By Don Babwin
Associated Press
CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago police officers initiated a higher rate of stop, question and frisk encounters last summer than their New York City counterparts did during their peak summer, which preceded a federal ruling that New York’s implementation of the controversial practice discriminated against racial minorities, a civil liberties group said.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said it identified more than 250,000 of such stops in Chicago from May through August in which there were no arrests. African-Americans accounted for nearly three-quarters of those who were stopped, though they make up about a third of the city’s population. On a per capita basis, Chicago police stopped 93.6 people per 1,000 residents, or more than four times New York’s peak rate of 22.9 stops per 1,000 residents, which happened during the same four-month period of 2011.
“While most of the media coverage has suggested that the stop-and-frisk was a New York phenomena, its use is not limited to New York,” Harvey Grossman, the ACLU’s legal director, said in a statement.
“And just like New York, we see that African Americans are singled out for these searches.”
The study concluded that people were far more likely to be stopped in predominantly black communities, and that in predominantly white neighborhoods, blacks were still more likely to be the “target of stops,” the ACLU said. For example, in the Jefferson Park area, African Americans accounted for 15 percent of the stops, even though they made up just one percent of that area’s population.
The ACLU said it also found that police gave no “legally sufficient reason” for initiating many of the stops. It said it examined a random sampling of “contact cards,” which officers are required to fill out whenever they make such a stop. On half the cards, the officers didn’t state a reason for the stop, and in some cases, they stated that they stopped someone for a reason that wasn’t related to suspected criminal activity.
The police department did not immediately respond to a message asking for comment on Monday morning, but department spokesman Martin Maloney told the Chicago Tribune that the department prohibits the illegal practice of racial profiling and has taken steps to improve the training of officers on the issue.
In New York, a federal court judge found the NYPD was unconstitutionally using the stop and frisk policy to target minorities. New York City appealed but ultimately asked an appeals court to lift the stay on a judge’s ruling in the hopes of speeding the implementation of reforms it had already agreed to in a settlement.
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