Case: ACLU Settlement with the Chicago Police Department

On August 7, 2015, Chicago Police Department (CPD), the City of Chicago, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois (ACLU) reached a settlement agreement to conduct an independent evaluation of the stop and frisk practices and procedures, and increase transparency and public disclosure regarding Chicago police investigatory stops.

The agreement also called for heightened training of officers, designed to ensure that investigatory stops in Chicago are conducted only where there is reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and that protective pat downs are performed only when legally justified.

Under the agreement, the City and CPD would collect additional data about all investigatory stops and all protective pat downs, including those that lead to an arrest, in the City of Chicago. CPD was required to provide the data to the ACLU and former U.S. Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys. Judge Keys would use this data to independently evaluate the City’s practices and oversee the implementation of the settlement agreement.

On August 12, 2015, Governor Rauner signed the Police and Community Relations Improvement Act into law. This law requires statewide data collection for stops that result in frisks or arrests. Police officers will also be required to issue receipts to people they search during a stop.

Judge Keys released his first report on March 24, 2017, which covered the first half of 2016. His findings included that Black people made up 71% of stops by the Chicago police, and they were more likely to be frisked than white people when stopped, yet police were two times more likely to find weapons on white people. Officers also failed to justify stops more often for Black and Latino individuals.

The second report was released on March 5, 2018, and it covered the second half of 2016. There were similar takeaways with this report: 92% of people stopped and 95% of people frisked were people of color. And Black and Latino individuals were nearly twice as likely to be frisked.

On October 17, 2019, a third report was released. This time, Judge Keys also identified concerns with how Chicago police collected data and supervised officers conducting stops and pat downs. Because of these concerns, he determined that it would be "impracticable" to get an accurate assessment of CPD's compliance.

As a result, on September 26, 2019, the ACLU and the City agreed to a temporary stay of certain provisions of the agreement. The temporary stay required CPD to conduct focus groups with its members to inform revisions to its polices, and anticipated that the reports would resume in 2020. CPD would develop a project management plan by March 1, 2020, and it would be completed before the reports were anticipated to resume.

In the summer of 2020, the independent monitoring team from the consent decree in Illinois v. City of Chicago took over Judge Keys's role in this agreement because of the overlap in responsibilities.

A new report was released on March 19, 2021. None of the deadlines in the temporary stay had been met, but in the meantime the monitoring team had taken other steps. It worked with statistical experts to identify new concerns, proposed a community engagement component that would included people from Black and Latino communities, and provided recommendations on CPD's policies, documentation, and training.

As of September 3, 2021, the temporary stay remains in effect.