Denise McBroom, 9th Police District Council member and Canaryville resident, reads out Ald. Raymond Lopez’s, 15th Ward, statement to CCPSA. (Photo by Igor Studenkov/for Chronicle Media)

The fifth listening session on the potential changes to Chicago Police Department traffic stop policy didn’t go quite the way it was originally supposed to.

The hearings are organized by the city’s Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability, a public body created as part of the 2021 police reform package to, among other things, suggest and review any changes to police policies. For the past few months, CCPSA commissioners held listening sessions throughout the city to hear how residents were impacted by the current policies and what changes, if any, they would like to see. The March 19 session at Tilden High School, in the South Side’s Canaryville neighborhood, was supposed to be no different.

But the listening session was indeed turned into a full-fledged CCPSA special meeting. According to Commissioner Remel Terry, one of the commissioners who organized the listening sessions, they wanted to give the commissioners an opportunity to share their opinions on the issue. Residents still got a chance to weigh in during the first half of the meeting.

In contrast with the previous listening session on the Southwest Side’s Garfield Ridge neighborhood, where the speakers overwhelmingly supported the status quo, this meeting had an equal share of speakers who wanted to reform the policy, if not ban traffic stops altogether. The commissioners were equally divided on the topic, with some supporting substantial limits, some supporting keeping the policies largely intact and others saying they’d favor some compromise.

The next hearing will take place from 6:30-8 p.m. April 18 at Truman College, 1145 W. Wilson Ave.

There have been long-standing concerns about whether police in Chicago and other cities stop Black and Hispanic drivers at higher rates than white drivers. Pretextual stops, where police officers use traffic law violation as a pretext to search cars for unlicensed guns and other contraband, only added to the controversy.

Organizations such as Free2Move Coalition and Impact for Equity called for the city to ban pretextual traffic stops, limit stops for what they describe as “low level” traffic safety law violations such as a broken taillight, and require police officers to show that they had “reasonable suspicion” that there might be something illegal before searching cars.

The conversations about changing the traffic policy grew out of discussions as to whether it should be added to the federal consent decree. Any policy changes would need to be something both CCSPA and CPD agreed on.

Terry told Chronicle Media that the commissioners wanted to talk about where they stand on the policy, but the Open Meetings Act requires that any discussion of a public body’s official business that involves more than two members of a public body must be treated as a public meeting. Folding a special meeting into an already scheduled listening session made sense, Terry said.

The reform package that established CCPSA also created elected three-member councils for each police district. Erin Vogel, the council member for the 9th District, which includes Canaryville, was one of the several speakers who cited a 2021 analysis of traffic stop data within the City of Chicago that found that, in 2015 to 2020, less than 0.1 percent of traffic stops led to recovery of illegal firearms.

“Pretextual traffic stops do not make us safer,” Vogel said. “Fishing for contraband perpetuates the cycle of harm and distress.”

Alees Edwards is on the council for the 11th District, a West Side district that, according to CPD statistics, experiences some the highest levels of violent crime in Chicago. She described an incident where police officers approached “a son of a pillar of the community” when he parked his car in front of his home.

“They said if it doesn’t get out, they were going to bust the window,” Edwards said, adding that the case against him was thrown out in the traffic court.

She said that she wanted officers to keep the community safe, but all incidents like this did was create distrust.

“There could have been scenario where officer could have introduced himself, and created some kind of a friendly conversion, but instead they (acted hostile),” Edwards said.

Local Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15^th Ward, who criticized the current CCPSA and district council structure, couldn’t attend the meeting due to a scheduling conflict. But in a statement to the commission, he argued that anything that happens during that traffic stop, he said, should be guided by “mutual respect, personal responsibility and accountability.”

“The CCPSA has the opportunity to educate communities ignorant of their rights and responsibilities when pulled over, the need for respectful engagement by both diver and law enforcement, and an understanding of what happens when ether side choses to violate the previous tenants,” Lopez stated.

Joi Imobhio, a policy strategist at Impact for Equity, was one of the several speakers who urged reform, saying that those who favor maintaining status quo ignore minorities’ “lived experience of being stopped multiple times in the month.” adding that, rather than keeping officers busy responding to “low-level violations,” CPD “should prioritize responding to driving behavior that’s actually dangerous,”

Resident Darian Barnes, who testified via Zoom, told CCPSA that he was pulled over seven times within a span of a few weeks. During one of those stops, he said, three squad cars converged around him and officers searched his car for 20 minutes. With the stress, Barnes said, he was worried the situation would end badly.

“I expressed that I was becoming more anxious because I was overpoliced, and not because I thought they’d find anything (illegal),” he said.

Anthony Crawford said that, as someone who regularly riders a motorcycle, the seemingly minor violations are not minor. A light being out, he said, can give a motorcyclist the wrong impression of how big the vehicle is.

“It’s a vehicle that weighs several tons, and it’s moving at high speed,” Crawford said.

While he said he was fine with some reforms, taking away police’s ability to stop drivers “just puts people at risk.”

Commissioner Perspectives

Commissioner Aaron Gottlieb said he was in favor of restricting traffic stops to situations where the officers have some evidence that a driver committed a serious crime. As he saw it, traffic stops could be dangerous for both officers and the drivers due to how quickly the situation can escalate.

Commissioner Sandra Wortham said that any policy should take the experience of the police officers who enforce it in mind, since reading about it doesn’t prepare one for the reality of conducting a traffic stop.

“I’m very, very concerned that we’re being so prescriptive that we take away discretion that we pay for them to train [on],” she said.

Wortham said that, as a Black woman, she would caution against making broad generalizations about what the Black community wants.

“Just like on any other issue, there is no racial community that is a monolith,” she said. “What I hear in my com is a desperate desire to be safer. So, I would like to give my community every tool they need to get us closer to this reality.”

Commissioner Angel Rubi Navarjo said he wanted to limit vehicle searches. He said that, in conversations with police officers, he heard that many would appreciate more guidance on what do during traffic stops. Navarjo also generally agreed that reducing pretextual stops, as opposed to more general traffic stops, would be best for both sides.

“It only takes one bad interaction of one traffic stop to leave a bad taste in their month about the Chicago police, and that will (add to) the cycle of tension,” he said.

Commissioner Abierre Minor said she wanted to ban searches without consent, and that “we need to clearly define pretectal stops in whatever policy we come up with.”