Traffic stops study raises questions

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- After three years of tracking every traffic stop and reporting each incident in detail, Illinois police have a mountain of data, a few clear trends in how drivers are treated and difficult questions.

For the third year, police in 2006 pulled over about 2.5 million drivers. And just as in the first two years, minorities were stopped in larger percentages than driver population numbers would suggest, and were much more likely to be searched than whites.

But it's not clear yet who will answer questions about the disparities and what -- if anything -- will be done to address them.

A state panel created last year to review the results hasn't met because only a fraction of its members have been appointed. And police agencies and activist groups say there's little urgency to act immediately on widespread reforms.

"Right now I don't know that anybody is looking at it or getting all that excited about it," said Laimutis "Limey" Nargelenas of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police.

Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago, who pushed for the annual study -- created by state lawmakers in 2003 to address complaints of racial bias -- says it proves that racial profiling "is not a myth, that it actually does occur."

The 2006 numbers, compiled by the Illinois Department of Transportation and released without fanfare earlier this month, show that minorities were pulled over 32 percent of the time, although they account for about 28 percent of the driving population.

Minorities were more likely than whites to be pulled over for equipment, license or registration violations, and more likely than whites to be ticketed.

Police rarely conduct consent searches, where they ask drivers for permission to look in their vehicles. But when they do, minorities are asked more than twice as often as whites.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois hopes the search data helps it persuade state lawmakers to outlaw consent searches next year, spokesman Ed Yohnka said. He said they've made a similar push before but it's been blocked by law enforcement opposition.

But people on both sides of the issue caution that it's premature to expect significant reforms quickly, for several reasons. For one, the results themselves can be deceiving.

For example, stops statewide climbed from 2004 to 2005, and again in 2006. But that tally includes huge increases in both years from the Illinois State Police. All other agencies saw stops decline slightly in the last two years.

The data also show large differences in stops among different departments, and even within some agencies from year to year.

Of the more than 900 police departments surveyed, more than 360 departments last year reported pulling over minorities in smaller numbers than their estimated driving population.

And of the five departments that reported the biggest increases in stops from 2004 to 2005, three reported that stops declined in 2006.

Police say those kind of discrepancies raise questions about how much the results can tell about police work. Some even suggest the study is a waste of taxpayer money -- each department must pay to compile the data -- and officer time, providing predictable results that don't break new ground.

"I don't have a huge department," McDonough County Sheriff Rick VanBrooker said. "I can tell what I need to tell by the paperwork submitted [by officers]."

Davis argues that by 2010, lawmakers will be in a better position to call for reforms, including better police training and possibly even stripping funding from agencies with racial profiling issues.

"We can't have a blemish," Davis said. "Illinois will certainly not remain that kind of a state."