Class Action Proceeds

This is why you don't chase numbers for bosses any more:

• A federal judge has allowed a major civil rights lawsuit challenging Chicago Police Department traffic stop practices to move forward on behalf of thousands of Black and Latino drivers, marking the latest chapter in a legal battle over how and why the department conducts street and vehicle stops.

  In a ruling issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland certified a class of Black and Latino individuals who have been stopped by Chicago police since June 2021, or who may be stopped in the future. The plaintiffs are not seeking monetary damages but rather want the court to order CPD to change practices they contend disproportionately target Black and Latino motorists.

Ah yes, the "targeted" traffic stop allegation, probably hte only thing to ever come out of then-Senator Sparklefart's TSSSSSSSSSS cards.

• While the ruling does not determine whether the city violated the law, Rowland’s opinion places the current dispute in the context of more than four decades of challenges to Chicago police stop practices.

  The judge wrote that Black and Latino Chicagoans have repeatedly accused the department of discriminatory stop programs dating to the 1980s. According to the opinion, lawsuits from that era challenged aggressive pedestrian stops that often led to disorderly conduct arrests. In the 1990s, attention shifted to enforcement of Chicago’s gang loitering ordinance, which the U.S. Supreme Court found to be overly vague and unconstitutional.

We'll leave it to the readers to figure out what the demographics are for criminals, but the sheer volume of bad law passed by supposedly intelligent legislators has always been amazing.

But here's where Officers should be warned (again) about chasing numbers:

• By 2014, Chicago police officers were stopping, questioning and sometimes frisking more than 718,000 people annually, with more than 90% of those stopped identified as Black or Latino. Following criticism from civil rights groups, an ACLU report and subsequent litigation, the number of pedestrian stops fell dramatically. By 2017, annual stops had dropped to roughly 100,000.

  But while street stops plunged, traffic stops immediately skyrocketed. Beginning around 2016, Chicago police shifted toward large-scale traffic enforcement, particularly on the South and West sides. Traffic stops rose from about 83,000 in 2014 to nearly 600,000 by 2019, according to figures cited in the opinion. Plaintiffs contend the department effectively replaced widespread pedestrian stops with widespread vehicle stops, using minor traffic violations as a pretext to investigate drivers for guns, drugs and other criminal activity.

This crap about "pretextual stops" being "racist" has always been such bullshit. Every single instance is still a violation of the Law, passed by the legislature and signed by the executive branch. If they don't want it enforced for political reasons, then they have the ability and power to rescind the Law that they created, or create a list of Laws that will not be enforced by the Police if a certain racial or ethnic group violates the statute. 

We can all enjoy the two-and-three-tiered justice system together!