The Office of Inspector General found “strong evidence” of “race-based disparities” in an analysis of Chicago Police Department stops and use-of-force incidents.
The inspector general’s office announced in a news release Tuesday that it found these disparities after looking at incidents from Oct. 17, 2017, through Feb. 8, 2020. The office found that Black people were consistently at a disadvantage and white people were consistently at an advantage when faced with such policing scenarios.
The results were mixed for Hispanic people and the numbers of other racial and ethnic groups were too small to evaluate, according to the inspector general’s office.
The office looked over the police department’s Tactical Response Report data, which is a compilation of the forms officers have to fill out when an officer uses force.
The data showed that Black people “were overwhelmingly disproportionately stopped by CPD” despite the demographic composition and crime level in the district where the stop occurred, according to the release. Among those who were stopped, Black people were also more likely to be subjected to force.
Black people were overrepresented in investigatory stops that lead to uses of force relative to their population in 17 out of 22 police districts, the release said.
Black motorists’ vehicles were 3.3 times more likely to be searched than white motorists, the inspector general’s office found.
During investigatory stops, Black people were also 1.5 times more likely to be searched than non-Black people and 1.5 times more likely to be pat-down. Chicago police officers were also more likely to use “higher-level force options” against Black people, the release said.
When it came to deadly force, Hispanic people had higher odds than non-Hispanic people of facing “a higher-level force option,” according to the release.
“While this report is primarily driven by quantitative analysis, OIG recognizes that quantitative data analysis cannot capture the complexity or situational uniqueness of individual use-of-force incidents,” the release said. “OIG’s report does not draw conclusions on whether the individual stops or uses-of-force under analysis were justified by law or consistent with CPD policy. OIG’s report also does not make a finding that the observed disparities are attributable to racial or ethnic bias by CPD members.”
The Chicago Police Department did not immediately comment on the report.
The office did not make recommendations to the police department but invited the department to respond, according to the release. The department gave a description of officers’ use-of-force-related trainings and trainings planned for the future. It also mentioned the department’s creation of the Force Review Division that “reviews individual reports of force and makes recommendations for training opportunities, refers incidents for accountability review if necessary and reports out.”
“Since [OIG’s period of analysis], the Department has made great strides in Use of force and Procedural Justice training and has revised numerous policies including, but not limited to, the entire Use of force suite of orders. In fact, the Department has achieved preliminary compliance on the use of force paragraphs in the Consent Decree,” the police department told the inspector general’s office.
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