lawsuit are not alone. Hundreds of thousands of Chicago residents have experienced this same thing.”
The motion for class certification can be found here.