Earlier today, the Illinois House Judiciary – Criminal Law Committee approved House Bill 1613, a measure that would make permanent the current practice of collecting data about traffic and pedestrian stops conducted by police in the State of Illinois. The practice has been in place in Illinois since 2004 when then-State Senator Barack Obama championed the law. 

The following statement can be attributed to Rachel Murphy, Staff Attorney with the ACLU of Illinois:

“We applaud the Committee and sponsor Representative Justin Slaughter for advancing this measure a step closer to becoming law. Collecting and analyzing data about traffic and pedestrian stops by police provides the public with appropriate transparency of law enforcement practices and serves as a critical tool for law enforcement supervisors to use in training and managing officers interacting with the public.

This data collection has been in place for 15 years and this bill simply continues the collection. Black and Latinx drivers continue to be singled out – especially for consent searches – by police in Illinois, as shown in a recent ACLU of Illinois report examining several years of traffic stop data. 

This data remains valuable, and we should not let collection of important information about interactions between the police and the public end this year. We look forward to passage in the full House.”