A disturbing new report from Chicago's top government oversight agency offers a painfully familiar conclusion: Blacks are much more likely to be stopped by police and subjected to use of force than any other racial or ethnic group, but evidence for pinning the blame specifically on racial bias remains unclear.
Similar findings led the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois to sue the city and the Chicago Police Department for alleged racial bias in the department’s “stop-and-frisk” policies.That case was awarded class-action status last year.
And similar findings regarding use of force in 2017 led the U.S. Department of Justice to sue and later sign a consent decree with the city that went into effect in 2019 requiring CPD to reform its training and practices in the use of force and other areas.
In each case, reformers and community groups have acknowledged improvements in CPD’s policies and practices but insist that they’re not enough.
The city Office of the Inspector General’s report finds “strong evidence” that Blacks are more likely to be stopped by Chicago police than any other racial or ethnic group.
And, when they are stopped, the city’s top oversight agency found, they are more likely to be subjected not only to the use of force but also to a higher level of force.
Was the apparent disparity explainable by differences other than race, one wonders, such as the differences between high-crime and low-crime districts and neighborhoods?
Unfortunately, despite the “strong evidence” in the data it offers, the IG report doesn’t say. It sticks to strictly to its data-collection role and leaves conclusions to the rest of us.
Nonetheless, the report, which looks at incidents from Oct. 17, 2017, through Feb. 8, 2020, offers data that show the frequency of stops and use of force were more likely to align with the race of the suspect than with the crime rate or other factors in the police districts in which the stops took place.
Citywide, when a police stop led to the use of force, more than 83% of the incidents involved a Black person, the IG’s report says, a racial tilt that remained generally consistent regardless of the district’s proportion of Black residents.
In the Near North police district, for example, where Blacks made up only 7.9% of the residents, they made up 73.5% of police stops, In Auburn Gresham, where Blacks are a 95.9% majority, they made up 97.2% of the stops.
On a given investigatory stop, Black people were subjected to a search of their person 1.5 times more frequently than non-Black people, and also subjected to a pat-down 1.5 times more frequently than non-Black people.
Citywide, white people were either underrepresented or proportionally represented — relative to their share of police stops — in being subjected to the use of force.
By contrast, Hispanic people were found to have higher odds than non-Hispanic people of facing a higher-level force option in most cases of subjects who were reported to have used deadly force.
As concerning and even alarming as some will find such statistics, it sounds like old news to seasoned police reformers and community leaders. It’s reassuring to have suspicions confirmed but more study is needed to determine the true nature and depth of the suspected bias and, yet more importantly, to develop effective solutions.
Some community leaders understandably persist in calling for community-based solutions and city leaders should take heed. Cooperation between police and the neighborhoods they serve has been hard to come by after years of suspicion and resentment on both sides.
Police stops and interrogations can and should be an effective tool in crime-fighting. But when unfair racial or ethnic disparities lead to growing mistrust for law enforcement, even from crime victims and potential witnesses, only the criminals benefit.
