CCPSA tackles pre-textual traffic stops during South Side meeting

From the age of 12, Darell Dacres, a 20th District Police District Council member, recalled being
“harassed and bullied” by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) while growing up in West Rogers Park. 

That harassment, he said, has continued into adulthood, first through the department’s previous tactic of ‘stop and frisk,’ and now through the use of pre-textual traffic stops.

“In the past three months, I’ve been pulled over twice by CPD. The last time, it was for being too close to the fire hydrant,” Dacres said. “I wasn’t in the yellow; I wasn’t on fire hydrant. There was nothing illegal happening.” 

Dacres is also a special program manager for ONE Northside, a nonprofit that aims to eliminate injustice through bold and innovative community organizing. 

He shared his experiences with the CPD during a special public meeting for the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) on Tuesday evening on the South Side at The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center. 

“They [CPD] pulled up to me, guns out and drawn, looking in my car and trying to see if there were people in my car. There was nobody. I was released, but my life was in danger,” he said, referring to the incident.  

Tuesday’s meeting aimed to educate attendees on the impact of pre-textual traffic stops on communities and public safety. The special session also featured a panel discussion with subject matter experts from other states who shared insights on how their police departments moved away from policies on police-conducted traffic stops and its effect on community and public safety. 

For example, in Ramsey County, Minnesota, county attorney John Choi instituted a policy in 2021 where the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute cases that stemmed from traffic stops based on minor equipment or registration infractions.

Since the implementation of the policy, non-public traffic stops for things like expired registration, missing license plates, and broken taillights have gone down by 86 percent, according to Choi.  

Angel Novales, Chief of CPD’s Constitutional Policing and Reform, was also present at the meeting and gave brief remarks before the panel discussion. The discussion featured presentations from subject matter experts and questions exclusively from CCPSA commissioners. 

The public meeting also follows renewed calls from several organizations, including Impact for Equity, Free 2 Move Coalition (F2M), the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the Chicago Torture Justice Center, GoodKids MadCity, and the U.S. Palestinian Network, urging Chicago police to end the practice of pre-textual stops. These calls were sparked by the police killing of Dexter Reed during a traffic stop in March on the West Side. 

Dacres’ experience was echoed by other public commenters, who shared their stories of being pulled over by police under false pretenses.

“As a person who’s been pulled over four times since April of this year, it’s not just an inconvenience for me,” CCPSA president Anthony Driver said. “Every time I get pulled over, I go through a whole process of trying to figure out how to make myself smaller, how to make myself less threatening.” 

Black and brown people are disproportionately impacted by pre-textual stops, according to  Patricia Jjemba, director of Legislative & External Affairs for the Cook County Public Defender. 

“It’s undisputed that CPD uses investigatory stops, pat downs and traffic stops in a disproportionate and even violent manner against Black, Latinx and poor Chicagoans,” Jjemba said. 

“Officers target and wait for these drivers to commit minor traffic offenses or outright fabricate violations as justification to pull them over. These stops are not only constitutional violations but also the gateway to criminal charges and inflicting a lifetime of collateral consequences,” she added.  

Tuesday’s meeting was also the result of organizing efforts by Impact for Equity and the Free 2 F2M over the past few weeks. They circulated a petition, gathering 2,000 signatures, which led to the CCPSA hosting a special meeting on the issue. The seven-member CCPSA has the authority to weigh in and vote on police department policies.

During the meeting, several police district council members also publicly announced their support for F2M’s policy platform, which calls for ending pretextual stops, ending stops for low-level offenses and ending suspicionless consent searches. There are 35 PDCs citywide who are backing F2M’s policy. 

“This is the first and only time in history that a majority of district councilors have come to a clear policy consensus, revealing that ending pretextual stops is the number one issue for public safety in Chicago. Solving this problem is exactly why the CCPSA was created,” David Orlikoff, a 14th District PDC member, said.

Some attendees, like 2nd District PDC member Alexander Perez, left the public meeting feeling hopeful. 

“We’re able to see that there are other alternatives that could be much more impactful and beneficial and bring actual equity to the problems we’re trying to address,” Perez said. 

There’s also room, he said, following Tuesday’s meeting to suggest new policy recommendations for the CCPSA commissioners to implement—policies that eliminate pre-textual traffic stops and solve problems without causing additional harm to the communities they serve.

Perez pointed to the Lights On program that leaders in Minnesota implemented as a model for Chicago. The Lights On program, which partners with law enforcement and auto service providers, replaces traffic tickets with repair vouchers for people who need financial assistance.

The program was launched following the police killing of Philando Castile in Minnesota, said Choi. According to the program’s website, fines and fees associated with tickets for broken car lights can disproportionately harm low-income individuals.

“The first thing that went through my head was, this is a policy recommendation that we need to push through the district councils and then through the commission to make it a priority with CPD and the Mayor’s office,” Perez said, referring to the Lights On Program.